Existence

Relaxation means opening up to energy. It happens naturally when we stop constraining ourselves with business, thoughts, concepts, limitations. There exist many different energies, but the fundamental ones – the most prevalent and inescapable – can be categorized as (1) those defining existence, and (2) those defining life, or perhaps more accurately, those defining livingness. Existence is a quality we share with all other entities in the universe, regardless of whether those entities are alive. Life, or livingness, is a quality we share with every other living entity in the universe.

All entities have two things in common. They all attract energy and they all give out energy. By attract I don’t mean gravity, and by give out I don’t mean, for example, the light reflected from the surface of objects that enables us to see them. These are only facts of an object's physical existence, and not its energetic existence. To open up to and become aware of energy (not the energy of the physicist, which is crude) we must admit a magic ingredient into the argument. We call this ingredient heart, love, compassion, etc. Now perhaps the most important question we can pose here, important because it establishes (even proves) whether God exists or not, is: Is love only something man-made which we bring to a situation, or is it something already and always there which we open up to and relax into (stop resisting) in our moments of lovingness? For me, at least, the latter is fundamentally the case (which doesn’t mean the former is not admitted): there exists a subtle substance that is everywhere, which, if we open to it, melts boundaries and allows entities to attract & receive energy, and create & give energy – allows entities to function naturally & energetically. This is what constitutes existence – a deep and subtle communion with God, and communication with each other. It is the goal of most meditation – to reach a place of sufficient inactivity so that real activity – the connectedness of things – becomes revealed and entered into; and many established spiritual practices involve approaching God by withdrawing from life (and all its turmoil) through simplification, and entering instead existence – a fully loving existence.

But Tai Chi is fundamentally different from meditation in that it involves moving, and as soon as we start to move we need to firstly feed the energy for that movement (which requires food, which requires hunting, which requires the taking of life), and secondly we need to start making decisions; i.e. we need to enter the other of God’s two great gifts – life.