Softness

Softness, as we know, is non-resistance. Allowing things to be and to develop not as separate entities or events, with us as passive observer, but as parts of ourselves, because everything we witness is part of ourselves – is taken inside in the act of witnessing. This is yielding. The enemy of this perfectly natural process is the thinking mind (which is also the fearful mind – the mind only thinks because it is afraid). The thinking mind cannot experience, it can only think (fear), and as such it constantly filters the present moment through the gauze of past experience and future fantasy, reducing and distorting it enormously. The thinking mind records the moment or the event or the experience so that it can replay it and repeat it at its own leisure, because one thing the thinking mind cannot do is operate in real time – it is far too slow and disconnected. But this is like analysing a painting or a photograph of a scene instead of experiencing the scene itself: it completely misses the fine texture of the experience – that part that cannot be faithfully documented. This is the softness of the experience. It is the part that does not resist and so cannot be recorded. It is elusive and will only present itself to our softness, which is why hard people just cannot comprehend that it exists at all. So when touched by a soft person there is no flow of energy – no passage of information – no communication as such. Instead I am transported – I am taken into a different reality to my own. And this is why we push hands. It isn't to test each others rootedness or yielding ability, it is simply to wake up to the fact that each of us is a unique creature – a living entity with a unique heritage and a unique place, and that that uniqueness is in the softness of the person, not in their mind or body or spirit.