In the process of learning, in the Taoist way and any personal practice, we are confronted with the paradox of practicing ".
Why do some not feel evolution in their practices or they feel "trapped" in their evolution?
In learning, not to be confused with practice, it is possible to affect the relaxation to guide the practice itself. This confusion is the source of the paradox.
He who learns, who seeks to integrate a gesture or an exercise, is focused on technique. This focus may not need the benefits of practice, but it is an obligatory passage for the storage and digestion of a practice.
Once the act of memory and body relaxation is acquired, the exercise can leave "what one learns" to go to "what we practice:” The difference is that there is no need to make any effort to "recall" what to do and we have acquired the habit of the exercise.
In practice, where we crossed an act of concentration to an act of attention, the effort is in the feeling and in the "internal alchemy", than in the art of gesture, in the effort of memory (the mind).
We're here in practice.
After some time, through repetition of a practice with which we become intimate ( "which is engraved in the depths of our being"), we are in the mastery and in the liberation of the form (gong fu) This is ... what we occupy ...
But this increase (which it is in fact not) is not linear, hence the complications.
In learning, if not to reach liberation of the concentration, you can always try to find more details and variations without ever practicing: one who seeks, without a firm and intimate basis of practice, does not practice, he does not apprehend.
The researcher, who “goes around to find "is not in the practice, " one who is inside. " An intensive research permits their learning and choice of practice, but this is by no means practice.
This is attractive, but not in practice, there is no possible way. There is accumulation of knowledge and congestion of the brain and heart. We're here in the way of letters, not the practitioner.
In the practice contains, intimate and mastered, it is important to try and refine its understanding of the way through knowledge, but it is only for entertainment, not to help the practice.
Whoever is in the learning phase, after a while, just enjoying the moments of presence which leave the tensions and doubts: these are fleeting moments and clear memories, they are a "waste of time ".
The only thing left is the feelings of extreme relaxation and ease in his practice, in a very short time. This fluidity comes from a temporary lack of strong intent and a total presence on the exercise and the cessation of sneaky mind. It is a relaxation that comes from a "lack" of something, a "less": a lack of tension, absence of mind, a gesture without internal reviews.
After this state of grace, we wake up wanting to find this facility risen, we will try to replicate what we lost with more attention, more concentration and of course more tension.
It will not work: we replace a "less" by "too much". We try too much, we want too much, we are looking too much: then he must let go, let go and forget to look.
But this "non-research, that absence of waiting must be done in daily practice.
We also experience a normal process that goes from the non-understanding to master exercises and concepts, all passing through intermediate stages of various confusions.
We are experiencing that whatever happens, we always arrive with time to adjust to different practices, yet we can not judge our inability to perfection in the first few seconds of learning something new.
Successful one day to understand a movement, we refuse to not understand everything right away. This will occur on all new exercises over the years of practice.
Stuck in a boiling ego, focusing on our failure and convinced of our inability, we stay there, the arms swing, instead of practice.
We have experienced this progression in learning, but we are slowing down a bad concentration and need to do: we try too much, we do more.
Understanding this: in learning, we can touch the way, but we must not leave our work, "its not because we see the land in the distance that we can leave the ship."
We must continue, without paying too much attention or deny the phenomena that occur in research and fresh tension with the sole ambition of an aimless repetition. In the learning phase, we only build the foundations of a solid practice.
If we focus on phenomena, if we look for the feelings, if we try to reproduce or simulate fugitives statements, we are bogged down in endless waiting.
It is very difficult to get out of learning, often impossible to pass into a real practice, if we're looking for the easy pleasures of illusory sensations.
The phenomena in our learning the way, are stumbling blocks for us from our practice. They are pleasant or painful, short-lived or sustained in any case irrelevant ... except for the teacher.
The more we feel "things", the more we can attach, the less we practice. This slows us waiting like horseshoes on the feet of the prisoner.
It is interesting to notice what is happening to his teacher, because it allows us to "discharge" of these details and return to our practice.
Immersion in a constant search for phenomena, superficial gratification without issue, only allows the mind to rescue struggling with the progress of practice.
It is therefore ironic that what stimulates the practitioner, phenomena, or what will prevent them from moving towards the search for sensations can easily oust the true feelings.
It is therefore useful not to look, not try to replicate what is no more: the states come and go and we still need to remain stable in our practice.
This stability is the internalisation of feelings and move towards the knowledge of our reality.
