Special Times

The average person, in a whole lifetime, will probably have less than a handful of really life-changing energy experiences, and will meet less than a handful of living entities that really make their energy sing. The day to day grind of living one's life, the going to work, the eating of food, the shitting it out, etc. are not really that important, what's important is to be ready for these special occurrences - to be awake when they happen and not let them pass you by - and to spend at least a couple of hours every day preparing for them and honouring them. Popular culture is full of paeans and laments to such experiences – films about fleeting chance meetings with someone you feel more connected to than anyone else in your life (Hollywood always spoils them by having the characters live happily ever after in married bliss), songs about staying true to lost love (as if you really have any choice), and poems that express the perfection of connexion. When you're connected well with another then you're connected in that instant to everything, “And makes one little room an everywhere.” If you allow the practice to spring from this sort of feeling or yearning then a significant portion of each day is spent with the energy of connexion – with what's really there rather than with what we fill the day with. We have to constantly ask ourselves why we do the work. Do we do it because of what we want out of it – the relaxation, stress relief, power, healing ability, to teach, or do we do it because we know we have no choice. If your motives are truly noble – they come from a selfless need to serve the Dao (rather than a desire to have the Dao serve you) – then the work you do will begin to stitch the days and the weeks and the years into one seamless thread of service and devotion. This is the only way really to bring that vibration of connexion into everything you do. The regulating aspect of the work – the part that stops you disappearing up your own backside, as my teacher would say, is of course the pushing hands. The simple give and take, the touch, the laying alongside, the being inside another's ward-off, the impossibility of yielding, all tend to disarm the ego and focus one's attentions on what really matters – the miracle of the other.