REIKI ÉTERNEL, AMOUR ET LUMIÈRE

07/24/2026

Spirit of Stillness

In the quiet fold of the earth,
she stands
not moving, yet moving the world.
The wind leans in to listen,
the grass bends as if in prayer.

Her gaze is a horizon,
endless and unbroken.
It holds the patience of stone,
and the tenderness of rain.

She does not chase the moment
she becomes it,
letting silence bloom around her
like wildflowers after snow.

And in that stillness,
you feel it
the pulse of a spirit
too vast to be held
and too gentle to break.

🎨 Art by Serin Alar
🖊️Poem: Piahn

06/26/2026

06/21/2026

How to Sit With a Difficult Emotion Instead of Drowning in It

Most of us have only two strategies for painful emotions: suppress them or be swept away by them. We stuff the anger down until it leaks out sideways, or we let it flood us until we say something we regret. Buddhism offers a third way, and it's a skill you can actually practice. It's sometimes called "RAIN," and it turns overwhelming feelings into something workable.

The first step is Recognize. Simply name what's here. "This is anger." "This is fear." "This is grief." Naming sounds trivial, but neuroscience confirms what meditators have known for millennia: putting feeling into words measurably calms the brain's alarm system. The moment you say "this is anxiety," you've created a sliver of space between you and the anxiety. You are the one noticing it — which means you are not entirely it.

The second step is Allow. This is the hard one. Allow the emotion to be there without fighting it, fixing it, or fleeing it. We spend enormous energy resisting our feelings, and resistance is what turns pain into suffering — the second arrow again. Allowing doesn't mean approving or wallowing. It means dropping the war. You say, internally, "It's okay that this is here. It's already here anyway." The paradox is that emotions allowed to be present tend to move through and pass, while emotions resisted dig in and stay.

The third step is Investigate — gently, with curiosity rather than judgment. Where do you feel this in your body? Is there tightness in the chest, heat in the face, a hollow in the stomach? What does this emotion believe? What is it afraid of? What does it want? You're not analyzing your childhood; you're simply turning toward the experience with interest, the way you might examine an unfamiliar object. Most difficult emotions have never actually been looked at directly — only fled from.

The fourth step is Nurture. Offer yourself the kindness you'd offer a frightened friend. You might place a hand on your heart. You might silently say, "This is hard, and I'm here with you." Self-compassion isn't indulgence; research shows it's far more effective than self-criticism at helping us recover and change. The emotion is often, underneath, a part of you that simply needs to feel safe.

Here's what makes this practice profound rather than just a coping technique: it rests on the Buddhist insight that you are not your emotions. You are the awareness in which emotions arise and pass, like weather moving across the sky. The sky is never harmed by the storm. When you practice RAIN, you're not getting rid of the storm — you're remembering that you are the sky.

Try it the next time something difficult arises. Don't wait for a crisis; practice on small irritations first, the way you'd learn to swim in shallow water. Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture. Four steps between you and your old automatic reactions.

You can't always choose what you feel. You can choose how you meet it. ☔

06/18/2026

When I say relax don’t force things, this passage captures that essence, it also points out what I often say about class notes.

The phrase natural spiritual awareness (⾃然神觉, zìrán shénjué) is the heart of the instruction. It is not merely “be relaxed.” It means the Spirit is allowed to be naturally numinous (灵, líng): not pressed down, not excited upward, not split into competing intentions. This is why the text insists that heavenly naturalness (天然, tiānrán) is the basis of correct Fire Phases.

The classics describe “rules and measures,” yet the author warns that these are ultimately pedagogical: they point to patterns that can be recognized after the fact, not formulas to be imposed from the start. There is the deeper principle here: Doing is the foundation of Non-Doing. One does establish conditions—steadiness, virtue, simplicity, quiet sitting, guarding the heart—yet once the basis is set, the decisive movement is Non-Doing (⽆为, wúwéi): not meddling, not chasing sensations, not “manufacturing” circulation. Hence the line, “naturally one is in Non-Doing, yet nothing is left undone” (⽆为⽽⽆不为, wúwéi ér wú bù wú wéi).

The work completes because the interference stops, not because control increases.
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Excerpt from the Book “Daoist Cultivation, Book 34 - Oral Formulas of the True Transmission of the Great Dao” translated and commented by Vitaly Filbert.
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