Just a reminder everyone that for many of us, this energetic practice puts in into a very raw place for a while. It can be like you are in the middle of open heart surgery for an extended time. On the table. Not in the waiting room. Not post-op. On the table with the heart open… You can’t get off of the table, can’t sneak away. You have to let the process work itself out. This internal alchemy is a big transformation process. It can’t be done overnight, but must be felt and digested and ripened over time.
I remember when I came home from Japan for a couple of weeks after being there for two years, the Roshi looked at me and said, “Be careful”. I was in the middle of a process, and it was a very delicate time. And I of course was a mess in many of my interactions when I went home.
But this process does normalize and unify and it is so worth it to go through it! You’ll have so much to offer when you have been through it.
Everyone does this differently, has their own process, and I think you all are heroes who have the karma to look at it and honestly face it.
And just to say, breakthrough will not be separate from feeling good and real and useful. Somehow, many of us compartmentalize them for a while, but they are not separate. As our process deepens, it will be as if everything begins to drive us toward this truth, like an arrow in flight. Truly touching this process, giving yourself to it completely, it will naturally bring about this greater transformation as a matter of course.
Zen Embodiment 
And once more a desideratum. Thank you for reminding us again and again. It is so easy to forget and just judge yourself for being too soft or weak or anyways somehow „wrong“.
To my big surprise meeting Zen is much, much more about my heart as I thought. Actually I thought it has nothing to do with it, when I started six years ago. How ignorant and naiv. I was completely caught up by the opposite idea, that it is possible to even cut emotions more off than I did already. Very energetic, Rinzai style, I wanted to use Manju’s sword and get rid of everything. Funny.
Instead actually very soon the heart took over and as you know I had very painful burning heart months in Sogenji. Constantly, many, many months and actually up to the point where I thought I harm my physical heart. Your help was so needed and it worked. Alone your acknowledgment and your own experiences helped me so much to get out of the very hard, not empathetic judgment of being too soft, or always upset or dramatic. And I am absolutely sure that a progress in the Sanzen room one day came through that. Through this relaxation, through letting go of the idea of doing everything wrong or even worse being wrong, but accepting a process which happens naturally. Nothing wrong. For me this process still seems to be the major work. But I learned to ride the wave. With all ups and downs. And I can perceive more and more the cathartic work which gets done and receive it as a grace and with humbleness – all pain included.
Thanks Core.
… all said already in an email, but I have to add something: the illustration is wonderful! I can happily say that I come closer and closer to this stadium, where you allow it to happen. At the beginning my body bend in the opposite direction, still trying to protect what actually wants to be released. Thanks Corey, keep us going, please.
Thanks Seitai! Please keep me posted!