Photo: Yotam Arad-Adar

Tension

Chronic tension in the body/mind becomes an anchor – a reference point – about and around which we construct ourselves. This is why when such tension finally releases we feel lost – flailing in space – and must reinvent ourselves – refind ourselves.

The Religious Fallacy

That it is noble to suffer. This is such a difficult one to cleanse from the system because it is everywhere: our societies and cultures are built on it. Governments, religions and teachers control people with it. It tells us that we are not good enough and must constantly strive to be better. It encourages a completely wrong relationship to everything, especially time. In fact, in a way, it creates time. Without it future and past need not exist.

No time.
Like the present.

Robert Grenier

Perfection

I used to be of the opinion that “perfection” was a man-made conceptual ideal, rarely, if ever, attainable or realisable in practice. I now see that perfection is, in fact, the norm; it is imperfection that is man-made. We see what we are – we see ourselves – our mind – reflected everywhere. It is what we bring to the world, and what we imprint on the world. To make it perfect we just need to say Yes, and nothing else.

There is a beautiful phrase I heard somewhere: If I am afraid it is because I see something that isn't there.

Abandonment of a phenomenal centre constitutes the only 'practice', and such abandonment is not an act volitionally performed by the identified subject, but a non-action (wu wei) leaving the noumenal centre in control of phenomenal activity, and free from fictitious interference by an imaginary 'self.'

Wei Wu Wei, aka Terence Gray

the meaning is not behind the words but in the words as they unfold, and refold, in the ear

Charles Bernstein on Louis Zukofsky

Central Equilibrium

If you want discipline then try disciplining yourself to be happy.

Photo: Leah Lev, China

Ego

The ego is a most formidable enemy (the most formidable), and the only weapon at our disposal up for the fight is our spirit. Tai Chi should be (but rarely is) a way of honing the spirit and directing it to this end.

The mind, as such, is totally unreliable. It is a cowardly opportunist, siding with whomever it sees to be winning the battle, and dousing the fire with its wetness. The mind's surety is a sure sign that the battle has abated, for a time.

Teaching

The teacher's job is to open his heart and truly see the student. This is an act of compassion – an unconditional act – and as such has absolutely nothing to do with setting himself up as a standard by which to be measured. It is just essence touching essence. Then instruction becomes a natural response to that seeing, because when we see we see potential – we see the student free of constraint and inhibition. The last thing we see is problems or negativity of any sort. In the realm of seeing – the realm of pure spirit – there are no problems and therefore no solutions. There is only being.

Photo: Siany Moore, Australia

An ever-opening heart is the natural consequence of a healthy spine.

To be a self is simply to be something in the world and yet yearning for it.

Lyn Hejinian

Daring the new is why we said yes to each other. But can we reach each other? Can we try and get close? Conflicts, fear, needs and hopes can be walls that we have to face. However, in between two people, there's a third, the space in between the two, and it is in the search for the third that we discover who we really are. If the Greeks had 14 words to describe different ways of loving, how many do we experience?

Juliette Binoche and Akram Khan

This from Arielle yesterday.

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we would die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.

George Eliot

Thanks to David Guymer for sending this.

Joy & happiness are my light
Joy & happiness fill my life.

When we talk of energy it is not the energy of work or effort (rearranging things), but the energy of awareness (enlightening or illuminating things). In fact energy is awareness – it reveals the truth.

Work

Inside us are two creatures. One, our essential nature, which is also our essential goodness, can only say yes, and therefore this yes is unconditional. The other, our ego, which struggles to dominate our essence, either says no or a conditional yes (yes but or yes if). The work, the only real work, is to relax sufficient to let the unconditional yes start winning and then keep winning. To begin with yes appears as faint glimmers – small transient islands poking through the morass of self – but gradually it becomes clear that the morass itself floats on an ocean and these islands come from this ocean – an ocean of essence. When we see this for ourselves we can let the morass begin to break up and dissolve into the ocean. Then it is just a matter of time.

A stillness encompassing movement.
With enormous beauty still to answer to.

Blackness seeps through the closed door, douses the lamp.
It is a longing for the same world, and a different world.

John Riley

Relaxation is trust.

A road through the pines
and the blue-green mist.

at the root there is no me

Love is sharing