Polarity in TCC: We Are the Form & the Formless

“Your life matters. Treat it that way!” said Justin Stone.

How do we come to Realize that? Cultivating a felt sense of connection between the palms through the principle of Polarity in T’ai Chi Chih (TCC) is one key. The connection we feel when the palms face one another encourages a deeper embodiment of what we come to Know. We are connection. We are the substance we feel and shape between the palms. We are THAT.

With what degree of tender exquisiteness can we pick up this substance, for example, off the shoulder in Around the Platter Variation? Are our wrists engaged with vitality thus activating more fully the flow of the Chi as fingertips point up to create an oval shape?

Are we immediately aware of feeling the substance between the palms? If not, try bringing the base of the palms slightly closer together to cultivate the sensation of a slight tug in the wrists. This forms a stronger and more alive oval shape and importantly activates the meridian channels running through the wrists. What do you feel between the palms as a result?

As we pick up the shape, we express, with ever increasing sensitivity, the individual coming into being. As we follow the curve of the platter with the wrists, we also, continuously and simultaneously, Know ourselves as part of the whole. We experience directly our own divinity, the formless. At the far point with weight fully shifted forward, with what degree of intimate attention can that shape be placed back down, merging the individuality back into Essence?

Can we, then, in the second half of the movement luxuriate in this sea of Being, this Cosmic Heart, as the wrists trace the curve back home? “Don’t rush the backswing!” Justin would remind us. Significantly, can we not anticipate as the hands stay flat when they pass through the center of the chest at heart level on the way to the shoulder eventually forming the individuality once again? What do you feel at the center of the heart as the hands pass through?

Around the Platter Variation teaches us about the individual and the universal, the form and the formless, both/and. We arise through polarity and return to source, all the while held, in and as, the substance, the Chi, divinity itself.

The substance we come to feel with ever greater reverence through the connection between the palms and the tender alacrity with which we learn to shape it matters. We learn our life matters. How aware are you of feeling this substance in each moment? As awareness increases, so do the blessings. “Love energy is the fruit,” said Justin in Spiritual Odyssey.

If you claim, “I don’t feel the Chi’” my gentle invitation is to relax all the little muscles in the stomach area, drop into the tan t’ien and inquire, with infinite kindness, “Do I want to?”