Even Steven?

We go our separate ways, then find ourselves, with age, coming together, at heart, at least.

This work is necessary purgatory – the time it takes to unburden a heavy heart.

A lifting heart is Heaven on Earth – the veritable Kingdom of God.

It is all meant to be, so stop worrying it to death.

Behind each mental formation is the faint echo of a primal cry from the wilderness – a plaintive Woe Is Me – a backdrop of depression. If you listen hard enough you'll catch it. It is the cost of a life lived in and from the head: victimhood and slavery to a set of values that invert those of the heart, largely out of spite and self-loathing.

I contain a heart and that heart contains me.

Meditation is a time to simply sit, allow the mind to recede, and let the heart do what it aches to do: pour joy and love into the world. This is, at its deepest, the heart's desire, and so, on one level, meditation is instant gratification.

I earn a humble keep by raising spirit and healing soul. And the longer I keep at it the more I feel heart – the reality of heart – the life of heart – to be all.

Heart is, rightly, irrepressible.

"Dad, for my birthday can you send me thirty quid for a gram of Mandy so me and my mates can get off our heads?" When I was her age it was a Party Seven of Watney Red Barrel, so it's reassuring to know that some things are improving.

"Awareness of God starts where self-sufficiency ends."

A while ago a Buddhist friend of mine visited with his 3 year old son. At one point he denied the boy a request and the brat threw a spectacular tantrum. My friend looked to me with compassionate but passionless eyes and said: "It's terrible isn't it – they start suffering so young." I strongly objected pointing out that the boy was not suffering at all but simply letting out energy – expressing himself. My friend didn't really listen because he was already reasoning with the child – trying to teach him the awful habit of overruling heart with head. The child listened and his temper subsided. "Now he's suffering," I said.

When heart takes pride of place – centre – it generates a steady stream of joy, irrespective of feeling. Joy is an energy, an effusion, a giving, whereas happiness is a feeling, a condition, a taking.

Reappraise the principles, regularly.

"The trouble with most therapy is that it helps you feel better. But you don't get better. You have to back it up with action, action, action."