The Road I've Walked

Over these years, in learning how to be with myself, I seem to have slowly walked through three stages.

Once, I was easily trapped by things.

When something upsetting happened, my mind would not stop, turning it over and over. Those stray thoughts, that sadness, pressed on me like a cloud, and I sank into it, unable to come out. Back then I thought it was the thing itself that made me suffer so. I kept trying to change it, to make it into what I wished it were. But the more I thought, the wearier I grew, and the more stuck.

Later, I slowly understood something.

What truly trapped me was not the thing, but my thoughts. It was the way I turned that thing over, again and again.

Once I understood this, I learned another way. When those thoughts came again, I no longer plunged into them, nor struggled against them. I tried to watch them quietly, the way one watches clouds in the sky. I watched the stray thoughts come, and watched them go. I told myself that these were only passing thoughts, not me. They would come, and they would surely go. And thinking this way, the cloud no longer felt so heavy. I found that I did not have to be carried off by my own thoughts. This step made me lighter, and much more free.

And lately, I have caught a faint glimpse of a further place still ahead.

In that place, it seems one no longer even needs to watch one's thoughts. They come when they come, and go when they go, and I need not deliberately watch them, nor remind myself not to be carried off. They flow like water, of their own accord. When a good thought comes, I use it naturally; when an unwelcome one comes, I let it flow away just as naturally. No grasping, no pushing, no struggle, no effort. A person and their thoughts, joined together, flowing like water.

This, I think, is perhaps what the ancients meant by the unity of knowing and doing.

And strange to say, it was in this very stage that I found myself falling in love with tai chi. Every movement of tai chi is soft, and round, and flowing, like water. When I practice it, it is as if I am practicing that very state, no force, no struggle, letting body and heart join together, and flow. I think my body, somehow, recognized before I did the place I have been longing for.

To be honest, I have not truly arrived at that place. Even now, I still often need to watch my thoughts as one watches clouds, and sometimes I am still swept up in them for a while. But I know now that such a place exists. And I believe that as long as I keep walking, step by step, and keep practicing, one by one, there will come a day when I arrive there, naturally.

Looking back on this road, I find that the growth of a person is perhaps just like this.

From being trapped by our thoughts, to being able to watch them, to one day flowing together with them like water. Step by step, lighter as we go, and freer as we go.

I am still on the road. But to be walking this road at all, I am already deeply content.

Marie, Founder of Lyfairs