Giving

Mastery of Tai Chi requires you, first and foremost, to become a great giver rather than a great yielder. John Kells

Quite a revolutionary statement this, especially since Dr Chi said 9 years to learn to yield then 1 year to learn to attack. If you can't give - muster, mobilize and let your energy out - then as a human being you are next to useless. Giving is a matter of heart. Yielding should also be a matter of heart - opening the heart and accepting with the heart whilst moving forwards - but so often it is instead just a sneaky technique to get an advantage over someone who is letting their energy out. If, when pushing-hands, neither you nor your partner can effectively give then neither of you are going to get any yielding practice anyway. Giving has to come first.

Walking through life is a bit like walking through a mine-field - if it's not the ego that gets you it's the debris from the ego. John Kells

Caroline on the weekend.

Presents

Dr Ram Ben-Shalom, pictured below, a student of Assi Ben-Porat in Tel Aviv, brought me a beautiful little picture from Assi – an ink drawing of a character in Lifting Hands with the sacred mist rising visibly within. Thinking where I should get it framed I remembered this event from six years ago:

On John's 60th birthday in 2000 I was due to visit him for Pushing Hands at 6pm and on the way from my flat on the Lower Clapton Road (Murder Mile as it was affectionately known) I stopped off at various shops to buy him a little present. Buying things for John is always difficult, especially since he hates celebrating birthdays, but I felt the 60th deserved something. Unfortunately I could find nothing suitable so I resigned myself to not getting him anything.

The last interesting shop on the Holloway Rd one passed before turning off to get to John's flat, which was then on Liverpool Road, was a picture framing shop I really liked visiting because the lady who owned the shop was very friendly as well as being very beautiful, so I decided to go in and buy a classy birthday card for him. Unfortunately on this occasion the lady was not there, instead there was a gay guy called David who always wore extremely tight turned-up jeans high off his ankles and high into his groin, and spoke with one of those lacquered gay voices – almost a lisp. As I was buying the card I noticed a series of smallish framed photographic portraits of famous movie stars on the far wall - Brando, Gregory Peck, Cary Grant, etc. One of them was Grace Kelly - John's favourite - a beautiful photograph. I said to David, "Is that Grace Kelly?" He replied that it was and he then told me a wonderful story of how in the 1970's he had worked as an electrician in the palace in Monaco and had met Grace Kelly and had become friends with her (she really missed speaking English apparently). When he finished working in the palace she gave him a large signed and framed photograph of herself and her children which he said he will treasure for the rest of his life. I was so charmed by his story that I bought the small portrait for John (even though it was, for me, a lot of money) and got David to wrap it up nicely. When John opened it I have never seen such surprise and delight in a persons face. He hung the picture on the wall by his bed.

heart

              What
            enters
               and
            where does
          it enter?

The Grand Opening

The Heartwork weekend was a great success with 60 attending the Saturday and 50 the Sunday. People flew in from Israel (Rami (seen here working with David Knight) & Nitsan), Denmark (Corinna), Cork (Ann & students), Sligo (Kath & Dick), Dublin (John & Fionnan) and Aberdeen (Caroline & students), and of course many others from all corners of London and England including some students of the late Michael Spink. Tim and Kevin, both regular commenters on this blog, were there. There were students with over 30 years Tai Chi under their belt and people who were completely new to Tai Chi.

The work we all did together was technically simple and energetically rich. Mainly partner work. The figure of eight, our basic building block, was introduced into single and two hand pushing - the practice of entering the other person's energy by opening the heart and embracing rather than invading their space - creating an environment within that they cannot resist falling into. As we all discovered, when one connects heart to heart one absolutely does not need physical force to affect. Leaning back into the Guardian - an aspect of our energy that resides behind and which is naturally connected to seemingly more remote and less obvious levels of our reality including our destiny. Rearing forwards into our natural ferocity - a realm JK calls the Dragon. Connecting to (opening and embracing) the Heavens and the Earth - what JK calls the Sacred Tree - becoming the tree.

