DIARY OF A MAD WOMAN ON THE PATH TO ENLIGHTENMENT 091012

CHAPTER 25: By Jove I Finally Got It!

September 10^th, 2012

            I was crawling into bed last night having just completed my second performance of the day of Tai Gong (this one while sitting down next to my bed), when it hit me like like an ACME safe falling on Wiley Coyte… It’s not about the artistry!  All this time I’ve been focusing on how and where to move my body parts in an effort to be graceful and fluid because I admired that in others.  The truth is, the ballerina will always be more hypnotic to watch than a weight lifter, but that doesn’t diminish the effect of Tai Chi on either of them. 

            I tend to be a little slower than the average coyote about things like this because my Western mind is preconditioned to look for and judge beauty.  Now, before you say “tsk, tsk..” think about the amount of time you spend before the mirror every day applying the wrinkle creams, the make-up, the facial masks, and the like.  Why do you do it; I would propose it’s because you too have some pre-conditioning when it comes to the value and advantages of “beauty”. We say things like “true beauty comes from within”; “your beauty radiates from within” and “you are beautiful where it counts”, but at the end of the day we all know what it means when the matchmaker says, “well, they have a nice personality”.  And, that’s not where we want to be.

             I’m even slower than the rest, as I have a hard time putting down my self-deprecating humor because it shields me from the pain of having lost so much of myself to disease that the image in the mirror is no longer recognizable to me.  It’s so much easier to laugh at myself than to perhaps discover that people are laughing at me.  The really tragic thing is that when I was young and famous as “one of the beautiful people” I was just as hard on myself and equally as insecure about my body than.  I’m not going to stay here long because this is just way to heavy, but suffice it to say, for the first time in my life when that safe cracked my head, I realized that however the hands and body are moving, however smooth or clumsy the acrobat, the value of Tai Chi to me is equal to that of the flawless ballerina.  And that is was it is all about.

            Today I went to the school for a second Chi treatment, only to arrive and find out that Shifu was sick.  Shifu cannot get sick!  Bugs just don’t stick to a Shifu like they do to the rest of us; do they? Who does Shifu go to when he does get sick?  And if it’s ferocious enough a bug that it took out Shifu, what will it do to me?  All these thoughts went racing through my mind as I considered what to do next.  So, having arrived at no answers, I went into the Tai Chi studio (the room with all those intimidating mirrors), and I put on my music, and I performed 25 minutes of Tai Gong.  Even though I had my eyes closed the whole time, I know it was beautiful…I felt it!  You didn’t see it, Shifu, but trust me, I made you proud!  You know why?  Because it was never, for one single second, about the artistry.  It was all about feeling and channeling my chi. 

           I hope you get well soon and are back in all your Shifu-ness because me and all your other students appreciate all you do and we need you!