Sometimes it takes a death to slap you in the face

October 17, 2016, my father, passed away shortly after midnight!

A couple of days before I was sitting in my backyard. Sun shining and sun bathing; vitamin D being absorbed. I can feel it like a dry sponge getting moistened by water.

My backyard excavated, laid open feels the sun too. Water evaporating, photosynthesis and the great transformation happening with all the 5 elements of nature mutually supporting each other.

My father in hospice. No pain, but no immune system either. Chemo sucked the Chi out of his body. Sometimes your body can’t handle the pound of cure, hence ancient wisdom is nothing to ridicule.

My father never spoke his feelings. He never laid them bare. His heart never opened; nothing to absorb, nothing to let out. No evaporation, no mutually supportive cycle; NOT in tune. Only death lies ahead.

Sometimes it is indeed too late! Sometimes people do not feel how the earth works. Not necessarily the science of it but the intrinsic art of the cycles that communicates a tune higher than its individual notes.

I am no better. I didn’t even get the idea to go into the sun on my own. My cute, not even one year old puppy did it and I saw him absorbing and deep down I knew it was the right thing to do. I listened! I listened to my dog from the pound. I listen to all I can and take notes.

The fall of man is not knowledge itself but the belief that we are separate from nature. I know Noah saw it that way, he listened.

My father thought he could heal himself and he failed miserably. Not because he tried but because he closed himself and no longer listened.

Many people think they are beyond nature, in fact, America often promotes the idea that we defeated nature. What arrogance! That is the fall of man.

The one truth I follow is gravity and nature’s cycles are buried deep within me and my mind often obscures this fundamental truth. I wrestle with my mind’s illusions and delusions to lay myself bare to nature and woe to those who do not take heed.

This is why my beliefs sync up with Pantheism and Taoism, more than other belief systems. More on this in future posts.

Tai Chi below Shannon Falls in BC

The practice of the Tai Chi form reaches its apex for me when performed in nature. The first step in learning the Tai Chi is the basics. Once the body mechanics are understood, the applications of each posture need to be comprehended. This develops an ability that demonstrates good structure. Structure is how the body handles pressure. Bad structure collapses under pressure and good structure does not. Once these elements are understood on a general level the most satisfying part of Tai Chi is not being able to defeat multiple attackers, but simply moving and interacting with nature. When you feel you are able to follow nature and understand it as if you were the rider and it was a horse, you are in a place to realize a deeper part of yourself and to improve upon the many weaknesses you endure while living in this complicated world.

Please do not take these words as some type of fixed idea that you complete one step, the basics, then another and so on to the final stage of development, rather take them as a process. By looking at your learning as a work in process, you can shed the idea that there is some kind of fixed state, and you might be easier on yourself.

Sometimes we work the basics and move on to realization, and back to applications, then realize that you totally forgot the basics and have to start all over. The process of Tai Chi can be frustrating but it is important to be easy on yourself and remember to love what you are doing and then do it often.