Mariana de la Vega is the founder of the Consciousness Lab. The lab explores fundamental questions of Qigong, like why do we practice, what do we know for sure, and what do we really want? Today she shares a fascinating insight with us. My name is Torsten Lueddecke, and this is the Wisdom Qigong Podcast. Welcome to the Wisdom Qigong Podcast. I’ve got Mariana de la Vega with us today.
It’s the second time we meet, and Mariana, the last time we—you introduced the Consciousness Lab to us, and we’re going to explore this a little more. Can you just quickly give us an introduction to what the Consciousness Lab actually is, please? Yeah, yeah, sure. Hi, everybody. It’s so nice to be here. Thank you so much. The Consciousness Lab was an initiative that started just like this exercise of reading part of the theory, reflecting on it, meditating on the theory, but not just Zhineng Qigong theory.
Also, you know, all the background that Zhineng Qigong has, like Taoism or Buddhism, some Confucianism, some really, really ancient texts, and you know, some of the revisited versions interpreted by, you know, modern and contemporary masters. And just trying to meditate on those texts, not so much to understand the theory, but just connect with the profound and deep message and try to bring that not only to the practice of the methods, but actually to real life.
An expression that I—I found useful is, okay, now we have all this explanation, and how do I bring that to my relationship with my teenage daughter? How can I eat this? Is it cold? Is it hot? I mean, so that was like the first intention of the Consciousness Lab. We’ve been meeting for over a year now. We’ve reviewed a lot of texts, and I decided to wait for a little while before reviewing Zhineng Qigong texts because they’re not so easy to read.
So we had all this background, but the first question we asked ourselves was, why do I practice? What am I expecting? Why do I do anything in my life? That was like our first question. And of course, everybody can answer something different. You know, in China, it’s really common that people approach this practice from a healing-body, illnesses point of view. So that’s like the common ground for most of us.
But we came to understand that Zhineng Qigong is not just a method, just a series of methods to make Qi and blood flow well in the body and, you know, recover functions and get rid of illness. It’s so much more than that. We first asked this question: why do we practice? What are we expecting from this practice? It was a very interesting question, and we keep asking this over and over and over again throughout the year, throughout our meetings.
And then, well, we started, you know, bringing consciousness into a lab. So if I understand that correctly, you’re not tackling this question from an analytical mind where I’ll say, okay, I want to heal my knee, and I want this in my life, and so on. Because you said you are meditating over these questions, so really by meditating over them and just asking them over and over and over again, you’re kind of surpassing your conscious mind and allowing whatever is deep inside you, from your true self, to pop up and become visible.
Is that, is that what you’re doing with this practice? Yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, it’s… Yeah, no. The first impulse when you get asked this question is, of course, I want to heal cancer, or I want to… But deep down, what are you looking for? And we came to this word, we said, okay, what we all want is happiness. We just want to be happy.
And if we delve deeper into this word, we find that we just want to stop suffering. And obviously, we connected a lot with Buddhism in this, in this sense, because Buddhism is, you know, this research, this deep investigation into what suffering is. So we started with that and we started meditating. And then when we came across Zhineng Qigong texts, we started with paranormal abilities. And then we practiced some of the methods, but we focused mainly on what paranormal abilities are aiming at.
It is to understand that the limits that you have in your mind are self-imposed limits. The mind has no limits. You only have the limits of your beliefs. So we were not interested in, you know, moving things with the mind or, you know, developing some clairvoyance or any of those specifically. But it was just like, you know, starting to break those limits and just realizing, just having this insight that what is the mind?
The mind is what you believe it to be. Then we started reviewing Dr. Pang’s Hunyuan entirety theory. It was funny because we just got caught up in this trap of what is Hunyuan Qi? What is Hunyuan Si? What is Hunyuan Hua? What is… So people started, you know, intellectually trying to understand the book. So we decided to make a stop, like, halt. Okay, everybody, this is not the intention of the Consciousness Lab.
So what are we going to do now? Let’s work. Let’s go back to basics. And we did this very interesting exercise. What is the only thing in your life that you’re certain about? What is the only thing? So we started meditating on that, and we based this practice on, I think he’s German, I’m not sure. Or from Austria. Bernardo Kastrup, maybe you’ve heard of him. He’s the scientist, you know, consciousness scientist.
And he said if we set aside, just for a while, all the concepts, all the words, because we have to agree on a meaning to start using the big words like consciousness, like universe, and we can waste a lot of energy, a lot of time just trying to agree on a definition. But what if we just put these words on the side, just for a while, and just dwell and immerse yourself in the experience of now.
