First of all, I think it is helpful to realise, especially in our modern world, that even though there are 24 hours a day in theory, many of us lead very busy lives earning a living, looking after family members, checking our emails and our phone messages 10 times a day etc. etc.
It is not really true that we can ‘have it all’ in this physical dimension of existence. If I book a trip to New York next July, for example, I cannot yet bi-locate and go on an African Safari at the same time (although I’m working on it because at the end of our AMAZING advanced retreat in Nerja I felt so high that I almost believed that I could be in two places at once if I really wanted to be!!)
Anyway, at the moment we are all restricted by linear time and three dimensional space, and so we all have to prioritise. We can have an extra 30 minutes sleep in the mornings, or we can get up early and do 20 minutes of ITC before we set off for work (who am I kidding? –I don’t really ‘work’ anymore and so I am blessed enough to be able to sleep for 10 hours a night and still have loads of time to practise my tai chi) but you get my drift.
Now we all have a choice about what to prioritise in our lives. Do we prioritise activities that really make our heart sing, or do we prioritise making more money, seeing old friend out of a sense of guilt or duty, or indulging in comfy habits that anaesthetise our inner pain and dissatisfaction, such as chilling out in front of the TV with a glass or two or wine and a large bowl of crisps?
Remember that your personality-self and your higher-self always want completely different things from life. Your personality self is always seeking for physical pleasures and emotional comforts, whereas your soul just longs to be free and to go back home to Oneness.
Moreover, your egoic-self absolutely does not want you to awake and heal 100 per cent because when we do this our egoic-self actually starts to dissolve away into nothingness. So on any genuine spiritual path to enlightenment, we are all going to experience a lot of egoic resistance. What to do?
I would advise that you just begin by calmly observing your personality-self, or a sub-personality-self, coming up with reasons why you can’t practise your ITC. Then, establish a dialogue with the part of you that really does not want to practise. You may find some very interesting parts of yourself in there somewhere, and then you can begin to really get to know them!
For example, you may find that you have a rebellious child within you who is still protesting at how his/her over-controlling parents made him/her practise the piano/violin/ Maths every evening, when he/she just longed to go out and play with her friends. Once you establish a dialogue with this part of yourself, you can actually reassure her/him that practising Tai Chi will not mean having no time for fun and friendship.
Or you may find that there is a wounded child deep within you who was humiliated at age 6 by a dance teacher who told him/her in front of the whole class that she/he danced like an elephant. This wounded part of you would now rather not even try to be good at ITC, than risk trying to be good at it and being told by Master Jason Chan that he/she moves like an elephant.
Once you are very honest with yourself, and accept that you are resisting practising for some rational, but neurotic reason –rather than insisting that you just do not have the time- you can start to heal all the wounded aspects of your personality-self that tend to sabotage any chance you have of lasting success in one or more aspect of your life.
I once completed a very long and tedious personality-test, and the psychotherapist who scored it told me that I was completely normal, except for a very strong rebellious streak. Given that I am an extremely law abiding individual, this really surprised me. But the more I thought about it, the more I could see that I do still have a very powerful rebellious little girl in my psyche, who reacts very badly to any parental or authority figure telling her that she should or should not do this or that. For example, if any well-meaning friend tells me that I really should not drink Diet Coke, my rebellious inner child just insists on drinking more of the stuff!!
So now I know that I have this rebellious part of my personality, I tend to negotiate with myself, rather than trying to insist that I ought to do something that is ‘good for me’. This may sound a bit schizophrenic, but I actually ask myself to do myself a favour e.g. ‘Please come and do just a little bit of exercise with me and then later we can chill out and watch your favourite TV show’.
On a much deeper level, I also sit in meditation and send love and light to all the aspects of my personality-self that are still not totally healed, and that therefore sometimes try to sabotage my awakening journey. I do my very best to love myself unconditionally as I am now, whilst committing myself to further awakening and healing on a day to day basis.
Does all this work? Yes! Slowly but surely, I am becoming more awake and slightly less full of loads of unhealed ‘stuff’ that used to keep sabotaging all my attempts to become a more loving, kind, joyful and peaceful presence in our troubled world. I have been meditating for well over 20 years now and practising Infinite Tai Chi for over 12 years. I still have a long, long way to go, but I can now see that my resistance to awakening and healing is definitely less than it was 10 or 20 years ago, and that the habit of meditating has become almost as strong in me as the habit of having a daily hot shower.
So my final words of encouragement to you this month are – as usual – just this: Act as if you are already a totally dedicated and advanced Infinite Arts Practitioner – and PRACTISE.