Softness

As always when teaching I'm struck by the importance of softness. And its scarcity. With a class of advanced students you can be pretty sure that softness, or the magic of softness – the tingle and life of softness – will be absent. Everyone knows that softness is important, but few worship it and place it at the core of their being – an ideal they are constantly striving and failing to attain, and yet touching regularly, if only in others. On Monday night in Mallow there was one soft person in the room and she was probably the least visible and least recognized (certainly the least assuming) there, and yet when she entered the room it was as though she entered with an entourage or equipage of magical creatures, dancing attendance. When I put my hands on her during the application work I was lost despite the fact that she did everything 'wrong' – another confirmation of the triviality of technique. I can still feel the hole her softness created for me, and if I stay true it'll stay with me for the rest of my life. Experiences like these grow on you and increase in intensity with the passage of time – beacons of light shining through the darkness of self. What marked this person out, or set her apart from others, was the fact that she vibrated, or trembled, with something other than self – a nervousness and acute awareness of her own insignificance in the face of reality. Relaxation, if it is taken to mean sinking more deeply into self which it generally is, is deadly and repulsive. Real relaxation is the removal of tension so that you can feel and connect to what's really there, which is always totally awe-inspiring and just this side of overwhelming, especially this time of year. The verge (all three meanings – edge, wand and inclination) of life and death.

The swirling mists of Mallow. Responsible for a 4 hour detour to Shannon on my way into Ireland.

Teaching

Teaching in Mallow last night, and being quizzed by students who couldn't quite understand, I remembered that when I first started teaching, the advanced students would often tell me afterwards that I had given too much information. It really all depends on whether the teacher wants to create a space and experience dominated by words, rational explication and technicalities, or one oozing and dripping with energy, softness and mystery. Of course to create the latter the teacher much possess these qualities herself and must be strong and confident enough to draw these qualities (which are inherent in everybody and everything) out in/of their students. There's always the temptation to say a lot, partly because as a teacher you're often on a roll – the stimulation and stress of the teaching experience has forced you to a new and clearer understanding yourself which, being a generous person you are inclined to share, knowing as you do that sharing brings things together. The problem with this is that what's generated by the session may be particular to that session and may not be deep enough to have any relevance after the session has finished. The rational process is beautifully but dangerously generative – it extrapolates and interpolates into all sorts of areas and arenas it's not really qualified to go and can give a feeling of knowing to the ignorant. But this is only ever tinkering or scratching a surface, and will never lead to significant change or ego reduction (softening), it'll simply clutter the mind with clear shiny objects. Clarity is as much a curse as a blessing.

The teacher is also tempted to over-teach because she knows that a reasonably high proportion of those present are either not going to practice at all or are sufficiently stupid to practice the wrong thing given half a chance, and so whilst the teacher has their company and attention she struggles to make things as clear and straightforward as possible. Again, clarity is a curse.

My teacher always used to say to me, “I can't do the work for you, and even if I could, I wouldn't.”

Concentrating too much on postures and techniques will intimidate some and satisfy others in the wrong way. If anything give too little rather than too much (stay connected to your energy and resist the mind's temptations) – that way you allow the student to go away and find out for themselves through their own work and practice – discovery being an empowering experience. If the students don't do the work or do it wrong then you have to understand that that is their choice – they actually choose to be lazy or stupid – usually by being distracted by something else. These choices have been made very early in life – certainly before Tai Chi. To change this in students is well-nigh impossible. I've seen my teacher try every trick in the book to wake people up and still fail. That is one of the reasons he stopped teaching publicly – he realized students were using him as a spiritual crutch rather than a stimulus to deeper work. For the student to change they must really want to (with every particle of their being) – even then it's difficult. That change will then happen through grace, which the teacher encourages through their own work and dedication and consequent ability to draw energy and connectedness into which ever space they inhabit. What's important is that you have done the work yourself, as teacher and student, and are well prepared for the teaching – that is, connected and energized.

