Adventurer vs. follower

Adventurer?

A truly spiritual person is an adventuer who sets out to find out about the ultimate reality; a religious person, on the contary, is a mere follower of a set of dogma and believes. The two do not bear any similarity at all. The spiritual adventurer must be fearless for 'truth is a pathless land' (J. Krishnamirti). ''He must have the attitude of the explorer: the urge to discover new worlds and new dimensions within; the desire to explore inner space; the perseverance to succeed in his quest.''(Peter Rendel 'Introduction to The Chakras') My Tai Chi teacher, Li Lian, often quotes his late teacher, great grandmaster Wu Tu Nan in saying, 'to truly master the art of Tai Chi, one must have perseverance, courage and will surpassing the average'.
Institutionalized religions, on the other hand, demand  faith, obedience and conformity from their followers like a herd of sheep. They don't encourge exploration, enquiry and expansion. They create division, conflict and fear among people. How can anyone who is full of predudice, judgement, hatred and fear be spritual and adventurous?
Expansion of human consciousness is only possible if space is created within the individual; and space can be created only when the mind is allowed to take a break from the daily busy thinking patterns. In the practice of Tai Chi, such 'spaciousness' which is often misinterpreted by some as 'emptiness' or 'void' is facilitated through stationary Kung exercises the most basic one of which is the standing pole posture. In this posture, one must keep the body relaxed yet fully centred and firm;  the mind quiet yet watchfull. There is attention rather then concentration. I used the word 'attention' because it implies 'inclusion' rather than 'exclusion', 'totality' rather than 'fragmentation' as suggested by 'concentration'. When the posture is maintained for long enough with such a state of mind, one will start to sense the movements of his Chi, the vital force within. All he needs to do is to observe the arising and subsiding of Chi within with aloofness, 'neither forgetting, nor forcing it'.

or follower?

In fact, a large part of Tai Chi practice (I'm talking about authentic Tai Chi, not western-style Tai Chi) constitutes these stationary Kung exercises, which are very time-consuming, very challenging, and often very painful to perform at the beginning. It's an adventure that takes place within rather than without. With perseverance, one will experience an expnansion within both his consciousness and his physical body as each cell of the body gets saturated with Chi flow. The body feels lighter, firmer, more resilient, more vibrant. The difference between the bodies of those who have cultivated their Chi and those who haven't is like a car with good strong tyres pumped full of the right amount of air and a car with flat tyres that are nackard worn out. How can you expect the latter to drive well even if it's a posh BMW convertable?
Tai Chi is a road for an explorer to tread on, not a set form of exercises for learners to follow and emulate.
The teacher is there to point the adventurer in the right direction, not to carry the follower along the way.