Habit

My teacher always used to say that learning Tai Chi is a process of replacing bad habits with good ones. Some bad habits are relatively easy to eradicate – smoking, eating meat, etc. – because it's obvious when we're indulging. But habits of posture, character and attitude are much more difficult to get a handle on. In these cases a positive model of how we should be is vital – far better for your energy to focus on the positive than the negative anyway. The teacher is this model. There should be aspects of your teacher – the energetic aspects – above all his connexion to the living truth, rather than personality or power, that you totally admire, and feel – have always felt – your life drifting, and now driving, towards. Each time your teacher is with you is all he is saying is stop being afraid, start believing, and join me. This is the most positive message and invitation you will ever receive. Reasons to say no – excuses – abound, they are too numerous to even contemplate. It is the surest indication that the thinking mind is ally to the ego that these reasons abound as they do – they are expressions of our fear. It is the heart that takes those leaps of faith. The work at hand is to open the heart, put it out there, thrust it, trust it, and get the body and spirit in good shape so that when the heart leaps the rest of us follows very shortly after it. The great teacher – the great human being – lives each and every moment with such an unfolding heart, letting it spill into the world as reality opens up before them. That is their greatness.