So the only thing that is certain in your life is that you’re having an experience. There is an experience. We’re not going to describe the experience because the experience is made up of all these elements. You know, the sensory organs, information, the feelings, the emotions, the thoughts, the concepts. Let’s just say there’s an experience. We don’t have to agree on this because it’s evident for all of us, there’s an experience.
Life is an experience. And the second thing that is automatically understood is that if there is an experience, there is something having the experience, something or someone. We’re just not going to go into the concepts of consciousness, mind, or self. So if you review what you call your life experiences, you can connect with some memories. And if I ask you to just connect with an experience you had as a child, a memory is going to come up, just pop up, and then connect with an experience you had when you were 25 years old, and then an experience you had when you were 32, and so on.
Etc. The content of the experience changes all the time because the experience, by definition, is that it’s a process, a changing. But what was constant, what was always present in the experience, that something that perceives or has the experience. So then we return to Dr. Pang’s book and we found so much meaning in words and in phrases that were, you know, like, we don’t understand this. And we came across this one very special phrase, I’m just going to read it, that says humans, knowledge about the world of nature is in essence the natural world having reached this stage of knowing itself.
So what the entirety theory talks about is that not only everything in the universe is connected, it’s just that it’s just one thing. And that one thing is experience. You cannot separate the experiencer from the experience. The experiencer is the experience. And when you realize this, it’s just the universe realizing itself through the experience. So what happens, what we’ve seen in the Consciousness Lab, is what happens when you realize that illness, sadness, anxiety, longing, searching, depression, or love, whatever, is just an experience.
What changes in your life when you just realize it is an experience unfolding and that the experiencer that is yourself is just that, the experience in itself. So it’s a very interesting practice or meditation because it’s a natural detachment from duality. You no longer say, this is good, this is bad, this is correct, this is incorrect. It’s just experience. It’s just the universe experiencing itself. The Consciousness Lab has a life of its own.
So it’s taking this, this curse, this, this path, because I don’t know if you agree with me, but we live in, in a time where consciousness language is everywhere. We see it in books, we see it in social media, et cetera. One of the phrases that we hear a lot, that we repeat ourselves all the time is the answers are within. So we start looking within, but we don’t know what within is.
So you say, where? Inside my body, inside my mind. Inside of where? So the next question should be, what is the body? What is the mind? But naturally, you get like no answer. And you get this feeling that you can go deeper than that. And the one question that stops this searching is, who am I? What am I? When I say I, when I say I want happiness, when I say I am suffering, when I say I am a woman, when I say I am sick, what is the I?
And I think what Dr. Pang is saying through these books is that these teachings is that you can see yourself in everything. Everything is you. This is an entirety. So when you say let’s go within, you don’t have to go into the body. You can take a look at the universe because you’re taking a look at yourself when you, when you see everything else. So that’s, you know, the way we’re taking with this Consciousness Lab.
It’s been so interesting. We have a way you can discover Qigong. So at the Zhineng Qigong Students Hub, we know that understanding Qigong is very important and also that Zhineng Qigong in itself has various nuances that people can’t easily comprehend. So we’ve approached it in the style of a video game. On this page, discover Qigong, you can select your character. So you can either be a beginner, a practitioner, or a holistic healer or self-healer.
And you click on your character and it takes you to these different sections. In these sections, you can explore the nuances. And when you click on a card, all of the resources pop up and we’ve made it really fun and not many people know about it, so if you are interested, have a look. And discover Qigong. That was so beautiful. Mariana. Usually, I try to summarize and rephrase in my own words, but I don’t think I can do that because it’s been.
You’ve really taken us through a beautiful journey here. And so I was listening in awe, and I suppose our audience will have done the same, and they might just go back and rewind and listen to it again. So I think, yeah, um, maybe we can just dive into a few ideas that you presented and you started off with, you know, focusing on experience, because you said, this is the only thing you can be certain of.
Now, even if I see a mountain, the mountain is already my interpretation, really. You know, the experience is that, yeah, there’s some light coming in through my eyes and I can experience something. So, so basically the experience is the raw data before my mind kicks in and comes with any interpretation or any judgment. Right? Yeah, yeah. And from that point, you moved on by saying, okay, so there is no distinction, no difference between the experience and the experiencer, because it is.
The experience in itself is something that is happening, and that is me or at that moment, experiencing whatever there is. So you cannot say, I am having an experience here. It is really the same thing. And so I’m right till this point. Right? But I follow you. Okay, good, good, good. And then, because everything is an experience, you came to the conclusion that basically my experience is just the universe expressing itself through me.