What delighted me was seeing just how quickly people twigged that interaction requires not just good willing energy from both parties, but a willingness to register and respond to the tiniest spark of magic in that space between, not just to encourage the efforts of the other but because it makes the most of the occassion and takes us both beyond ourselves - it takes us into the Third Heart. This is what John calls positivity. It's not the reality you feel that is important, it is the reality you create, and together we all created a totally amazing and unique experience for all: a weekend we'll be talking about for years to come and which will reverberate deeply into all our lives. Like it or lump it we are now all energetically connected through the living teaching which emantes from John Kells. I think this is what most of us will remember - just how immense - strong, soft, open, trembly, pervasive, encouraging, enheartening, compassionate, generous, and dangerous is the Masters energy and presence. He embodies, he is the teaching.

Softness is when your physicality no longer resists your energy. John Kells

What we're practising is humanity.

John Kells to Debbie Cook on Saturday

Intuition dwarfs intelligence time and again. The things we can't speak of here at our fingertips.

Jess Mynes

Thanks to a (wonderful) poet for lending me the words to sum up yesterday.

As Mark pointed out, it was a very moving - emotional - day for many of us, being able to physically - face to face - heart to heart - reconnect with friends and colleagues - comrades in arms - from years ago, and establish new connexions - so many new faces - so many open hearts.

Tony Hurley (Bucks), Roberto Fraquelli (Exeter), Martin Greig (Metropolitan line), Rod Philp (Iowa), Ross Cuneo (Brisbane), Richard Druitt (Puerto Rico), Assi Ben-Porat (Tel Aviv), Simon O'Connor (Mallow), Tony Visconti (New York), Dario Ciriello (Santa Cruz?), Penny Woolf (Oxford), Osman Phillips (Vancouver Island), Richard Dockray (ill in bed) and Verne Crawford (broken femur) sent me apologies for not being able to physically attend and send their love to all.

British Tai Chi Chuan Association

The first and of course the best Tai Chi school in Britain, if not Europe, is reopening in July in London after a public absence of 15 years (we've been working like Trojans in private). We are having a Grand Opening weekend of Tai Chi and Heartwork, open to all levels, on 15-16 July. If you're interested email me for details, stating your interests and your teacher if you study Tai Chi.

"We had a willow tree in the back garden and I used to look at the willow tree and the grass and think, well we could be like this – we could be very close to nature if we learned how to just purely interact..." John Stevens

Communication

As a preparation/temptation for tomorrow I'll post a complete dictation from JK. Whenever he throws pen & paper at me my heart drops, or rather fear rises, because I know it means I'm going to be in the grip of his best energy for the next hour or so, something that has driven the faint-hearted to tears or even to flee for the hills, never to be seen again. I like this one (he doesn't - does any creative person have any time for what they did yesterday?). It reads as a series of aphorisms straight from the teaching.

Language is probably the most popular tool for communication.
Man has been using it for a long time.
Why then are there so many misunderstandings, breakdowns and disasters in our relationships with others?
We have developed the kind of knowledge that can put men on the moon, so why do we not feed the starving and heal the sick when we so clearly have the means to do so?
What is written large in society is only a reflection of the small in the ordinary relationships we experience.
The answer is, of course, that communication is man's most difficult problem, and the basic principles are not generally known.

Communication took place before words were invented.
Confusion arises when it is assumed that communication begins with words.
The foundation for any episode or cycle of communication takes place out of time, before words can possibly interfere.
Then we come up against the problem of definition, since each word means something slightly different to each person according to character, talent, conditioning and mood.
To be open to all this - the huge far-searching humanity of the other person - requires humility which itself requires the laying aside of self-indulgence.
This means basically that you have to lay aside fear in order to listen.
To at least know this is a start.
But without this we are bound to repeat our own history endlessly which is no way forwards in the process of deepening our understanding by learning life's lessons.
The chief quality of listening to the energy behind words or other modes of expression, is softness.
Hardness implies barriers of self-satisfaction, often at our success at bearing off fear in some situation or other.
This kind of pride often encourages abuse.
The activity of our thinking mind as it comes to our consciousness often works against listening.
Softness implies lack of motives, lack of meanness.
The meaning of what is being communicated must attract and stick, and also be allowed to stick.
The understanding comes from the seeping of each into the other.
Good intentions and good nature are no substitute for correct method.
Filling the other person and being allowed one's own filling, is what is required.
Without this nothing is ever perfectly communicated.
It is as if a thirsty person is never given enough to drink, so that he always remains thirsty - pretty soon thirst dominates his existence.
So it is with lack of softness, lack of appropriate or sufficient giving.
Needs become paramount, and dominate the dialogue between the various aspects of our own energy and other energies, so that our general awareness is lessened with a parallel lessening of our capacity to communicate.

