The struggle for words

By Simone Claridge · True Better You

Something happened in our Thursday Mingjue Deepening Practice Class the beginning of August that we've never done before.

One of our own stood up and read us a poem. Not a lesson. Not a technique to learn. Just her own words, marking five years since a diagnosis she was once given a number for.

Peggy has been part of this community's practice for a while. Five years ago she received a diagnosis, and with it, a prognosis — a timeline, a number, someone else's idea of how much time she had left. This week, she read us what she wrote about that anniversary.

With her generous permission, I want to share it here too.

The Struggle for Words

If you had asked me five years ago

on the day the diagnosis landed

like an atomic bomb

or an alien invasion,

when all I could feel was death

and devastation

and fear...

Wait—I had hoped to write something

important here,

but all I'm laying down are cliches.

I wanted to tell you about the journey

of the last five years, but

all I can find are trite phrases—

like death and resurrection,

like drowning and finding a raft,

like darkness and then sudden sunshine.

I want to tell you about gratitude

and love from unexpected places

and pleasures I didn't pay attention to

before. And joy. Much joy!

But my words seem banal and

almost insulting to the reality.

But I digress.

My grandmother used to say,

"Don't wish your time away

because one day you will want it back."

But she was wrong.

I don't want the last five years back.

I just want to let you know,

if you could have seen me five years ago

waiting on the other side of that door,

I'd tell you I had no language for it.

It is indescribable.

It deserves so much more

than this poor poem.

If I had the choice, would I go

through it again?

And I would answer yes,

but only if I could write better poetry.

Here is what I noticed, listening to it land in the room.

She reached for the phrases we're all given — death and resurrection, drowning and finding a raft, darkness then sudden sunshine — and one by one, she caught herself. These are clichés (thought forms), she said. That is the reference framework meeting something real, and not surviving contact with it.

Even her grandmother's saying — don't wish your time away, you'll want it back — she held it up against her own life, and it didn't fit. She wasn't rejecting her grandmother. She was being honest about what she actually lived.

And right where the words feel most banal to her, she writes: And joy. Much joy! She isn't performing a resolved feeling for us. She's pointing at something the sentence can't hold. The word almost disappears in front of you. What's left is what it was pointing at.

Teacher Wei has a teaching about this: a word is just a tool. It points. When I say a phrase in class — Mingjue is clear — the phrase isn't the state. It points toward the state. And once you've arrived at what it was pointing to, the word can disappear. It's done its job.

We carry a lot of other words too, not just teaching words. Phrases we were handed by family, by culture — stories about what a hard year is supposed to look like, what strength is supposed to sound like. Grandmaster Pang Ming calls this our reference framework and Teacher Wei reminds us often about it: The reference frame isn't us. It's just information we were given, and sometimes it fits what we actually feel, and sometimes it doesn't fit at all.

Teacher Wei said Mingjue is the master key, because you come to your true self and wake up to who you are — you come to who you are — and then you don't create problems, and you don't attach to problems. Peggy isn't resolving five years into a tidy lesson. She's letting it stay open. Indescribable. And true anyway. That's the whole poem, doing exactly what it came to do.

There's a formless "shape" underneath what Peggy is pointing at, even where the words give out. Most of us picture real change as an accumulation of forms — one practice added onto the last, one technique stacked on the one before, each new piece of information hoping to finally be the one that reaches us. More layered on top of more, the way sediment settles over a spring, until what was always clear underneath gets buried under everything we kept adding.

That's not the shape of what happened to Peggy. It's not the shape Mingjue points toward, either. The shift was never another form — not even another thought, another piece of information — added on. When we are in the center itself — movement happens from there.

Cynthia Li comes to my mind — much of her writing lives on Teacher Wei's TWCC community that ours has grown from. She's also a physician who has written about her own two health crises.For a long time she met hers the way her training had taught her to — analyzing, managing, adding one more approach to the pile. It was only when she stopped trying to think her way through, and let herself rest fully into stillness, that things began to shift for her in a way she describes as almost "floating through it," rather than fighting for it.

That's the same reality Peggy's poem keeps spiralling toward — each pass a little closer, never quite landing: a fullness so complete it doesn't need a sentence. Stillness isn't empty. It's who we already are, underneath every story — no time, no space, just the fullness of emptiness. We arrive there simply by focusing — natural, relaxed — recognizing that we are always changing, always evolving forms within evolving fields, and by letting go, not attaching to whatever moves through. What's left is the non-moving center, watching everything else move. That's why the reference framework can't hold it. That's why the clichés fall away right where something real begins.

With her blessing, her poem is now also a song.

→ Listen: The Struggle for Words  

Words and story: Peggy Hatley. Music: Simone Claridge, True Better You.

If you are living inside your own hard timeline — clinical or otherwise — we hope this finds you.

This is the direction I want this community to keep growing in. Not a room where I speak and you listen. A living exchange, where every path gets to be honored for what it actually is. So — to everyone here — feel free to share whatever your open heart wants to offer: your process, your struggles and your wins, your recognitions, your creativity. Leave a comment, write to me directly, or bring it to a session. Let this community be a source of bubbling joy and gratitude, overflowing through your reflections.

Peggy — thank you for trusting us with what doesn't resolve.

We gather every morning to chant N together. 8–9AM EST. The door is open.

→ Join the Daily N-Tone Session

With Mingjue love and warmth,
Simone

With so much gratitude to Peggy, for her honesty, her trust, and her generous permission to share her words.

Sources:
Sources: Mingjue teaching on words as pointers and the reference framework — Teacher Wei Qifeng, Thursday Mingjue Deepening, July 30, 2026. Hunyuan Entirety Theory — Dr. Pang Ming. Peggy Hatley, "The Struggle for Words," 2026. Cynthia Li, in conversation with Michael Lerner, ServiceSpace Awakin Call, July 18, 2026.