187. The 9th Baguazhang meaning of "internal" as an internal martial art

In Baguazhang 八卦掌, when a practitioner comes upon a wall of resistance, the strategy is to change direction and go another way. The trick is to see the wall of resistance before it sees you and change direction before it has a chance to react. The thing is, most of the time that wall of resistance only looks like one, when you are right there having to deal with it. Despite what most people say, it is actually quite difficult to recognise the signs beforehand. And even if we've had the training and practice to recognise and deal with the problem in a timely manner, often the wall of resistance does not look like a wall, nor is it resistant. In fact, humans being humans, the wall of resistance sometimes grows out of our actions to combat against it. So does that mean we do nothing? I used to think as a small child, that employing Jesus's saying of "turning the other cheek" meant doing nothing. And only once, just once, when I was around eight years old, I tried that strategy to spectacular failure and humiliation at school. After that incident, I went home and told my mum. She promptly told me to fight the bullies after school, outside the school grounds. If there were any issues arising from the new strategy with the teachers, she would deal with it. And so I learnt to turn the other cheek, followed up with backhanded and the right amount of bitchslaps to make it known to all bullies that this four eyed git comes packin'! The point of all this is that before a person can go off and cultivate spiritual enlightenment, we need to make sure that our earthly concerns are first taken care of. In fact, in the art of Baguazhang, spiritual enlightenment comes directly from how we deal with earthly problems. Sometimes, though, we change direction and spin another way. At other times we deal with it through Deflection. We twist this way and that. Becoming an unstoppable force of nature because Baguazhang has this thing about it that makes mastery of it, the walking embodiment of the Art of War itself. Not in the sense of egotistical bragging, but in the sense that Baguazhang is an internal martial art. And that the nineth (9) meaning of internal is Yin 陰 .And that the Art of War is a Yin energy 陰氣 activity. Not Yang energy 陽氣 as popularly believed. (Hence, the Baguazhang Art of War)!