Locus cloud of karmic chi energies

In Measuring Meditation, by William Bodri on page 546, we find this:

Just as a weather front gives birth to a variety of winds flowing in all directions, there are a variety of chi fronts flowing through all the body’s internal organs, and each of these organs has its own specific, characteristic chi flows.  Here is an even bigger way to view things.  Since we also have our own individual personalities, habits, and forms of behavior, thus, as individuals we, too, can be represented as a unique set of habit energies, or habit chi flows.  There is no such thing as an individual self since all conventional existence is defined through interdependent origination, so what we are can be viewed as just a locus cloud of karmic chi energies.

Keeping this in mind, you can see from yet another aspect how the process of cultivation comes down to the task of transforming your physical and mental habit energies.We must try to purify them and make them more refined.  We must try to abandon any bad habits or evil ways we have become attached to, and replace them with good habits and more virtuous behavior.  Recurring bad habits are like a river of chi that cannot stop, so purifying our behavior can be viewed from the aspect of purifying our chi and its habitual flows.  Since chi is related to thoughts, this really means transforming the mind.

When you think of the individual as a flowing collection of dirty chi streams, you will more readily recognize why we say that cultivation comes down to transforming our habitual mental streams of activity.  Just like the seeds of the alaya, the chi circulations of the personality and physical nature are involved in an endless flow, and if we do not purify these streams or learn how to detach from them, we will never arrive at the ability to see the Tao.

From a humanistic viewpoint, this makes behavior the beginning, the process and fruitional result of the spiritual path as well.  From the standpoint of karma or astrology, this even tells us that when an unfortunate karmic period arises that connects with our chi flows, the only way to change the situation is to detach from the pull of these flows and what they might impel us to do.  Thus cultivation is definitely the only true way to change one’s fortune and destiny—by resisting or detaching from the karmic flows that would impel us into a certain karmic destiny – and the only way to truly actualize the meaning of “free will.”

It is hard to stop something that never ceases flowing, so in spiritual cultivation you learn to purify your physical and mental habits by transforming them at the root, which will in turn cleanse you chi flows and bring them into a harmonious state of balance.  In other words, the proper way to cultivate your chi channels is by cleansing the mind, and the way to purify the mind is to learn detachment through emptiness meditation.