Justin Stories (February 2024, Part 2)

From Guy Kent, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Co-host of the 50th Anniversary Teacher Conference in July 2024

During my accreditation, Justin was serious and most interested that teacher candidates moved well. I received much personal instruction from the auditing teachers from out of town. When it came time to do my formal presentation, I recall likening T’ai Chi Chih (TCC) movements to those done by people the audience may have seen moving slowly in a park. Justin stopped me right there! He said something about TCC movements not being anything like “T’ai Chi in the park”. I stood corrected, flabbergasted, and continued. Somehow, I was accredited even though I felt I had severely disappointed the Master.

About a year after my accreditation, another accreditation class was being offered by Justin in Albuquerque. I was busy with work and didn’t (appreciate/accept the opportunity/responsibility to) audit the accreditation. I did go to the last day of the accreditation to witness the certificates being distributed. I had the opportunity to see Justin and sat down next to him. He was noticeably upset. He mentioned that there had been an ill-prepared and disruptive candidate that had attended and he had to ask them to leave the previous day, that they would not be accredited by him. This was an obviously very difficult decision for Justin, but it also impressed upon me just how important any accredited teacher’s demeanor and ability to demonstrate the movements well was, not only to Justin, but to TCC practice. Any teacher recommending a candidate for accreditation needs to be very confident not only in how the student moves, but how well they integrate TCC practice in their life. Are they grounded?

Shortly after Justin moved to Albuquerque in 1993, Carmen Brocklehurst suggested I take him to lunch. This was intimidating but I called him, and we agreed to meet at his house and drive to lunch. I do not recall much of our conversation, other than he probably sensed my interest in his time in the stock market. He mentioned his interest in a few stocks at the time; I recall Merck being one of them. I was aware Justin had a technique for picking stocks. When returning from his trips in the East he said he would go to the public library and access the recent newspapers. He would manually plot a moving average (50-day and 200-day periods) of the particular stock of interest versus the overall market. He said it was important to see if the stock was leading or trailing the market. He never provided too many details. He said spiritual evolution was inhibited if one were too focused on amassing money. I may have missed the opportunity to learn his techniques, but I did learn that his real message was I should not focus on “making money in the market,” that there were much more important activities for my time and attention.

Returning to Justin’s home after lunch, I was intending to drop him off and return to work. He invited me in and after sitting down he said “So, do you have any questions for me?” Oh my! Where to start? What an unexpected opportunity. What might your questions have been?!

I reflected that my life was going quite well, I had a great career, loving wife, growing family. I said I felt guilty that things were going so well. He stopped me and said, “I don’t think the world is any better off because you feel guilty.” Yes, this was true. My perception and belief system were not the broader view from which he viewed life. Thirty years later I am still processing this response, and some of the missed opportunities with Justin for “answers” to questions.

I was intimidated by Justin’s presence. I realized he was an advanced Being and I did not feel worthy of consuming his time. I was more than willing to be with him, to absorb from a distance, but I was not comfortable being the focus of his attention. I now realize that as a teacher, Justin only wanted the best for me and probably realized I was not ready, or willing, to accept his direct teaching. There are others in the TCC community that had “more awakened” interactions with the Master, and I am envious they took advantage of his focused responses. Justin was always kind when he encouraged me to return to the community when he sensed I was slipping away.

At the more public forum of one of the TCC Association’s monthly meetings, Justin made himself available for questions. I recall him being asked if there were such things as coincidences. He paused, and with a twinkle in his eye responded, “I think not.” I loved how he referred to “signposts.” Those things in life, that with hindsight, hold clear indications of meaning.

One other incident worth mentioning is when I witnessed Justin in tears. There was someone that was a TCC student, and a friend/partner of an accredited TCC teacher. This person participated in some of the TCC events sponsored by the TCC Association and TCC Center. He felt compelled to challenge Justin’s stature as a teacher and creator of the TCC movements. (At least this is my recollection and perception.) He wrote some very derogatory articles that, when not published in the TCC News, he chose to send to his own mailing list, derived from the publicly available TCC Teacher’s Directory and the Association’s membership list. Justin was aware of this and mentioned to me that this person had shared with Justin the names of some of the TCC movements he changed to reflect his bizarre view. Justin was deeply hurt by this, and the names chosen. I remember not being able to offer any consolation or explanation for this person’s behavior.

My take aways from the experience have been numerous:

• Justin was human. He was sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others, regardless of how baseless and misinformed they were.

• Working with the Chi is powerful. There are people, if not grounded, for whom the flow of Chi is too much for them to handle. They can “go off” if not properly taught or later observed and coached in how to handle the flow of Chi. We all need to be helped sometimes to work through the emotions that may come from the “Chi-encouraged balancing” within our beings.

• Some may think it cute to tweak or change the names of the movements. I ask anyone doing this if they would be willing to present their changes to Justin.

• Justin did not respond or engage with this person, to my knowledge. He seemed to trust the Chi and felt for the person’s misdirection and confusion. I liken this to the “forgive them Father, for they know not what they do” biblical comment my mother often shared. As it turned out, this offensive person faded away from their self-inflated, but non-received, pulpit and it wasn’t too much later that I read he died. Who knows the circumstances that brought all this into action? I saw it as a purification of TCC practice. There may always be doubters and malcontents, however Chi is a powerful force that cannot be denied.

• Justin held TCC practice in the highest regard. To not bring our teh, personal integrity, to everything associated with TCC practice, and Justin Stone, is an insult.

On Saturday evenings, after meditation and a short drive to/from a Chinese buffet, the group would return to Justin’s living room for “teisho.” Justin would have selected a book from his library and would ask someone to read to the group. The material was often deep, and Justin would take the opportunity to explain his understanding of the text or sometimes divert the discussion to other topics. On one occasion the regular reader was not attending, and I was asked to read the material. I read several pages and at one point skipped an entire line in the reading. The material “made sense” to me, even without the entire line of ten or twelve missing words. I read a just a little further and Justin stopped me and asked me to re-read the last bit. He had known I missed material. This was the lesson that he was closely paying attention; he knew the lesson plan! On which side of the cave entrance did you leave your umbrella?!

I attended several meditation retreats with Justin. Justin wrote frequently about meditation. In the later years he seemed to distill his experiences to teaching what he called Turiya meditation. (Turiya being a term for the fourth state of consciousness, along with sleeping, dreaming, and awake states.) When asked by people if they should meditate, Justin often said, “I don’t tell them yes or no, but I always tell them they should do TCC (regularly).”

Justin was a teacher. During one of his personal solo trips to 29 Palms in California to meditate, he said it became clear that he “would be a teacher for the remainder of his life.” He said the energy in the desert was conducive to meditation. He also reflected, with some disappointment, that his meditations were not as deep as he got older, but he continued to sit with the group and maintain a personal routine. One item I never asked Justin about was his comment that a good meditation teacher can tell what state a meditator is in by looking at them. I wondered if this was a visual observation or possibly a more subtle “syncing” during meditation where a master can perceive each person’s state.

Justin held meditation in high regard, though I dare say below TCC practice. He saw TCC as complete, as is. I believe he did not offer to accredit people to teach his meditation techniques because he did not want to dilute the importance of TCC as a (moving) meditation. He also warned that true meditation teachers were hard to find. Meditation is not something to be casually dabbled with, the teacher’s teh, is of the utmost importance.