Talent

A large part of talent is being more interested in what it is you're doing than you are in yourself. You then lose yourself in the doing and connect that much better, to the activity, to your own energies and abilities, and to the essential truth of the enterprise – the heart of the occasion. In fact when you lose yourself in an activity you become such a vital component that you define it as much as anything does. When you watch someone lost in Tai Chi (rather than lost in themselves doing Tai Chi) then they are clearly connected and motivated – driven – by the spirit of Tai Chi. It's as though the ancient masters speak through them. There is only a certain amount your teacher can tell you (everyone's patience runs out eventually), and technicalities are perhaps the least important. What the teacher struggles to do is connect you to the correct way of doing things so that you can begin to receive instruction from the endeavour itself, and from the energy that flows through it from its sources. In a way this defines mastery – being good enough not to require your teacher any longer, not regularly anyway. If the art is a living one (connected to a source that continues to feed with new energy and new knowledge) then the teacher will always be ahead of you, and their company is always a godsend and should always be treated as such. Just a casual glance in your direction and they will instantly be able to pinpoint the root of any problems you are having. This may be a problem you don't even realise exists, and almost always they are simply that you have ventured down an avenue of limited worth and need to be redirected to the straight-and-narrow. Always remember that progress in Tai Chi is measured by softening. If the student is not getting softer (losing the brittleness of self) then they are making no progress and it is all a waste of time.