Novice Attends Albuquerque Retreat

The word was spoken … Flame.

… written down, ashen forms

Remain.

Love’s

Simple

Expression

Of gratitude –

That blessed

perfume:

Joy

I am new to T’ai Chi Chih. By the good graces of Lisa Otero, who has observed and corrected my fledgling practice on several occasions, my wife Jeneth and I attended the recent retreat with Carmen Brocklehurst at the Canossian Spirituality Center in Albuquerque.

I’d been practicing for about four or five months, mostly with Justin Stone’s and Carmen’s DVDs. Justin’s DVD also features a wonderful practice session with four teachers. A few movements have been clarified since these sessions were recorded, but the DVDs are still excellent. I found my magnetic center pointing to Carmen as my teacher, and so it was that I found myself in Albuquerque.

My first “experience” at the retreat was having a sense that someone was standing to my left. I have a visual impairment that prevents me from seeing the details of a face peripherally, so I turned and immediately said, “I recognize you – you’re my teacher.” There was not so much as a thought involved in my “seeing” her face next to me; it was more intuition. It felt like an original face seeing itself in a mirror and remembering without having ever seen before.

How one may know anything, let alone by intuitive certainty, has been a topic of active inquiry ever since I realized I felt in harmony with the notion that “the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile,” as philosopher Baruch Spinoza said. This is also a major theme of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament of the Bible.

Realizing the magnitude of my enslavement to vain and futile pursuits, which could never fulfill my yearning for the simplest and greatest of joys, is a great place to be as it may give birth to a movement that is ever new. Indeed, such are the movements of TCC. The Chi is ever new, ever creative and so the discovery of that which is eternal seems to have a new beginning each time I realize it moves me.

TCC is good for me because of the health benefits I desperately need, and I also find much more in this practice. Why am I so fortunate to find myself in such high-minded and courageous company? Someone once told me, “It’s true that the enlightened are as if chosen from above. Your job is to see to it that you are among them.”