    I was suddenly
    required to be
    like my soul:

Slippage

Slipping is a mysterious business. When someone slips you it feels that having known precisely where they are, suddenly they are gone, only to appear somewhere else almost instantly. It’s as though they have leapt through space and time. I suspect that this ability stems from working on other levels than the obvious one. A rough and simplistic depth line would be body, energy, spirit, heart, soul. Each underpins its predecessor and flowers from its successor. Mind can stem from any really – it depends how deeply you feel. I remember dear old Chris Brown – so uneducated that the rational process, which lets face it is quite unnatural, used to fill him with such anxiety and stress that it would feel that someone was moving the furniture around the room whenever he tried to think. However, when he was left to his own devices his mind would erupt from his other faculties quite beautifully and appropriately. If the person you are working with is operating on a deeper level, then their presence, on the operational level you are working, will feel ephemeral and misty and will be constantly slipping. Relaxation is simply slipping down a level on the depth line. So we relax the body to connect with our energy, etc. So if your partner is constantly slipping you it may feel that they are being clever and evasive, but really they are challenging you to their level which just requires you to relax. Unfortunately, working with a more advanced person can be disconcerting and the last thing on your mind is relaxation, especially when working with your teacher, who will always toy effortlessly with you. However, if you manage to suppress your natural fear in such a situation and relax just a little then the other will draw you into their space. It’s the nature of communication to want to happen, so to avoid it or miscommunicate (not hear) actually requires a lot of effort and always comes from not taking the other for what they are; projecting aspects of yourself onto the situation. We always create our own reality, so it’s entirely up to you whether it’s a beautiful one or an ugly one.

Emily is 175 today.
God bless her - she's the greatest.

Could mortal lip divine
The undeveloped Freight
Of a delivered syllable
'Twould crumble with the weight.

To Ireland later today (back Tuesday) so there may be less activity here than usual.

Multifacetedness

A point/object in space, when observed has a left and right, a top and bottom, and a front and back. When we regard these dual aspects we effectively cleave the point, first in two, then into four and then into eight. The space between the parts is the energy of cleavage, or the energy of bondage, depending on how you look at it. When you see and feel an object as a play of opposing extremes, even in a simplistic spatial manner like this, then you turn the object into energy – your regarding works the object and transforms both it, and yourself in the process. Take your hand as the object. It has a front and back. It also has a top and bottom – finger tips and wrist, and it has a left and right edge – little finger edge and thumb/forefinger edge respectively. When you consider one of these pairs – say the last of the three – the left and right edges, and you allow these two edges/aspects to come apart and have some separate identity, then the space between – the hand – becomes charged. It's difficult to know why this happens. It may be because the mind finds it difficult to regard two things at once and so to give an impression of duality flits at great speed between the two, energizing the space between, but I suspect it has more to do with the heart. The heart is always wanting to open and to fill and be filled. When you open a door you pull or push it away from its jam – you separate two edges. Effectively the same with the heart – as it opens it expands – its boundaries move apart and the space between fills. The action of the heart is to fill, and so to fill an object it naturally and playfully considers these dual aspects – it cleaves and separates and fills the spaces it creates – it permeates the whole object rather than concentrating on only its central part. No dead space. The mind fixes, pointedly and singularly. The heart shares. It gives and takes, from one to the other, and part of its nature is to be softly aware of the two or more relating parts. To think of oneness or unity as a congealing of separate entities is wrong. Oneness is the dancing heart energy between the two – either the coming together of two discrete entities in the act of communication, or the separation of the dual aspects of the single entity. The space between. It is a weird and wonderful fact that the way you regard something changes both the thing you're regarding and yourself. When you become interested in the multifacetdness of things and the interrelatedness of things, rather than simply registering their physical presence, then your heart is naturally involved, and when your heart is naturally involved in everything you do then you are working with love – you are in love. Love should be blind - impartial and unconditional. When you are in love then everything sings with your love and everything confirms your love.

If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.
David Carradine, who is 69 today.

Honeysuckle
scent like
an open vowel
 
wrung out
in the rain's
gloss-
   
olalia.