Yes. So this is all that it is. And if I don’t go into the judgments, if I don’t go into the interpretations, that means. Now, the initial question, where you started with, like, I just want to be happy or I want no suffering, this kind of disappears because with, if it’s just the experience, and I don’t put the labels on it, then these things become meaningless. I mean, like real meaningless in a good sense.
That is. Doesn’t mean, oh, my God, I have to be so sad or I have to be this, or this is so bad, or I’m suffering. It’s you. You call it detachment from the suffering, right? Yeah, it’s. It’s a detachment from these opposites, this dualistic view. Dr. Pang says what human consciousness, human mind has made is a world of opposites. And the basic opposite is subject and object.
So we view ourselves as the subjects experiencing objects or knowing objects. If we take a look at modern science, that’s what science does. It’s just trying to understand the universe from this distinction. The subject is observing a lot of objects and trying to explain these objects. Dr. Pang says this has been very harmful for human beings because this separation is an illusion. So the separation has caused, first of all, for us to separate ourselves from nature and try to dominate nature.
In second place, what this has done is separate ourselves from society. So society has gradually walked the path of individualization. You have to look within yourself to be happy. You have to do what you must to make yourself happy. And it is your responsibility to be happy. It is your responsibility to be safe, to be healthy. But we are part of a society. It is the responsibility of all parts of society to make us happy, to make us healthy.
And that, alongside being one with nature. Dr. Pang says these opposites, just by making our starting point that there’s a subject interacting with objects, create only a partial view, and this is the root of suffering. When we come to understand that subject and object are the same thing—an entirety—this changes. And how do we do this? He says, through the practice of the methods. The first step is understanding that your body and life activity are an entirety of Jing Qi, and Shen—body, energy, and mind or spirit.
There is no independence of these elements. We’re just using language to explain three different expressions of the same thing, which is Hunyuan Qi. Yes, but there is no body apart from energy or apart from mind or spirit. It’s just a way of explaining it. The first thing is that the methods are so well-designed and have so much wisdom behind the movements and sequences that what we’re doing is simply integrating or reconciling these three elements.
There is no movement, no life activity in what we call the body if there is no energy and information working at the same time. So we start understanding that, but then we have to move on to Dr. Pang’s Paranormal Abilities. We start making hunhua. We start understanding that every time we have an experience of what we call an object—and that object includes the body—we are merging and transforming.
So we tend to identify so much with the body that we say me and we touch the body. But really, the body is just an experience of this thing we call the experiencer, or I, or consciousness. Then the third stage described by Dr. Pang is when the subject and the object become one. That is when consciousness becomes its own sub-object. When consciousness realizes itself, we reach what we call enlightenment or awakening and realize that there is no separation—everything is just the universe knowing itself or consciousness expressing itself through everything.
So there is no inside, no outside. There’s no universe out there, far away. Because when we think about the universe, most of us first think about stars, galaxies, and planets. But no, the universe is everything. There was a very beautiful insight when one of the teachers explained that the Chinese character for “universe” represents time and space united—it encompasses all time and all space.
That’s the universe. So when we returned and started reading these passages of the book again, there was a completely different understanding. We were just experiencing the book rather than merely trying to grasp the concepts. It’s so easy to let the mind think that accumulating concepts and explanations—using all this language—means you’ve evolved in your happiness.
Searching. It’s just a very big trap I think we will encounter sometime or other in this searching. But, but there has to be a stop to the searching. And when you realize there is no person, no body searching, the search has to stop. This is it, the experience is it. Now, I have to challenge you here a little because initially, when we started, you said that one of the reasons you founded the consciousness lab is that you wanted to find ways to implement these insights into your daily life.
And we talk about these beautiful ideas that you’ve presented, which, yeah, is the reality. So I think “ideas” is the wrong word because you, I think you hit the nail on the head. But is there any for us now on a daily, daily basis? Because we don’t want to go back now to our daily life thinking, wow, this was a beautiful conversation.
And then move on as we, as we always do. You said that you’re going to look into how you can implement it in your daily life with your teenage daughter. That was your example. So how do you use these insights in your daily life? Well, first of all, I don’t mean this to be like, you know, a formula or a set of steps, but what I do is just notice the resistance to the experience because there’s only experience.
And, and the experience is all there is. And when you resist the experience, you create this illusion of suffering. So we all have a lot of experiences if we want to fragment them or separate them. It’s just one experience after all. But if you want to say, okay, I’m having this conversation with a friend, that’s an experience, and you don’t like it, your mind starts saying, “What my friend is saying, it’s hurtful,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Then you notice the resistance, the resistance to the experience of consciousness being with itself. So you notice, like, this distinction: I’m a subject observing or even trying to control an object, in this case, another person. But when you realize it’s just the experience, and there is no me and you, it’s just experience, and you let go of the resistance, I would say that’s good enough.
