The Incorruptibles

One of the aims of both TaiChi & Heartwork is to be able to release your spirit at will. Freedom. This requires the spirit first to be developed into a strong, shimmering entity. This takes years of dedicated practice, sticking to the principles of the work, repeating day in, day out, developing the correct sort of heaviness which is really a deep sobriety and lack of self coming from years of service and years of practising correctly. However, without a feeling for connectedness (for others) a free spirit will be dangerous and undirected, or wrongly directed. My teacher has always said that his aim is to train Incorruptibles - spirits in the service of connectedness. This requires real intelligence, the intelligence & inquisitiveness to be willing and able to investigate the principles of the work in such a way that they come alive and develop and seep not only into your fabric but into the world around you through your intensifying relationship (connexion) with it. Internalisation. As John would say, practice not just to the point of the work becoming internal to you, but beyond, to the point of it becoming the internal of the internal. This requires love. The work, and everything it entails, must be embraced and taken into a willing heart. Resistance must be relinquished. Yielding. This is why some students who never seem to practice can progress far more quickly than others who practice all the time. It is all a matter of heart rather than work. Or, maybe I should say, heart comes first. Without heart there is no beauty because there is no connexion. With heart, everything is beautiful. The difficulty is to struggle on with what you have. If you are interested in what we do and are willing to put in the hours of work then you definitely have heart, underneath it all. It is simply a matter of uncovering it sufficiently for some of the threads of connectedness to untangle from it and connect and bring in sparks of inspiration to feed your enthusiasm. As I have said before, the struggle for any mediocre student is to become a good one. This is all a matter of motivation. What is it that makes you do what you do? What is it that makes you devote hours a week to the practice of something as strange as TaiChi or Heartwork? At the beginning a student may say they want to become more relaxed, more healthy, fitter, or may want to develop martial prowess, or may just be lonely and want company (I had one student years ago who came along to her first class saying, "I wanted to do Spanish but the class was full. Can I join your class instead?"). These are all mediocre students. To become good students they would need to gradually (and gradually is best) come to the growing conviction that this sort of work is the foundation of their humanity, and consequently is the most important thing in their life. The reality of heart is the truth, not the world we see with our eyes. The reality of heart underlies everything - "under-stands" even. It is our invisible 99%.