The taiji mind is neither distanced nor removed from the actual world. It is intensely and intently with and of the world it inhabits. The imagination, as such, does not enter the picture at all. We do not think above and beyond what is actual. But our intense presence gives us power beyond the usual: a power to squeeze and press as though into time and thereby feel much more than usual – the power to travel deeper into reality. We effectively choose consciousness and awareness over thinking. And the world which opens up to this intensity teems with life and detail – we become aware of potential – of possibility – and we feel that what this potential possesses as potential – a fine charge and delicacy – an evanescent incandescence too beautiful to imagine – dies the moment it actualizes and enters the so-called real world of actual things. So, for me at least, coming into being represents a sort of death, or at least a shocking let-down, and actual death, which allows entrapped essence to re-enter the virtual world, a sort of birth.