The Path of Wisdom
Outer chaos, inner calmness, and healing
Master Glenn Tobey
Addressing your emotional response to the pandemic.
April 2, 2020
My topic today is about wisdom.
How are you doing with this crisis going on? What have you been learning about yourself with this crisis going on? You know that the universe has a lot to teach you about this crisis going on. Pain and suffering have been going on for thousands and thousands of years. It is just a lot more personal right now.
However, the wisdom of it, this is not new. Pain and suffering have been going on for a very long time. What we can take from it is what we can learn. Yes, there is reality of danger. I understand that. Something I can explain for several minutes that people have been working for thousands of years, I beg for your forgiveness that I am trying to summarize a huge thing into a couple of minutes.
It’s about the body, mind, and the heart. The purpose and function of the body is to have experiences. Pleasure or pain. Experiences. It doesn’t know what to do with these experiences. It simply reacts. The body has experiences. Beautiful! Then the brain records it, categorizes it, puts it into a place. Sometimes the brain is responsible for interpreting the pleasure. It also interprets the suffering. A lot of suffering comes from interpreting what’s going on. The brain thinks it is in charge of the body. It interprets and dictates the order so the relationship between the body and the brain is very interesting.
But the heart, the mind, not the physical heart, the consciousness is really the pathway to understand things. So, the body experiences. The brain records. And the consciousness provides the pathway to understand what’s going on.
What do you do with the pathway? How do you get there? You have to remember emotional experiences to take you back to the emotions. If I am thinking about something happened 20 years ago, and had this emotion of fear, it takes me back to that emotion of fear I had at that time, but not now. So, the emotions are very good at storytelling, teaching stories. It takes you back to the event 20 years ago. Here is what I learned. It’s called wisdom.
So, the universe has a lot of wisdom to give to you. Your body will experience the emotion. The brain will learn how to interpret it. The consciousness really provides the mean of understanding what’s going on.
A number of years ago, I had a deep meditation. I sat still. I quieted myself down. And I closed my eyes. I got calm. I let go of the monkey mind. I let go of my body. All of a sudden, a staircase appeared before me. My brain said, “Wow, a staircase.” It went away. Come on, brain. Be quiet. I went back and got this staircase with 13 steps. My brain went, “Oh boy.” It went away. Come on, brain. Be quiet. I don’t need my brain right now. I don’t need the body right now. Here I am in my consciousness.
So, I took one step up. I was asking the universe what I should be doing with my life right now. Then when I saw the staircase, I took one step up, the earth beneath me went away. Then the stair in front of me went away. All I have is one stair. I took one more step up. Then the stair behind me went away. And then the next step, next step. 13 steps. Took this step up. Disappeared. Next step up. Disappeared. Nothing in front of me. Nothing behind me. Just that one step in front of me. I got up to the 13th step. All of a sudden, here is the path. I saw this path. My brain says, “Oh boy, it’s a path.” It went away. It is out of the consciousness. So, I went 3 more feet. I took that path. I learned more and more. The consciousness ended up answering the question I had, “What should I do for my life right now?”
How do you enter into that consciousness of what is going on? What is the universe trying to teach you? The wisdom about what’s going on for you now.
There is a radio show long time ago called “Rest of the story.” Paul used to tell a story for about two minutes. A commercial break. He would come back and tell the rest of the story.
So, the experience you are having now is the virus crisis. It’s that experience. The brain is recording and interpreting the suffering. But the consciousness is going to tell you what the rest of the story is. Go deeply into your consciousness.
Qigong Master Glenn Tobey
Master Glenn Tobey, M. Div., M. A. in Management, is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker in private practice in Duluth, Minnesota.
He has almost forty years of experience in the Human Service field and has worked in both urban and rural settings, and values the collaborative community-based model.
He has also taught at the college level, and conducted numerous SFQ workshops and trainings in various community settings. Glenn continues to teach and to share his knowledge and wisdom of Spring Forest Qigong which is at the center of both his professional focus and his personal passion.
Glenn is a member of the SFQ teaching team. He teaches Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, Instructor Certification, and other workshops.