While playing, bring attention to the hands and how they follow the ball when the opponent hits it. Eye-hand coordination is an amazing thing. The hands ‘see’ the ball and your legs get the message from the hands and move into place; ‘you’ are not in the picture. “You’ do not have to do a thing, ‘you’ are not involved. Players think they have to calculate so much to bring racket to ball and yet this is a process undergone by the being and the ego, or conscious mind, need not be involved.
Play around with this and take yourself out of the process of ‘finding the ball’ and see what happens. Is it an automatic process or do ‘you’ have to be involved? Explore, experiment and find out for yourself.
The doubt that arises at times around contact or the swing in general suggests that you feel you have to make decisions or have an understanding about the swing that you cannot possibly have. When does the racket have to start going back? When do we bring it forward? How close do we need to be to the ball at contact? Where is contact? These and others, are questions the ego cannot possibly know. When this recognition of not knowing happens, obviously doubt arises. How can it not?
Instead, if we can stay alert through this automatic process that happens through no effort of our own, how can there be doubt? We don’t know and we know we don’t know and now we understand that we do not need to know. We also KNOW that the ball and racket will come together and we can just chill and watch this incredible process happen over and over again…………until we feel the need to get involved and ‘help’ the process, at which point, things will break down!
How long can you stay out of it?