I don’t know if that’s, you know, complete bliss or joy or what. But it really changes the way I live. When I just notice the resistance to the experience. The practical application is not so much, “Oh, I learned something. I will deal with my daughter in a different way.” That’s not what it is. It is more because of the insight. Your ways of being change, and you show up because you are a different person with that insight and with this level of consciousness.
And that changes everything in the relationship with your daughter or with people around you or with all of your life, right? Yeah. And then you start noticing that sometimes there’s anger, sometimes there’s frustration. That’s the experience. But when you resist anger and you resist frustration, you create something else. So the first step is just noticing the resistance and even resisting the impulse to judge yourself because you’re resisting the experience.
It’s just, hey, relax. The resistance to whatever is, is. And then what happens is that you start reacting differently. What I’ve noticed with some friends, some people around me, my parents, my daughter, is that they say you’ve been reacting less and less to some things. But it’s not my intention to not react. My intention is just noticing the resistance to the experience. So it’s a different approach because in the first one, you want to change yourself.
But then again, you’re identifying yourself with a character, with a personality, with, so you make all these efforts to be a good person, and you’re always a work in progress, and it’s never good enough. Because there’s always this comparison. I could do better. I could be more compassionate. I could be more generous, I could be more kind. But when you simply notice the resistance to what is, automatically the subject becomes the object of observation.
You really get to observe. Because all the time what we’re doing is we’re resisting what is. We’re resisting what we call suffering. But we’re also resisting pleasure ending. I mean, if you’re having a really good time, a really happy moment, you’re resisting by having the idea, “This should last longer. What should I do to make this repeat again and again?” So you’re with friends and you’re having a good time, and then you start, “Oh, we should meet more often.”
Let’s all bring out our calendars. When can we meet again and repeat this good time? That’s a kind of resistance. So you’re having a good time, just resist. You tend to resist the idea that this will also end. So the noticing of the resistance is, I mean, the step or the practice, if we can call it that, that right now has given me a lot of insight.
And I love that approach because it’s so different from how most people go through life when we have, we have, we’re trying to enforce rules upon us, like you said. Okay, be more kind. Don’t be so angry when your daughter says this. Yeah, don’t, don’t do this. Be that way. And that doesn’t work, as we know, because it’s, it’s something we’ve, where we basically put forth upon ourselves that.
So we, we do ourselves, you know, harm towards, towards me, if I do that while. While, if it’s coming purely from an insight and this action is derived from something deeper, then it becomes effortless, right? And then it is the real thing. I mean, there’s no, no if. If a bad person does something good, he doesn’t become a good person. It’s still the bad person, right?
Trying to be good. While with your approach, with your way of doing things, now it is, it’s a real transformation. And because of these insights, you are a different person. But not because you’re trying to be that person. It’s just because this is the natural thing that evolves and grows out of your insights and the work you do for your consciousness. And I think that is the powerful.
And I think that’s the only true transformation, the only real transformation. Everything else is really just applying force against yourself, and it’s not working and only creates more resistance. So I think what you’ve described here is really, really beautiful and powerful. So I would like to thank you very, very much for that, Mariana. And I’m so glad we started off with what you said. I want to talk about some of the insights we have in the consciousness lab.
And I think you’ve taken us on a beautiful journey here. And I’m definitely going to be someone who’s going to listen to this conversation over and over and over again because there was so much beauty in it and so much to learn, but again, not learning from an intellectual point, but really now from a different point. And you described this beautifully when you, when you were basically, you were not really asking a question in order to get an answer, you were staying with the question.
And I think that’s, that’s, that’s the thing that a lot of us are doing wrong, because the moment we have an answer, it’s the end of the story and we close up. But if we continue to stay with the question, all things can come up and our learning process is just so much deeper and so much more comprehensive than if we just say, “Okay, here’s the question, here’s my answer, next.”
Right. And I think this is great that you’re working like this in the consciousness lab and that you just stay with the question, ask it over and over and over again, and then these beautiful things come as a result. So thank you very much, Mariana. Great work. Also, to the rest of the consciousness lab, I know you’ve got some amazing people in there, and so that’s wonderful.
So thank you again for the conversation, and I’m sure it’s going to be a third episode in the not too far future. Thank you. Thank you. We trust you enjoyed this conversation and we invite you to subscribe to our podcast so we can stay in touch and notify you of future episodes. We will end today’s episode with the Eight Verses Meditation performed by Zhineng Qigong teacher Katrien Hendrickx.
Enjoy. To get your free eBook on the Eight Verses Meditation, please check the show notes below.
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