Always aware of the medium we breathe and move through, the forces that operate (especially gravity) and the passage of time. This is humility, or what The Cloud of Unknowing calls imperfect meekness, imperfect only because it is not the be all and end all. Perfect meekness is the spark and dance of spirit within this mindful continuum which your bountiful compassion triggers and stimulates. Humility only comes with subduing the Adamic ego – heroically tackling original sin.

stifled by the anxieties, wealth and gaieties of time

From thought to energy, from front to back, from knowing to unknowing, from head to heart.

"Self-knowledge is the only way to get and keep the virtue of humility."

Thought thwarts heart.

freedom from over-identification

Every aspect of being, informed and regulated by the softness of touch.

"Basically, humility is seeing yourself as you really are. It's that simple."

(Literally: Meekness in itself is nothing but a true knowing and feeling of a man's self as he is.)

So why God, or some such? Because without you eventually reach an ontological or existential impasse – a labyrinth – an impenetrable mist. We all need a Rule, an Ordo Virtutum, a Catechism of sorts to get us through. Only one in a million can go it alone.

Disillusioned, not with life but with self. For the dullard there is little difference since life is always experienced and mediated through the self. Our work is to distinguish life from self, a task that can only be approached through faith and therefore heart.

Softness – the real softness of a tender touch – is the quality that should resonate through all actions and whole being.

"Creation is not an event in the past, but a relationship in the present." This is the allegorical nature of scripture – not really about past events at all (who cares?) but about what's happening now in your soul and psyche.

Woke up this morning with a phrase in my head: "Irrevocably touched by the absolute reciprocity of touch." As I lay and mulled it over I remembered the first time I encountered that beautiful word 'reciprocity.' It was in a poem by Wilfred Owen which ends with the phrase – The eternal reciprocity of tears – tears being a sensitive response, the only response, to touch, to being touched.

Everything we do, of any spiritual worth, trees do so much better. They don't have freedom of choice muddying the issue.

Belief is a natural state – a natural process – and the work is not so much to believe as to suspend disbelief – to soften the cynicism of self. Otherwise we focus too much on articles of faith, dogma, creed, and miss the trusting love at/of the heart.

How to live a life such that that living constitutes a continuous and gentle process of worship, without recourse to God or self?

"He would always go off to some place where he could be alone and pray."