a disciplined unknowing

on the edge of an impossible confidence

Jacques Derrida

incarnational depth

When the mind stops thinking – relaxes – then so does the body, and the mind starts to ride the contours & rhythms of the body. This is the stage at which I naturally become single-weighted.

To inherit is not simply to accept what is handed down from the master; it is to reaffirm the legacy in order to make it live on in a different way.

Martin Hägglund

Rather than being a mind thinking a body, I need to become a body "bodying" the mind – giving body to the mind – not in the sense of physical presence but in the sense of oceanic flows of energy.

Humility – character stripped of arrogance – comes from persistently beginning again.

Just as uncertainty in physics arises in the end from the fact that the object, in its turn, analyses the subject, so the uncertainty of thought comes from the fact that I am not alone in thinking the world

Jean Baudrillard

Practice: devoted time, alone.

The pull of the Earth stimulates my heart to attract other hearts.

Spirit is timeless as well as spaceless. Spirit is whole and resists division in time or space. Spirit is not being, but the purpose and truth of being. Spirit is mind, the whole mind, Spirit is both transcendent and immanent. The transcendental and the immanent become fused in spirit.

Nicolai Berdyaev

Hollow chest, rounded shoulders; then gravity operates on the heart, drawing me into its loving process.

a pristine ground of blue beryl

Just as Earth is the base for all that's still or moves,
On discipline, it's said, is founded all that's good.

Nagarjuna's Letter to a Friend

the exquisite softness of taiji

the body's complicated implication

knowledge in the process of discarding all notions and determinations

Nicolas Berdyaev

a developing attention to the edges of the unknown

Front Heart is the energy in front of me – between my arms – within my ken; that part I consciously connect through: the smiling face, the shaking hand, the embracing arms & chest, the humping loins, etc. A communal space.

to affirm is not to assert or assume, but to lighten, to unground, to release the fresh air of other possibilities

Gilles Deleuze

the dissonant & multiple

secret intensities of being

Excess of light produces a blindness.

William Desmond

Back Heart is dark, mysterious, unconscious, of strange energetic dimensions: angelic and daemonic guardians and guides. Ward-Off draws a cloak of this energy, around. Beyond experience & knowing – of the dark & distant past. Relax back into it, and take it as support.

When the heart clears the world mists up, objects lose their definition, and the space between becomes revealed as a place of energy & activity.

the icy laws of outer fact . . . the hardness of the unbelieving heart

the inner soul of faith's reality

William James

the bite of the unbidden

Make way for energy

The urge, the ardor, the unconquerable will

Walt Whitman

The first stage of heartwork is to relax the shoulders. Without this the heart is blocked, which doesn't mean that it is absent, just that it doesn't flow and doesn't integrate with everything else. Tense shoulders indicate tense hips, and tense hips mean no root.

the issue of its own intensity

the porosity of being

William Desmond

newly strange lineaments

Equilibrating by constantly attending to two opposing forces means that my mind cannot afford to be partial (favour one), and it soon learns to reside in the still space between, becoming a third (anti-entropic) force – that preventing the two combining and cancelling each other out.

Darkness compacted / until it is no longer dark

Mary Austin Speaker

Taichi is about developing the strength, flexibility, sobriety and humilty to support energy. Not just to harbour it, but to encourage it to flow, through & beyond the body.
The most important principles here are:
Sink & Relax : gravity – Earth – root;
Central Equilibrium : calm & still amidst the seething;
Single-Weightedness : I am two – two legs, two arms, two hearts, two bellies, and the two combine as twine – a twine of wands – wrestling coils – from which wring & spring the twists & turns of the body, enabling me to move around both invisibly (without upsetting things) and powerfully (upsetting everything).

My root is a material connexion – connecting my energetic mass to that of the Earth. Temporal connexion – my relationship with time – is managed through faith, hope and love. Faith is my connexion with the past – my ability to find support in what I have inherited – ancestors, traditions, culture, etc. Hope is my active belief in a future – a destiny that calls. And love is my expression of energy in the present, such that that present becomes in some way eternal – significant deeds, strung between faith and hope, reverberating and cutting through time.

"Hope" is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—

Emily Dickinson

A foundation of faith

The Internal is like the genie trapped inside the proverbial lamp (the External being of course the lamp): generally manifest as an almost imperceptibly gentle glow (the light of the lamp) but, when touched properly, exploding forth to dominate and overpower the moment. Every thing and every moment has an Internal – a special and unpredictable potency – trapped and trammeled by external forces. The smile breaking out on the baby's face when I look into her eyes. A true master is one who reaches into things and moments, and releases the Internal. As my teacher used to say: Tai Chi masters are two a penny, but true Masters – Masters of the Tao – are one in a million.

emptiness, signlessness, and wishlessness

Connexion is a product of awareness.

It's not what I do that's important, or even how I do it. It's what/how I feel as I do it.

There is fragrance.

H.D.

that feeling of endlessly breaking

Relish otherness

Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real

Iris Murdoch

Resistance is a stubborn refusal to connect – a willful ignorance – a deaf ear to the repeated calls of the Other for my attention.

The object that connects is dull compared to the connexion. This is why we strive so diligently to serve the connexion – in the hope that we may receive a little of its grace and spirit.

the answer is to keep questioning, to keep the question alive

John D Caputo

The secret is heart – in the heart. Omnia vincit amor. Always give, always relax, release, let go, connect, and serve the connexion.

My taiji is a struggle to burst free of the constraints of being. Not to avoid being – the responsibility of being – but to enter a transforming space : to become the energy of transformation – an energy for which anything is possible.