Joseph Massey

Time

My teacher has pointed out on more than one occasion that his best students have often been musicians. The obvious reason for this is that such students know what it means to practice. Learning to play a musical instrument well is probably the most difficult task a person can set themselves. It requires the humble taking of instruction along with tens of thousands of hours of solitary practice, and develops an intimacy with the learning process that few other endeavors will supply. However, I suspect the main reason is that when playing music you are actually working in real time which requires you to be able to feel, create, ride and slip time. You can only do this if your technique is so sound that you forget it – if you're worrying about the right notes or the correct phrasing then the music you're creating wont be buoyant. Riding time is not a matter of establishing a beat or a groove and then using that to thrust you forwards, but more to do with establishing a sustained and sustaining creative process by letting your energy out in a disciplined (playing the right notes) but abandoned (letting it fly) manner. You are doing two things at once – your fingers are involved in an immensely complicated and controlled sequence of movements and yet your spirit is riding high, intensely involved in the process of communication. Together these establish a space sufficiently attractive to seduce listeners in. Once this starts anything can happen – in the sense that what comes out of the occasion is not necessarily bound by the limitations of those involved. It's almost as though your expertise and training trap time, or distract it, so that your spirit can slip through it and start to operate outside of its boundaries. This is precisely what happens whenever you engage another entity. There is generally a structure to the exchange, whether the give and take of pushing hands or just the words of a conversation, but there is always something happening under, above and beyond this, energetically and spiritedly (spiritually), and it's these level that are important because they are not constrained by time – they don't stop when the exchange finishes. Softness is really just the ability to operate on these subliminal levels, outside of the hard spatial and temporal confines of the engagement. This is why a soft person (or animal – think of kittens or puppies), although often weak of energy, can be so effectively disarming and affecting – something about them slips through your defences and transforms.

I'm not saying that I believe musicians are generally superior people – I have known many and can safely say that they are not, they have been just as stiff and stale, just as locked into self-image as the average person. This is because their learning has often stopped – they continue to practice but only to maintain a level of proficiency (their self-image) which they acquired quite young, rather than to stretch their boundaries and break through their limitations: their technique becomes another acquisition (a hardening) rather than a liberation. It is important to take instruction long enough for your progress (destiny) to be assured, otherwise, spiritually at least, it's all a waste of time.

waves
     clutch
           
   almost
 the shore
             
almost
             
      let go

John Phillips

Balance

Assi sent me this link to online video footage of Kyuzo Mifune (1883-1965), the great judo master, strutting his stuff. My teacher used to cite him as one of the only non-Tai Chi masters to appear to have a rudimentary understanding of uprooting. David Knight recently sent me footage of Ueshiba in action and I was quite surprised at how coarse his energy is - certainly no uprooting in evidence there, or indeed any short energy (or yielding for that matter). He has great spirit but his students don't, so that vital between-energy (heart-energy) never gets a chance to operate. It is so important for a teacher to try his utmost to drag his students up to his level. It is only by doing so that he will continue to advance. There is always stuff inside that hasn't yet surfaced, but it needs stimulation to reveal itself, and for a master whose own teachers have passed on, that stimulation generally comes from his advanced students.

Another thing that struck me about the Ueshiba footage is the complete absence of female energy. Over 30 of John's students went to visit Dr Chi in the 1980's for Tai Chi instruction and Dr Chi said that without exception all the women were better than all the men. Softness is a feminine quality - it comes natural to the female; softness is a woman's strength and power. Male softness is very different. For a man his softness is his weakness and fragility and vulnerability. His aloneness. In a natural world the male is a tiny speck in a sea of female energy – a thin line of Y-chromosomes stretching back into a mass of X's. This is why men have created a predominantly masculine world – a world of tall buildings, straight lines, right angles, and technology, where the natural power of the female is suppressed – it helps him feel secure, and strong in that security. However, in his stupidity he has failed to realize that it is precisely his aloneness in the predominantly female universe that keeps him forever vigilant and on his mettle and sufficiently pressured and stimulated to express his natural masculine power which has nothing to do with muscles or brains or hardness and everything to do with keeping alive a vision or a dream of the connected beyond – the perfect woman, or what my teacher calls perfection's soul, and communion and union with that perfection. Olson was right to stress the importance of mythology – the story – the energetic environment rather than the physical one. If we had done this then the world certainly wouldn't be as filthy as we've made it. It's time to remythologise – to breath life and soul back into the mundane – to reanimate the universe and place the male and female back in their rightful place. This is what the Tai Chi class should be: a model of the natural world. The only other place I've found it is in poetry.

