How to Feel the Shores of the Cosmos

The longer your form, the better.

You’ll get a longer and deeper peek in the Grand and Ultimate Mysteries. Short forms, like Small San Sau, or like little fighting drills, provide a fine framework for engaging in partner work. But a long, longer, or longest form lets you contemplate deeper by going longer.

The Cosmos is All That-Is or Ever-Was or Ever-Will-Be.

Our contemplations of the Cosmos stir us. There is a tingling in the spine…a catch in the voice…a faint sensation, as of a distant memory, of falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the Grandest of Mysteries.

The size and age of the Cosmos…are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home, the Earth.

–Carl Sagan in The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean

Sinking into Taijiquan and asking your body to participate in exploring Grand and Ultimate Mysteries, is no easy task. But it should be.

Longer Goes Deeper

• After you memorize a form, you can sink into it.
• After you know the movements, you can let them emerge.
• After you’ve spent diligent time memorizing long, winding sequences, you can go deeper.

For short formers, here’s a caution: Why you should NOT do any shortened Forms…

Easy Tiger; don’t get so put off if your form is short. It means that you’re ready for a Long Form…

For me, at least, a short form is a too-tiny peek at Taijiquan.

Long form offers my body, a subtle, vigorous exercise; it gives my mind and breathing an immersive contemplation and meditation. And it offers my spirit some time to soak in the solitude and wonder of energies. Sights, shadows, and sounds of the sparkling sun, the radiant mountains, and the cool breeze sink right in.

Our species is young and curious and brave. It shows much promise.

Our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.

–More from Carl Sagan’s The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean

Watch the beginning now, and let Carl Sagan push you further toward…

The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean