Following a vision

Inside Kung-Fu Magazine

February 2009

Vol. 37


Following a vision

By Addy Hernandez


Late last summer, my instructor Joseph Simonet and I had just finished an amazing tai chi session together. I was sitting in the center of our Bagua (the name of one of our training platforms at Wind and Rock) as Joseph went and gathered some organic apricots from one of our trees. He brought them to me without a word as we sat and enjoyed the sweet fruits of our labor. It was one of those moments!

This feeling of wholeness and well-being overtook me. As a cool breeze and warm sun intoxicated my senses, I felt and intuitive vibration of being here in the now. Breaching the silence, I simply said, “Thank you.” Without hesitation Joseph replied, “Don’t thank me, thank Lillian, Lillian Susumi.”

I learned from Joseph that Lillian was one of his earliest tai chi instructors back in the 1980’s. She specialized in tai chi chueh and was the one who introduced Joseph to Gao-fu, his most prolific tai chi teacher. Joseph told me the story of Lillian calling him from several states away, asking permission to come and visit him on her vision quest of enlightenment. Apparently, she was seeking a favorable location to live her art. She felt a need and a calling to reach out to Joseph. A few days later she arrived and visited with Joseph for several days.

During her visit, she had identified several vortexes on Joseph’s property. After a few days rest, she left, never to return.

As Joseph told me this story, once again, I was enveloped in this sense of bliss. “So,” I asked, “Are you telling me that I’m sitting in the center of a vortex?”

Joseph replied, “It’s not that simple; let me explain.”

Joseph proceeded to tell me that he felt his art, “The Art and Science of Mook Jong,” was really very simple. It was really more like the “Art of Intuition.” He summed it up by saying it was all about, “the skill of thinking intuitively” and manifesting it physically through the notion of synchronicity.

Intrigued, I replied, “What is synchronicity?”

Joseph answered, “Synchronicity is a theory from Carl Jung relating to meaningful coincidences. Jung was a student of the I-Ching.” Joseph later confided in me that during Lillian’s visit she had also opened a gate for him. He learned to let go of knowing and began accessing the not knowing – an intuitive synchronicity. Joseph proceeded to tell me that when he built the “Bagua” training platform, he simply let go and filled in the blanks. He had a vision of what the platform was meant to be and followed that vision literally.

However, after designing, building and training on the Bagua, the intuitive, metaphysical, spiritual and historical significance has only now begun to reveal itself. This is where the story gets interesting. Unbeknownst to him, in building his “training platform” Joseph tapped into a 100 million-year-old life form-one of the oldest and most valuable written texts on the planet, all the while creating a giant natural magnet out of earth crystals.

Starting with the “vortex” location that Lillian had sensed, Joseph outlined an octagon shaped with basalt rock columns. Basalt rocks have a strong magnetic property, are hexagonal in shape (six-sided), and are a group of rock formations referred to as metamorphic rock or changes in form. This coincides with the 64 hexagrams of the I-Ching (The Book of Changes) and Bagua’s palm changes. At the center of our platform is a brown Moroccan marble yin/yang symbol, which is also a part of the metamorphic rock classification. Captured in the brown marble is a fossil from the cretaceous period (150 million years ago). It’s a nautilus fossil whose species has survived several severe extinction events. Joseph also built an 8-foot waterfall which crashes into rocks and emits negative ions. Negative ions help purify the air, similar to the surrounding trees which create negative ions during photosynthesis. Imbedded in the concrete octagon are the 8 trigrams and the 64 hexagrams of I-Ching. Granite is known for its high level of oxygen composition.

Adding up all these “coincidences,” I realized that when Joseph said Lillian had opened up a gate for him, he truly tapped into a universal matrix of intuitive synchronicity. No wonder I feel an amazing energy when I train on the “Bagua.”