Blake

Busy this weekend with teaching so I'll post an email I got from Pat earlier today. She's one of the few truly educated people I know.

Leafing through Blake to check something, I found, as I always do, quotes that encapsulate Tai Chi Heartwork concepts. Nature's cruel holiness reminds me of what you wrote about the difficulty of being ruthless. At the last Intensive you were saying you should have said what you meant to Gillian, and to me that seems part of what Blake was getting at when he constantly warned of the dangers of splitting contraries. It takes you by surprise at first when you read that Satan had too much pity, but his sin was trying to have only the pity, without the accompanying wrath:

And Satan not having the Science of Wrath, but only of Pity,
Rent them asunder, and wrath was left to wrath, & pity to pity.
...
The Separation was terrible.

The opposite of this is Beulah. (For Blake, the spiritual qualities manifest themselves in time and space, as places, individuals, nations etc., sometimes with the same name, sometimes not - confusing until you get the hang of it.) So

There is a place where
Contraries are equally True;
This place is called Beulah

Beulah is a kind of Garden of Eden, the next spiritual stage up from everyday life, which we reach sometimes, I believe he meant.

Changing the subject - I did a Yang style this morning, chanting hungalilihung rhythmically throughout, and making the movements fit the sound. It slowed me down, and changed the way I did the postures. Interesting.