The Garment of Beyond

Dr Chi Chiang-Tao, my master's most significant Tai Chi teacher, translated the first sentence of the Tai Chi Classics as “Light and nimble – like a monkey.” It is by far the best translation I've seen and it's a great shame he didn't bother with the rest of the Ching – he may possibly have managed to breathe a bit of life into it. Light/nimble comes from spirit. Spirit is expressed in the eyes. Softness however comes from heart and soul, and we're beginning to realize that it is a far more fundamental and important quality than either lightness or spirit. Spirit dances, it's playful and mischievous, you need to rouse it to get the most out of whatever situation you're in. Quick wits. You can also buy it in bottles. Just take a swig and almost instantly your spirits rise and hey presto you're able and inclined to communicate and interact. Heart and soul aren't so shallow. Soul is deeper than deep. It resides in the sacrum. It's misty and damp to spirit's fire. The holy ghost. It is already connected and cannot be contained or separated. It receives its nourishment from the earth and from the common soul and it feeds the heart. Heart is like the living expression of soul. It's warm, it beats, it opens, embraces and gives. It's what life is all about. Without it there is no life. John once asked Dr Chi the highest level of Tai Chi. Dr Chi thought for a while and then said just one word – Nothing. Softness is the expression of Nothing. It just means there's nothing in the way – the path is clear – heart to heart, the mingling soul. Mind is firstly the awareness of heart, and secondly the awareness of things. One bite of the apple and the mist clears and things are seen in their discrete glory. (Apples do have this effect – I use them to clear and lighten the mind – they cleanse.) Our original sin isn't that we take that bite but that we so willingly allow the mind to run away with itself and become a separate entity – we put it on a pedestal it doesn't deserve. When you're correctly stacked the sacrum resides in the earth, the heart in the sacrum and the mind in the heart. Then you are correctly coordinated and the mind is just a door back into the mists of your being rather than the creator of constructs and conceits to impress and intimidate. We've all known soulful people – I think of John and Assi and Roberto and Pip – old souls – you feel you've known them for thousands of years and will continue to know them for thousands of years. Timeless relationships. They're shrouded in what my teacher calls the garment of beyond – "a raiment bedecked with jewels" – you always have the feeling you can't get that close to them but you don't need to because they're already inside.

    the natural
    so complex
    but

Tender Times

Wonderful though strange time of year this. A tender time. A time of introspection – a looking inside, right inside, into genes. The first week of December always feels like a turning point, turning into a different energetic space where the coarse activity of generation – growth and decay – have quietened sufficiently for what's really there to reveal itself. This feeling stays until well into January, and the year's energy doesn't really pick up until the beginning of February. The important thing is to acknowledge this time as special and allow yourself to work differently – sensitively and softly with less of a physical grind (if you carry on the way you were you'll get ill). The year's momentum has stopped so there is no longer that drive and continuity, giving you a wonderful opportunity to sink into aspects of your ancestry and whatever ancient teachings reside within. This will happen naturally – it wants to happen, and it will happen if you manage to resist the social pressures this time of year to overindulge and stupify. Back in the Wimpole Street days of the BTCCA my teacher would have his centre open over the Christmas break (often including Christmas day) for daily 4-6 hour pushing-hands sessions. Add to that my own 4-5 hours of solo practice and it made for quite perfect days, and he always used to say that if you managed to make each session you'd be a different person at the end of the week. He was always right. The rest of the year was spent realizing and coming to terms with what came up during this special week. The same way that the rest of your life is spent coming to terms with important transmissions in your past – especially from childhood. My strongest memories – and they're getting stronger – are of my grandfather – my dad's dad – who died in 64 when I was just 5. He was a real formative influence, energetically, and it's strange – I see him as though he's in front of me, or at my side, although I feel him behind me, as though he's becoming, or has been all along, my guardian self – the energy mass that resides behind. He was such a gentle man – the only one who really understood.

