Truth always lurks one level deeper than you are at present. A breakthrough is required to reach it. A breakthrough into heightened awareness – a more intense awakeness. This requires hard work (that goes without saying) but more importantly grace. And such grace always comes from outside – it's like a beauty you never noticed before but now that you're more awake, shimmers everywhere. Like being in love.

growing up in bourgeois society is a process of transformation from a magical creature (a child) into a soulless automaton (a willing slave)

it's not repetition, it's discipline

I remember discussing the lamentable shortage of good students with my teacher. He suggested that my generation (those that grew up in the sixties and their aftermath) was the last to produce good students. Since Thatcherism (the selfish eighties) and then the Internet and smartphones (the Age of Distraction), depth, dedication and devotion have become the dirty D words. Apparently even the Carthusians now last on average only three years before the lure of the external draws them away from God.

grace pulling against gravity

you may be part of the same world as others but because of your intensity you operate in a very different reality

lambent movement

 

see beauty where others don't

if there's just one thing you could do that will help not only your taiji but also your energy and your personal happiness then let it be this: never lock your knees when standing

or at least investigate how locked knees make you self-centred, cut off from the earth, and oblivious to energy

we may learn tenderness, a fineness of concern

my dictionary defines the bourgeoisie as: the middle-class especially with reference to their materialistic values and conventional attitudes, so it stands to reason that we bourgeoisie are all, at least mildly, depressed

we have learnt to stand and move around mindlessly which has ruined our legs for anything with delicacy and finesse

depressed in the sense of unable to channel libido/spirit/heart into the quotidian

I have a student who is a swimming instructor specialising in kids who are terrified of the water. She told me that all she does is get them through their fear, and give them confidence in the water. Then learning to swim is natural and easy. I told her that's all I'm trying to do with her, only with spirit rather than water.

a form of erotic expression connecting sensory richness with primal desire

we suffer because we feel we are entitled to things we are not

letting go of everything that's not me