The word most appropriate, in this context, is love.
The umbilical to our mother is our first channel of communication.
The exchanges after birth may be less palpable, but are they less important?
If they go totally wrong could we not die?
What could be more important than that?
But when communication is blocked, when love is blocked or reduced, then a small death - a lessening of life - occurs.
In the large, life is communication.
It is said "God is Love" meaning the creator is love, so how can the created be less than love, indeed how can the created be less than the creator.
When it is said that all is communication, it is another way of saying that all is love.
Listening is the gift you give, is the gift you take.
To embrace listening completely requires a process that is neither give nor take but steady with the energy of the natural process.
It is when the self invades that we have motive, we have gain and loss.
Consequently, it is the ridding of self that is the process of love.
It is significant that a man and woman together can create new life.
But so can any two people, or two entities.
This new life may not necessarily take a perfect shape, but it is just as tender and full of potential as a new-born baby.
The reverence we can feel at such a birth is a special commitment to the natural process we call life.

Where the heart moves, we should follow, and not the other way round.
This way the world of success and failure may be left behind.
This does not mean immediate or huge success will follow our efforts.
Each thing that seems to go wrong is an inspiration to renew our faith in the natural process.
These little failures can then feed the work of reducing rather than increasing, until the self is removed more and more so we can listen more and more, be more and more at one with our partner in communication, one with the natural process itself.
The word love says it all to those who can hear - that all is love.



John Kells London 13v01

to vanish is to release
                   the world

Frank Samperi

The natural flow of the natural process is the gift of grace that is open to all who are devoted to essence. John Kells

for clematis
and vine

green twist
two ply
garden twine

Thomas A Clark

           means should
                 be 
           more than
                 profusion of
                intelligence
    impossible to write
    the ink does not play
             the primary
            but makes possible

Putting the work first

You must find it in you to bring the work alive – beyond where the teacher left it – even if this means heresy. To bring the work alive you must be able to make the distinction (feel the difference) between the life in the work, and the life in yourself doing the work. They are not the same. If they coincide it is only externally. When the work comes alive one feels reverential and humble, raw and vulnerable almost to the point of tears, only too pleased to be present and of service, or one is simply too engrossed and busy to register any feelings at all. When you come alive doing the work then your energy manifests, the spirit rises, you feel great, you're in control, you've never been better, you've never been quite so full of self. It all boils down to what precisely you put first in your life. If it is you then you live a life ruled by gravity – desire – the forces of acquisition – egocentric. If you put the other first, whatever that other may be – the person in front of you, the work, the teaching, the teacher, anything but the self – then suddenly you are free of the gross forces of selfishness, and instead you float and dance in a space governed by connectedness and the energy between – the third heart. Your dance – your internal life – takes you always outside the gravitational sphere of influence of other peoples selfishness, not by avoiding but by existing in a more active and refined reality – a more inclusive reality that sees selfish blobs for what they are – lumbering, sluggish, of no consequence – absolutely unable to enter the reality you exist within.

The work we do – the Heartwork – is so simple it borders on the trivial. Can you stand in front of another person and be open and honest and just connect? The answer is always yes, everyone and anyone can do it – everyone has it in them to be a human being, if only for an instant. The struggle for all of us is to extend that instant – let it reverberate into all aspects of our life and our reality. To do this we must put the work first – we must have had the blinding and earth shattering insight that everything, including our humanity and humanity at large, hinges on this work. Then, as my teacher would say, we are ready to begin.

Biography of T.T. Liang - JK's first Chinese teacher.