So that was kind of the sexy science, the fancy physics experiments. And today, with a glorious thud, we're going to go into some of the most well-established -- you could have a yawn already -- the most well-established, long-standing, across all the domains of physics, including good old Newtonian physics. Not just all this, no, no, no, spooky quantum. It's really mundane, established, simple, understandable. And this is probably my favorite session of the series -- we'll see what it's like for you. This comes from Master Wonchull Park, Tai Chi master and physicist, and his book Nowflow: Breath, Movement & Mind -- probably one of the more misunderstood books on the planet, slightly exaggerating. It's so easy to take something like: well, what about good old action-reaction? Newton's third law. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It brings back maybe some of the billiard balls. All this just stuff. Everything is just mechanical. It could seem like something we can be like, oh yeah, action-reaction, I got that -- even as it's usually taught in schools without any hint of a possibility that it is something you can feel actually in your own experience. And what we explore is: what if we don't treat it like a layer of the map that we just land on with a thud? But actually treat that as something that is both definite and as established as can be -- and also pointing. Where you can keep going, layer by layer, closer and closer to one's own immediacy of experience. What would it be like to actually free-fall into not just a picture of fundamental particles, but with that sense of everything interconnected in this parts-whole cascade? It kind of feels like leaning back out of a plane and free-falling continuously. Into this kaleidoscopic fractal of whatever flow we feel. We free-fall through any feeling of 'got it, that's it.' And into the practically infinite, right there in this instant of breath at the nose. A palpable yet indescribable teamingness of experience. Rich and smooth. Flows within flows, endlessly... Beyond Just Stuff Series: Maps, Mystery & Nature's FlowWhat is it about quantum that lets us feel like physics gives us permission to view stuff as not just plain old mechanical stuff? One of the limitations that comes up in a body-centered practice is that we can have associations with the body as, you know, "it's just the body" -- and that blocks our fuller feeling of the magic of being a human being. As physicist and tai chi master Wonchull Park says, the map is not the terrain -- but we can use our maps to open more to the terrain as it actually is. We move from the playfully imaginative through to some genuinely strange territory in physics, and arrive somewhere more ordinary and more immediate. But there's a question underneath it all that's worth sitting with: what is it that's actually shifting when we try on a new story about what we're made of? Is it the physics picture? Or is it a letting go of what we usually tell ourselves? Or some of both? These six sessions explore that question from the inside out -- using maps, yes, and also learning to see through them, fall through them, and arrive at something that doesn't need a story to justify it. The mystery, it turns out, was never in danger. It's always untouched. In these six explorations, each with an hour-long guided body-centered practice at its heart, we'll see what it might be like to peel back some of that "oh, I know my physical body, it's just stuff" -- to open to a richness that's already there, beneath what we think we know. No stamp of approval needed from any authority. Permission inherently granted. Thank you for Being with Being. beingwithbeing.org
