Softness is the quality of the true self, that which exists beneath our myriad defenses

            ––Wolfe Lowenthal

I recently had the rare opportunity to attend a reception at Ansel Adams’ house in Carmel, overlooking the incomparable Big Sur coast. It is now occupied by his son and daughter-in-law. On display in the living room were many reproductions of his iconic black-and-white photographs of Yosemite and New Mexico, among others. An old friend of mine, a photographer, was also there and I listened to his conversation with Ansel’s son on the head-spinning changes in the world of photography that the digital camera has wrought in the last few decades. Long gone are the days when a photographer would carefully remove the film from her camera in a darkroom and place the negatives in 3 baths–developing, fixing and washing–-each for a prescribed period of time to witness the emergence of the image resulting from the interaction of light with matter, the chemicals impregnated in the film and, in turn, their reaction with the chemicals in the solutions.

While the emergence of the image from an apparent blank piece of paper could seem magical, it was the result of a known, specific, step-by-step process that involves neither magic nor alchemy, but physics and chemistry. And careful observation. And time. How much time depends on the desired result. It was a painstaking process and a person developed mastery in photographic developing with knowledge and repetition. The “point and shoot” ethos of modern digital photography removes all that guesswork and satisfies the needs of 99% of peoples’ desire to record faces and places in their life. It also put a lot photo developing stores out of business! It is but one more example of our modern desire for immediate feedback and gratification and a world grown impatient with process, practice, and attention to detail.

Tai Chi Chuan is an exercise for the invisible person who inhabits the visible one.

            ––Margy Emerson 

Taoist cosmology posits a step-down of energy from pure light or vibration to dense matter (“the world of 10,000 things”). http://santacruztaichi.com/?p=962  The creation and development of our physical body follows a similar path in embryology and then in the developing self––it remains energetic at its core, just like all matter. In tai chi, song (loosening/unbinding/letting go) and ting (internal awareness/interoception) are corollaries to the chemicals in the photo development solution. These two factors are the means through which our “invisible person,” our true self, our spirit, emerges and manifests in our present visible life as a result of our tai chi practice. How that happens remains mysterious but results in a gradual “letting go” of our illusory attachment to egoic/dualistic isolation or separation to a recognition of our essential mutuality and relationship with all creation. We know that our physical mind/ body being is transient and changes over time but we also intuit that there is a “self” at the core of our being that is consistent and beyond change. The balance between those two notions of “self” is what emerges from a tai chi or any other sincere meditative practice. In tai chi, our body is the vehicle and gateway to that realization. The process requires time, repetition and focused awareness and results in a gradual dawning or recognition of the first glimmers of this other emergent “image” of the Self. The perseverance to follow that mental intuition and bodily feeling results in increasingly greater clarity, stability and constancy of the complete image. Our practice is the solution from which our true self emerges.