Vortex of Heartwork

Hugh Kenner's vortex quote from yesterday is really quite profound:

the vortex is not the water but a patterned energy made visible by the water

It indicates how your energy should be used in Heartwork. It should effectively create an energised environment (vortex) through which your immediate world is consumed and transformed. If you manage this then your immediate world also becomes a vortex through which you are consumed and transformed. Heartwork is different from Tai Chi in this respect. In Tai Chi we strive for balance. So if one person attacks then the other yields so that the interaction is balanced (the Tai Chi yin/yang symbol). However, heartwork is about transformation. You use your heart in such a way that you transform yourself (become a vortex) and you transform your environment into an image of yourself (another vortex). This is a fractal reality. A reality full of self-similar generation. So in a Heartwork Intensive we gradually, over the space of 5 hours, build up a complicated and elaborate posture from a simple figure of eight unit. When this posture is done quickly and with spirit it comes alive - becomes a vortex - and the more you repeat the posture the more like the posture your energy becomes. You become the posture. You become the vortex. When we then try the posture out on each other we find that when you attack into one of these vortexes that you become a similar vortex. The Intensive is then a collection of madly flailing, writhing, gyrating vortices, and the class itself becomes another vortex. When the students go home they take this vorticular energy away with them and through their commitment and practice they transform their own lives and environments. The Community of Heartwork (I love this phrase of Fionnan's) becomes another vortex.

Athletes generally have little understanding of this use of energy. They will strive to become a human machine, an object that uses fuel to generate energy which does work to complete a specific task (Lance Armstrong would be the epitome of this). This has nothing to do with connectedness or transformation and consequently the athletic pursuit does not improve the person. However, it is obvious that a few of the top athletes have realised that if they reach out with their heart to the spectators (and God) then a two-way transformation is achieved which gives the athlete enough extra energy to excel himself. Haile Gebrselassie immediately comes to mind. If you watch him run you can see that it is all heart. The fact that he is a beautiful human being who does much charity work is no surprise.