the white page darkens
with the soup of dusk

a world of no distinction
and unreflected presence

cool eyes lost
the body wakens

to feel the looming evocation
and hear the quiet incantation

of life’s
gentle passage

time suspended
night’s quiet intensity

dispels the clarity
that blinds me

to the essence
of the whole world here

at this tender time
of love and feeling

Joseph Massey's latest book of poems – Bramble – arrived at the weekend, from the man himself in Arcata, California. It is a stunningly beautiful book, not too small, with sewn left edge and rich smooth paper (every experience is tactile – reading no less so), in a short print run of 250. All the poems are lunes of 13 syllables, 5-3-5, shorter than the haiku, a form invented by Robert Kelly: "all the English haiku I found or tried to write seemed flabby or slack. Maybe 17 were too many syllables for English, which is much more monosyllabic than Japanese. I tried trimming, and got finally to a 5-3-5 pattern, concave rather than convex, 13 syllables, number of the lunar months. I called the form a lune, and wrote many. In older English, lune also means madness."

These are wonderful poems - they extend with long gentle fingers, seeping and insinuating, opening up your energy, but staying with you all the way. Poems from, of and to the heart. Working hard at Tai Chi the body and the energy take a bit of a battering – the legs get sore and the energy opens up and you feel raw and vulnerable. The problem then with resting and recovering is that the energy tends to curl up and close in on itself in reaction. I use poetry to help that energy horizon – that tingling edge – stay extended and open – to keep part of me reaching out and vibrating with the common soul whilst I'm relaxing and recuperating. Massey's poems are ideal for this because they don't dictate or demand, they just give – they yield. When reading his work I'm always reminded of what William Carlos Williams said about Charles Olson: “he has a feeling for his fellow man which staggers me.” If you'd like a copy email Hot Whiskey Press first to ask for airmail postal rate. Wherever you live it's going to cost less than £10 which for such a treasure is nothing.

          there's a metaphor
        behind each
                breath your life lets go

Ron Silliman reviews this book today on his blog. Obviously great minds do think alike.

The Energy Horizon

The thing about the Tai Chi class is that it encourages you to relax and as you do so it draws your energy out into the group. Your extensive possibilities begin to manifest: your energy gets out there and starts to take instruction from the energy of the group, led and directed by the teacher. Such instruction is always on a level you can't really feel, or let's say there are levels of instruction far beyond whatever you do feel. There is no real substitute for this and those students who learn privately from a teacher without the opportunity for group interaction never quite get it. The teacher's close company is as much a barrage as anything and whilst it will alter your energy quite dramatically it will not really encourage you to relax wholesomely the way the class will. The relaxation and support you receive and give by working in the group of peers is very similar to what happens when you finally start to relax and settle correctly into your life. It's not a matter of finding a niche or a rut into which to slot, or staying true to a vision or a dream or a feeling of specialness – these are all limiting and confined. It's about spreading out and getting your energy – your better part – out there into the world (of energy) and having it work for you, and having it worked on (for you). Beyond the imagination. Part of you is always in and with the unknown and so you are always picking up things and feeling things you have no idea about. This can be overwhelming or it can be exciting – it depends on how you choose to take it – as a victim or as a warrior. And this is a matter of choice, although once you have a taste for the warrior way you realize that the life of the victim is no life at all. As your energy starts to extend you begin to bristle and vibrate with nervousness and vigilance (this is what the teacher will encourage) – you know something is going on but have no way of knowing what it is. This bristling is a subtle tension which balances your developing relaxation, keeping some limit to your extensibility, but also, through the law of dynamic equilibrium, keeping your edges frayed, tender, and above all, open. When the feelings get too much, or your energy's down, or your confidence has taken a knock, then this tingling horizon will contract through over-stimulation. Then is the time to work on relaxing – gentle, slow sweeping movements – as simple and with as little muscle contraction as possible. When you feel happy and relaxed and willing, then is the time to investigate the subtle micro-movements and tensions in the Form – to get your energy singing. It's all a matter of regulation: having the maturity and the discipline to do what's required rather than what you want. The difficult one to learn is the nervousness – the taste for danger. For that you need to be prepared to take many blows. And you need a damned good teacher. And you need to be a damned good student – one prepared to take those blows from the teacher without fleeing for the hills.

To look for God
look like God.
To find water in the earth
cut your dowsing fork
from one of water's trees
(hazel, willow, cottonwood)
& hold it as if backwards
turned in your hands
so that the lawfulness
of hidden water
deep below the earth
will act upon the fork
to make it flow straight
as water does
always obedient
to its one possibility.

Robert Kelly