Affection

Beauty (appearance) is perceived by the senses. Truth (essence) is perceived by the heart. Beauty and truth merge when the senses lead directly into the heart rather than the brain. Then all the senses effectively become touch (feeling) because there is an aspect of touch that enters through and beyond the mere tactile sensation (surface) and encourages communication – essence joining with essence. So, when I hear that baby cry I don't just hear the cry, my heart travels down the channel opened by the hearing, down the sound to the babies vocal chords/feelings/heart. And when I watch a student doing Tai Chi I don't just see their postures, I get drawn in, through the visual connexion, and start to feel what they are feeling. This is akin to entering the opponents energy in Tai Chi at the beginning of each posture. A leaping of the heart into every perception to touch, know and affect the thing perceived. When your heart enters things in this way then it encourages heart and good feeling: you leave a trail of affection wherever you go. It is the opposite extreme to the observing scientist who strives to keep himself as a vital being out of the experiment; an approach that may yield reliable and manipulable data (upon which false realities can be constructed), but not a healthy one by any stretch of the imagination.