20 September 2005

Breaking the mould

The biggest struggle we will ever have is to break out of the mould. Whenever I teach I am always struck by the truth of this statement and the enormity of the task. Society tends to demand as subscription all an individuals energy, leaving none or little over at the end of the day to work on breaking out of its, and our own, suffocating strictures.

Traipsing around Brighton with the kids on Saturday, shopping for new shoes which they both wanted but didn't really need, watching with distaste the immense enthusiasm and energy the average person has for shopping, and being struck by the architectural magnificence of the vast malls, which (along with television) seem to have replaced the cathedral and the church as the main means of controlling the populace, I imagined the spiritual progress people would make if their energies were redirected; but to redirect one would have to live outside. The taint of ego is difficult to wash away, especially when it is institutionalised.

Our approach, instead of thinking negatively in terms of removing or eradicating something, instead works on filling everything with heart. The giving, loving heart has to become master, at least when we practice, rather than the ravening, energetically disconnected mind which so readily burns everything it touches to a crisp. To make this switch (even to realise that it is necessary) requires real effort and determination (energy): it is rather like slipping into a different world. Religious practices often involve ritual, incense, incantation as a means of evoking the right mood of quiet and respect for communion with God. We need something similar: a few minutes of seated meditation (peace and quiet) or a simple energy exercise which you find useful, simply to relax, bring a smile to your face, and get you into heart mode, before you approach the impossibility of Tai Chi. Your whole practice session then becomes a revolutionary act, an act of subversion, your thrust against the real enemy which is not the powers that be or the moronic masses or the muslim hordes, but the tension of the busy domineering mind. In theory, as the heart wakens the student falls in love with it and within no time at all everything in the student's life is bursting with heart and they live happily ever after. This can happen but only if the student courageously takes on board the teaching and the implications of their own practice: that each day is the start of a new life, a life more full of heart. This is the process of heart: growth rather than steady state, indeed exponential growth. Heart needs to grow otherwise it dies, and love becomes polite affection rather than the generous, overflowing gush that it should be. Standing still is the same as going backwards. "All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses".

1 comment

taiji heartwork said...

Quote from Whitman, probably the most positive of poets:

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.