One of my abiding memories from childhood are the hours my father spent in the garage tinkering with his car – a beautiful 1954 Riley RME. He was constantly dismantling, cleaning, repairing, reassembling. At one point he even electroplated all the nuts, bolts and screws with gold. I had no idea about any of the technicalities but I enjoyed the feelings his care, attention and love for that car generated in the space. Feelings that were generally absent from the house. This work of refinement – the dismantling, cleaning, healing and reassembling that we engage in is vastly important: if my father had spent the same time and energy working on his own structure I’d have learnt such valuable lessons and he (and I) would be far healthier now. However, it is the space between the moving parts – the feelings I experienced – that interest me.
The interactions of matter and energy are the domain of physics and the thinking mind.
However, the energy we investigate is massless and works best on living connecting entities.
At its best and most effortless the energy is an aspect of the living heart of interaction.
It resides in the space between interacting entities.
This space is totally susceptible to the quality of your non-thinking mind.
In a sense it is mind: mind is aether. Is space.
If your mind is relaxed and beneficient then it will encourage interaction – it will enhearten, not just the space between you and others but the spaces within your own being.
Doesn’t it say in the Tai Chi Classics that mind is the oil that lubricates the body?
If the mind is tense and negative then it will actively dishearten and connexions will be broken, between you and others and within your own structure.
The ruthlessness and inner viciousness I’ve recently talked about are just aspects of the struggle to remove self-concerns from this space: the lack of pity is really just a lack of self-pity.
Your mind then becomes the mind, becomes the aether, and there is only knowing, and you become and create the ideal environment for heart and life to flourish.
Without this selfless, meditative base you will always struggle, not only to connect but to belong.
The interactions of matter and energy are the domain of physics and the thinking mind.
However, the energy we investigate is massless and works best on living connecting entities.
At its best and most effortless the energy is an aspect of the living heart of interaction.
It resides in the space between interacting entities.
This space is totally susceptible to the quality of your non-thinking mind.
In a sense it is mind: mind is aether. Is space.
If your mind is relaxed and beneficient then it will encourage interaction – it will enhearten, not just the space between you and others but the spaces within your own being.
Doesn’t it say in the Tai Chi Classics that mind is the oil that lubricates the body?
If the mind is tense and negative then it will actively dishearten and connexions will be broken, between you and others and within your own structure.
The ruthlessness and inner viciousness I’ve recently talked about are just aspects of the struggle to remove self-concerns from this space: the lack of pity is really just a lack of self-pity.
Your mind then becomes the mind, becomes the aether, and there is only knowing, and you become and create the ideal environment for heart and life to flourish.
Without this selfless, meditative base you will always struggle, not only to connect but to belong.
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