Simple

For many years now, my life has been shifting to more and more simple. Not by chance – I work on it. Eliminating unnecessary distractions, setting clear priorities, keeping needed focus. Those are my tools in order to be of good use. In our age of “more-not-less,” I find myself an outsider. Limiting everything to essentials, to stewardship of land, students, and my own destiny. Simple life.

As an eight-year-old, my relationship with Spirit is a secret refuge, my citadel. Precious. I dialogue with elusive, yet palpable, "spirit presence" through feet, sky, moon, trees, sounds. It lives in all things and everywhere, inhabiting my body, too. When alone, I dance in slow-motion, feeling that clearly something unknown is flowing through me. Or I engage in shapeshifting, seeing the world from the viewpoint of a tiny daisy in a meadow.  At age twelve, I start inventing slow sequences, gestures, postures. It's a language, an architecture. An invisible realm to be inhabited with breath, awareness, sensing. Amazement. Nobody needs to know. I experiment, get lost. The practice becomes an anchor for me. Cosmic spheres are signaling, pulsing with silent music. The awe of being alive. A strange inner warmth and humble confidence awakens. Six years later, I read about Yoga for the first time. What a surprise. How similar to my own playful discoveries which I kept carefully hidden. How come?

 

 

When twenty-eight years old – seeking out the ancient martial art and moving meditation called T’ai Chi Ch’uan – it makes so much sense. Feeling home with it, I can now root and grow like a plant. Giving myself completely over to studies and training, I allow myself to be changed. In return, T’ai Chi fortifies me as artist. Over time my writing, theater pieces, and documentary films become infused with subtlety. Fiercely I admire the simple principles and the art of it. Heaven and earth communicate with me, and with my woundedness – deep down healing happens. I surrender, listen, follow, and am guided, gifted, blessed, protected. Now at age seventy-two – still in love with my over-decades-cultivated T’ai Chi universe – I keep practicing being aligned and spacious, embedded in planetary forces. It provides a framework for living in contact with Spirit. Dwelling in a silken spiderweb. It alters ordinary mind. Can we listen to the ancestral wisdom in our cells, their memories asking for metamorphosis?

 

 

Investigating “simple”  with singular curiosity, worlds of complexities and paradoxes will keep opening up, one after the other. This fascinates me endlessly. Why acquire the “many”  when the “one”  can be examined forever – diving deeper and deeper.  On the journey, the horizon continues to move as well. Harvesting universal truths about life through physical visceral research, be it with movement, voice, breath, therapy, dreams, writing, drawing, meditation, Kum Nye, or T’ai Chi. Here philosophy can be understood and tasted via the body.  All this keeps me grounded, allows me to go to the edge, dare. Volunteering for years in prison, accompanying others into death. Actively and willingly witnessing suffering, joy, loss, and transformation. Wide awake. Open. Exploring the essence of life. At its core, T’ai Chi is simple and beautiful. It contains poetry, and rhythms of all kind. Varying melodies, harmonizing within, and beyond the skin. The flow of chi and subtle energies is calming, cleansing. Here is the river. Yin and yang of breath. The inner realm mirroring the macrocosm. All is interwoven, affecting each other. Are we sensitive enough to participate?

When practicing T’ai Chi, focus is developed, and lucid presence. Least effort and ease. Doing less. Flexible, soft, fluid. The multitudes are contained in a minute shift of weight from one leg to the other, letting the arms float up, wrists bend, a slight folding in the hip, spiraling into the Bubbling Well. Renewal is waiting. Gravity’s song is simple. Never-ending. Can you hear it?

Simple life