Most years, at some point when I am teaching, I will hear myself repeating to the group words of my first teacher: ‘… the thing is’, he would say, ‘ you kind of just have to believe me…’. He was demonstrating the standing posture for Chi Kung, then correcting ours/mine.

I knew a little about Sitting in meditation at this time, but the Standing Jan Chung was new to me, perhaps even relatively new in Europe… (it being the early 1980s it had probably only been around in the West for twenty to thirty years). Yet something went into me, rooted me; at some level I did, indeed, believe. And belief, at a later stage, turned into trust: I found that I trusted my teacher fairly easily, then I began to trust our Form…

The next progression – into faith – takes longer. Our culture has so misused the word – so over-capitalised its f – that it is hard to come by a proper meaning: maybe it has none. Faith just opens: it arrives of itself, coming in with stillness. It is both the action of that stillness, and its experience; and it is entirely personal.

It is unknowable until it is known: once known, never again unknowable.

Tai Chi, amongst many many disciplines, perhaps all disciplines, even the most scientifically empirical, may lead there… And do you know how? Well, it’s not about moving mountains:

It’s about PRACTICE… and (in tiny un-scary print), neither myself nor anyone else can do it for you.

©August 2013