S. E. Meredith - The Aiki singularity

Theres something out there. And its in here too. It has no religion yet it arises from spirit. It has no culture yet its steeped in Asian mythology. It has no ideology yet charismatic cults have been built atop it. It has no economy yet serious money has been minted from it. It has no aesthetics yet its often dolled up in stage theatrics, colorful costumes, and cinematic histrionics. It has no science but when you feel it you wont need a weatherman telling you how the wind blows.

Its the universal, ubiquitous power of natures Great Way. Even the learned philosophers of ancient times couldnt do any better than I just did. They put up their hands and surrendered:

I dont know its name. When I must name it, I say only the Way. If forced to describe it, I have only the word Great.

But that kind of philosophical talk is eye-glazing stuff - well known from a thousand and one translations of the ancient Dao De Jing (). And therein lies the problem. People reading that kind of thing assume its all fluff. Just words or concepts or images or ideals. Nothing to see here. Nothing to feel. Nothing to knock your socks clean off.

The trouble with the internal energy teaching business is that everybody treats the topic as a metaphor. Or an image for meditation. Or a philosophical concept. Or just a word. It all seems so abstract. Thus, the default reaction when encountering the inner energy verbiage is a yawn.

But the verbiage gives us a starting point: words. Words are, after all, formations of air. So am I talking about air? You might think so, because, a common Chinese term for internal energy, is usually translated as air. But that would be barking up the wrong qi. Air is an ordinary physical phenomenon. But the something cited above is radically, seriously something else.

Paradoxically, the view of internal power as a mere abstraction stampedes people to the polar opposite error: material reductionism. After all (the reasoning goes) even though we cant trust the ancients to have simply said what they meant, still surely they werent that totally nutso. They must have had something in mind. So now there are a slew of interpretations of the internal power as a particular type of tissue in the body. Or a certain way of moving or bracing your body as a mechanical structure. All these are equally wrong.

The Tai Chi Classic writings () are a users manual for a total consciousness blowout and blowup. When youre holding the Classics, or any book on Tai Chi, you should feel respect. As though its a sheaf of LSD blotter sheets, hundred hits per page. Thats how potent this inner technology can be.

Yet over and over, the big existential question why resurfaces. Why bother to cultivate this stuff? I have covered that in pedantic detail as 'The Big Picture' (final chapter of my book Juice Radical Taiji Energetics). But its an underlying thread, or atmospheric theme, in all my books: What's the point? There are all these methods and drills and protocols, but what is the pot of gold at rainbows end? After all, I personally don't do combat sports, I don't work as a SWAT commando. I don't have a professional chiropractic concern or run an acupuncture clinic or any other alternative healing practice, so.... WTF man?

If, just by pressing a button or taking a pill, people could instantly feel even 1% of what I'm laying out (the internal result of these methods), the whole motivation thing would never come up. But since so few have any idea of it, I have to keep hinting at the result, dragging in tired marketing hooks: maybe you'll get some little self-defense ability against street punks ... maybe you wont fall as often, or as dangerously? Or, maybe it'll lower your blood pressure a couple points... I have to talk in these cloddish ways. Of course, the training can have some of those benefits. Better balance for seniors!