I really liked your post about substance and non substance. it has that taiji lesson quality… meaning very confusing, yet there’s something clear that can’t quite be grasped, but you feel like you got a slightly bigger piece of it through trying, And maybe more come later.

relax to have tension – for some reason this reminded me of the writings of Erle Montaigue of Australia. he was always saying that you must never complete any movement before the proper time, if you do it before then you’ve arrived too soon, he calls these “dead” movements which are not taiji. So perhaps to have tension before the precise moment is to bring this “dead” quality which kills our taiji. But if we’re relaxed, the needed force – call it a tensing, a tension – can emerge properly. So, relax to have tension. Like money: if you spend it, you don’t have it? But until you spend it, it’s nothing, in a sense.