"INFINITE AESTHETIC POWERS OF THE CREATOR"

 On skills and ”meta-skills“ in Jin Shin Jyutsu

I don‘t recall when I first heard or read the words that preface both of Mary Burmeister’s Text Books, in the unnumbered pages in Text 1 and on page 1 in Text 2. On them, Mary says of Jin Shin Jyutsu : ”It is not application of technique; it is demonstration of art, simply Being the channel through which flow infinite aesthetic powers of the Creator.“ I do know it was after our initial encounter; I was already ”drunk“, and so the words made sense to the very fiber of my being. Being in class with Mary, I knew at core that what I was experiencing was ”demonstration of art.“ No ”application of technique“ would have retained my attention for even half a day, but the five I got to spend in her presence left me longing to return to that feeling again and again. 

Of course, no genuine experience can ever be repeated. It is unique, complete unto itself. And yet, the ”something“ that makes it so alive is unchanging in essence, never different. That is because the part of me that recognizes it is also unchanging in essence and never different.

To me, Mary‘s presence flowed with an aliveness that introduced an ease between the words that far transcended the content they conveyed. It was through this ease that the matter at hand came alive. Such flow and presence are the hallmark of a person speaking quite directly from inner experience. Mary hints at the same sort of recognition when she describes the effect of attending her first lecture with Jiro Murai (Self-Help Book I, p.2) : ”My ’search‘ ended and an art of LIVING opened up for me.“ 

Most often, a person who just flows with awareness considers her flowing just natural. To her, it is nothing special, just a part of the human makeup. If such a person has students, she will generally tell them very little about what makes her who she is - she herself usually does not know. So the students are left to find out for themselves - or to forgo reaching that depth. The message seems to be ”do as I do and you will obtain the results I get.“ Yet when we try that and rely just on the doing, we are in for a surprise.

On the part of the teacher, the message seems logical. After all, isn‘t aliveness that flows between the words the source of everyone‘s aliveness? Period! In a sense this is quite true. The awareness that speaks with such flow and the awareness that recognizes it are the same. They are not separate, and neither is located in the mind. But how do we get such awareness to be present in our doing?

Awareness is not lodged in the confines of the words that are spoken, but rather the words flow playfully from the awareness. Our awareness, part of our ”spiritual inheritance“, recognizes it spontaneously, and such recognition is at once magical and a gift of great depth. Something about it is profoundly familiar and natural, it is simply a part of us, and yet it is not something we can want or do. What is it, then, that does the recognizing? 

The mind which packs the experience in words after the fact isn‘t capable of that. It reflects the experience and tries to explain it, but the words themselves do not contain what has happened. When all that is left are words, some concept, an illustration of the experience, something has disappeared, and the aliveness of that which is between the words is gone. The mind is still there, but Spirit has ”skipped town“.

Spirit, awareness, perception is our 13: beyond words, before words and between them. The words that remain, the concepts and descriptions that are filtered out by the mind are our 14. They at least serve the purpose of graving an image of what has been formlessly experienced, of densifying Experience into MY experience, of constructing ”me“ from it and thus creating at least the possibility of attempting to compare it with other experiences.

This has its place and meaning in the world where I meet fellow human beings. When it is all that remains, however, when it is to be generalized and a rule derived from it, the ”great dying“ has begun; The doing is still the same but the results are not! What animates and enlivens the experience has gone. There is no living meaning left to sentences like those we have read above. Yet without them, without their deep meaning which our inner being can comprehend but words cannot explain, only method remains, not art.

As in the novel Animal Farm where the sentence ”All animals are equal“ is one day amended ”but some animals are more equal than others“, the mind suddenly ”improves“ a key sentence like the one that says there are no rules and regulations in ”Creator‘s Art through aware and understanding Human Being“, adding : ”as long as you stick to the rules.“

It is true: Mary declares that our progress with Jin Shin Jyutsu depends on ”complying with the established procedures of the art“, but something MORE is needed. She adds: ”and unencumbered communion with the Creator.“

The mind can stay faithful to the established methods of the art, and it is well advised to do so. But ”unencumbered communion with the Creator“ is not of its domain! The mind can learn to structure the application of the art - breathe life into it, it cannot. Nor is that its job. It deals with acquiring the skills of Jin Shin Jyutsu, which have their obvious place as long as they serve the art. It deals with everything that you can ”load onto your hard drive“, so to speak: information, and even new software. For this, you can actually ”do something“. 

However, that which changes the aliveness of learning itself is 13‘s business. We can refer to this as the meta-skills of Jin Shin Jyutsu - skills of a higher and more subtle order that frame other skills and allow us to acquire them. But careful, this, too, is a concept, and all concepts are our 14‘s affair. The mind, the ego, will jump in at once if it realizes that there is ”yet another level“, and will try to ”do something“ about this as well, to engineer it in some way, and to get a handle on it.

The meta-skills of Jin Shin Jyutsu, however, depend upon the entire system‘s willingness to itself be changed. The ”central processing unit“ itself undergoes a transformation. There can be no control over this, at best a willingness, a disposition. There is no ”button“ for unencumbered communion with the Creator. It happens when it does, and we give in to it happening. Or we get bogged down in the mind. If we do, we will need ever more things to hold on to, which could be ever more technique, or ever more esoteric information which is just another affair of the mind‘s, or ever more of any variety of other things.

In the process of surrender to inner growth the Heart is both the Seeker and the Finder, at once that which embarks upon a journey and that which has eternally arrived. If ”that Japanese method“ is to grow through us into ”Creator‘s art through aware and understanding Human Being“ we simply have no choice but to open up to the presence of the very thing within ourselves that once touched us in Mary, or some other ”vessel of great aliveness“. It is our inheritance after all. For it to be authentic, each will have to unfold it in their own way while also staying firmly grounded. How that can take place exactly is not within our control, but our total being is called upon in the process!