Softness is not just a quality or a principle, it is the key to opening what we call the world of energy. This world is not just a world of which energy is a part – all worlds are such – it is a world in which only energy exists. For example, that red shirt left bedraggled across the chair possesses the energy of red, the energy of cotton, the energy of weaving, the energy of the water, detergent and machine that washed it, the energy of the sunlight and warm air that dried it, the energy of me and my moods that since wore it and flung it, the energy of the shape it now finds itself in, the energy of the friend who wore it before me and gave it to me, the energy of his generosity, the energy of whom he has become in the meantime, and the energy of that becoming, etc. etc. All these energies reside on the object – as though clinging to its surface – or the surface of its fibres. When all are stripped away, assuming such a thing is possible – when I remove its vocabulary – everything that can be said about it – then I have its essence – its singular energy. Of course it is not possible to prove that essence exists because there is no way of stripping an entity of everything it has. But my softness – my total immersion in energy and so my refusal to countenance force or will – provides a surface upon which essence shimmers and reveals itself. Softness befriends.