Learning is never what one expects.

It is said that all encounters in this world are a kind of reunion.

Taint the world with your own stench as little as possible.

Everything new in our lives must be repeated to the point of exhaustion before we open ourselves to it.

Develop a taste for invisibility.

Body in accord with mind
Mind with energy
Energy with spirit
Spirit with Nothing

The only way to become free (of something) is to yield (to it).

Some thrive in light, others in shadows.

We strive for balance not for its stability but for its plethora of possibilities.

For me, this low grade anxiety that haunts us all is the product of living lives without real spirit – without the presence and the very real possibility of death. And not just our own death but the death and the suffering of those we fail to live up to or take responsibility for. Every culture and every soul is haunted by the injustices they have both suffered and perpetrated, more now than ever before (because there is more injustice in the world today), and yet we have forgotten how to appease the dead either with prayer or respect – we have no notion of allowing ourselves to house the souls of those we destroy or love – we have forgotten how to truly promise – that truth is neither statement nor sentiment but a promise kept.

The student must be acutely aware, when approaching the teaching and using the principles, of the difference between the “letter of the law” and the “spirit of the law” – between the spoken or written words that couch the teaching and the true spirit that those words inevitably fail to convey. The struggle for the student is always to go beyond technique – beyond partitioning and utility – and into the soul of the work. Again this is only achieved through love.

Yielding essentially means bearing gifts – when you yield to the other you give them exactly what they want. However, you then make use of the strings inevitably attached to every gift.

We live lives dominated by the percussive impact of our heels upon the ground. This aggression then becomes bound up with our stubbornness – our hard-heartedness – our refusal to listen to energy – and even though civilized and mild-mannered (spiritless) we become essentially angry and violent creatures, albeit with an anger directed largely at our own destinies – our own source. Each time the heel strikes the ground with force the top of my leg effectively batters my sacrum and insults if not injures the tail, making the release of spirit a virtual impossibility.

The good student should endeavour to emulate the master by starting to yield before she gets out of bed in the morning.

an imperative to experiment

It also boils down to this: either I use my mind to design my future (planning and/or worrying), in which case I am effectively alone, or at least without grace, or I relax my mind and let my developing energy create my future, in which case I am with god, and whatever then unfolds (a relaxing into destiny) is meant to be. The first path leads to success or failure – either the future lives up to expectation or not. The second is simply an irreproachable life.

more a visionary insurrectionist than a hard-line ideologue