186. The 8 Baguazhang meanings when it comes to the word "internal" as an internal martial art

About two weeks ago I had an unusual dream, even for me. I dreamt that I got elected by the Roman Catholic Cardinals to be the Pope. In the dream I saw myself wearing the Pope's white habit and white skull cap. I know this because in the dream I saw myself reflected in a mirror with full lucid clarity. A couple of days after the dream, I told a friend about it and just for fun he started calling me: Papa Pete. At first calling me Papa Pete was just a bit of jesting. But it only took about a day for my mind to pull up the names Papa Doc and Papa Luanda. While I don't know if there is or was a Papa Luanda, except to say that Luanda is the capital of Angola, Papa Doc, on the other hand was a real person. His real name was François Duvalier, former president of Haiti from 1957 to 1971. He got the moniker Papa Doc because rumours had it that he was a Voodoo priest. Not in the same league as Papa Legba or Papa Ghede, but powerful enough with the right connections to wield both spiritual and temporal powers. Now to be clear, I am not a practitioner of Voodoo. But I was asked again by another friend to elaborate on a deeper level regarding Baguazhang as an internally focused martial art. And just as there are eight elements in bagua, there are eight meanings to the word 'internal' as it relates to Baguazhang. The first (1) meaning is that Baguazhang is Taoist as opposed to Buddhist Shaolin; the second (2) meaning is political, in that it originated from within China; the third (3) meaning is that Baguazhang can be used as a kind of walking meditation; the fourth (4) meaning is that one looks within oneself for self-healing; the fifth (5) meaning of internal is that it is a reflective art emphasizing fluidity over ridgetity; the sixth (6) meaning of internal means that it is a killer's art in the darkness versus a fighter's art in the light; the seventh (7) meaning of Baguazhang as an internal art, is that a lot of what needs to be learnt to really get good at it, comes from the experience of living the life of a martial artist and ultimately discovering what it means to be a fully realised Gongfu master! The eighth (8) meaning to which you can verify for yourselves by learning about the early Baguazhang masters, is that much of what a Baguazhang master has to deal with, has got nothing directly to do with martial arts and yet has everything to do with it. It is this last meaning that has me talking about Voodoo, being a Yinyangshi, or even just truly grasping the essence of cooling like a snake or swimming like a dragon throughout the Bagua circle. So believe or don't believe. It really doesn't matter. You could dismiss this all as woo-woo nonsense, but then, you would never be able to fully appreciate why the Taoist god Xuan Wu Shang Di 玄武上帝 is the dark lord of Chinese martial arts!