Wisdom

We all have intuition – inner knowledge – the body contains everything; yet few are able to distinguish it clearly from fear and desire.

Fear & hope

Rising up from the ground through the body there is a pedestal of tension upon which sits our self. We identify with this self and we cling to this pedestal – it is our strength – our rock – and if ever it should fall the ego would tumble and we would be left with nothing: precisely the nothing we strive for as spiritual beings. The pedestal must be laboriously dismantled piece by peace – there is no other way. This is why when tension releases in any part of the body a twinge is felt in the chest – a stab of fear from the ego and a leap of hope from the heart. Always two responses. We yearn for spiritual progress yet it threatens us enormously.

The hard cannot proceed without the certainty of success.

Photo: Chris Laver

When the mind stops and the ego drops then we enter the playful dance of the fascia.

Heart

The ego – our self-image – amounts to everything we have decided to hold onto. A monstrous edifice that glitters and gleams. It feeds on the anxiety induced by its contradictions: it must outshine but must also belong. It demands attendance and obedience from the mind body and spirit. The only part of us that knows its fraudulence and refuses to obey is the heart, so the ego seats itself in the chest – in front of the heart – blocking the heart's open communication with the world at large. Then anything that gets through to the heart is first censored by the ego, and anything that comes out of the heart passes first into the ego, and we have the mess of emotion we generally call feelings. In the realm of pure heart – unsullied by ego – there are no feelings – no refections – there is only heart – pure connexion.

Photo: Chris Laver

seafarers haunted by a world of spirits

Yielding

Yielding is meeting energy or force with non-resistance so that it can either remain or become energy and not become or remain force. It is a natural process, and requires internal transformation. If something is perceived as hard (forceful) then we have not sufficiently yielded. In this sense, yielding is healing because it maintains an energetic system – keeps things in energetic equilibrium.

My nephew Harley (his father - my brother - is a motocycle mechanic) making the most of a dusting of snow in Stockport.

The usual sequence of events:

Spirit (intention) leaps.
Energy flows.
Flow meets resistance.
Resisted energy becomes forceful.
Force makes things move, or not.

Force is blocked energy.

Energy not force: the essence of Tai Chi.

Energy tends to life, and vice versa.

Softness isn't just lack of hardness – it is an energy; in the same way that cold isn't simply lack of heat – it is also an energy. And, for that matter, emptiness is an energy, but of a very different nature to that of fullness.

Accept what you sense as real.

John Upledger