Yes, like a fountain, precious Jesus,
Make me and let me be;
Keep me and use me daily, Jesus,
For Thee, for only Thee.

Relationship

Relationship is about having the heart to transform with giving. Then giving is always forgiving, and forgiving is giving. In such moments the heart confounds the calculating mind and we touch perfection. What stops this is misuse of ourselves. By that I mean allowing our spirit to drop, for whatever reason. In a sense the only sin is lack of spirit, because then we can only take.

Humility

Anything we have developed to help us survive, including qualities such as strength, sensitivity, intelligence, charisma, need to be looked into and eventually dissolved away. Not because these qualities are bad – they are not – but because they are part of our habitual framework – our conditioning – and as such they hinder natural functioning – honest immediacy – and they hinder spiritual growth. Survival is all about putting oneself first – competing in order to prevail, whereas spiritual work is about putting the other first in order to dissolve the self in the heat of the moment.

With both eyes open
and the hands always empty
Moving about beneath the treasure of the sky
And over the treasure of the earth
Weightless and amazed
And drunk inside the rain.

Greg Hall

The struggle is not to struggle.

Peel from your back the scab of worry.

The spiritual master is always a threat to the state and always undermines social order.

Our worst fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

Marianne Williamson

Awareness abnegates the need to control.

You can't do what you don't know if you keep doing what you do know. To know when we are wrong is all that we shall ever know.

F M Alexander

It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and myths that surround it.

John Pilger

As profound a spiritual statement as any I have heard.

Happiness is connectedness.

Habit

Habit is when patterns set up in the mind force a result on the body. These patterns, though mental, are felt as sheaths of restriction in the body, and they reassure us because they limit our possibilities: at least until we have the maturity to yearn for freedom.

When the philosopher realises that working it out in words is not only an impossibility but a waste of golden time, then his mind quietens, turns in on itself and he becomes a meditator.

Whatever it is, get it off your chest.

The Other

When we work on our own we tend to work within a narrow range – the range of our own experience and our own comfort, and consequently that work tinkers and consolidates. When we work with another person we are immediately taken out of our range – the other extends it, expands it, deepens it and even ruptures it. And they will do so no matter their level. The onus is on us to open and not to judge. Such work is as necessary as breathing, without it we just wont grow.

Spine

The spine receives a thorough battering throughout the day. Gravity drags it downwards and our legs force it upwards causing compression whilst we stand and move around. Add to that excess lordosis in the lumbar spine due to tension in the hips, excess kyphosis in the thoracic spine from the slouch of depression, and then scoliosis due to asymmetry in the body or the stupidity of carrying a bag around most of the day, and we have the average spine: twisted, contorted, compressed, stiff and unyielding – unable to transmit a flow of energy – only capable of forceful gesture.

Don't think twice, it's alright.

Awareness seeps through space and time.

The miracle of the other.

Ligament

When the muscles around a joint relax and the joint opens then the ligaments holding the bones together become stretched, imparting an elastic contracting energy to the structure. This is natural healthy tension, responsible for keeping us together in the absence of neurotic muscular tension. When the muscles relax then the thinking mind relaxes, and when the joints open so too the mind, and when the ligaments stretch and impart their elastic energy the mind too becomes elastic and buoyant (hence hatha yoga). Relaxing, opening, stretching, contracting, are all energies that can permeate and flow through our structure and our relationships: our being. In fact any action has an energy if it is entered into and incorporated: brought into the body.

"The emphasis is on the flow of energy and on an awareness of one's own body and that of one's partner rather than on producing body lines and shapes."

A warrior is charged with bringing a halt to all contention and strife.

Morehei Ueshiba

One of the fundamental principles of Tai Chi is that correct posture is as much a matter of righting one's relationships as it is in aligning one's body. Or, to put it another way, when I have my hands on another person I am bigger and better than otherwise.

Posture

Correct posture doesn't come from sinking within oneself, it comes from being poised with generosity; and from having the presence of mind to give equally to all points of connexion: if my energy reaches out through hand and heart then also the foot. This requires real body awareness: an intimacy with one's anatomy, and a willingness to be free of tension – free of accumulated energy. A willingness to be defenceless in the face of life.

real—realized—poetry is not about its author, who is always unknown, but about the reader’s connection with the unknown author, whose branches / flung wide in welcome / to a friend you have known / for millions of years

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In a roomful of shouting people, the one who whispers becomes interesting.

Peter Schmidt

Ego

The only reason I need an ego – an imaginary existence – is because I have lost my true sense of who and what and why I am. This loss, which is really a loss of centre and therefore a loss of true perspective, means that I have also lost my ability to receive the world and to give to that world. This loss, which is tragic and catastrophic, is necessary for social control, and everything we do and think assumes that this lost centre does not exist; in fact in the world our egos have constructed for us this lost centre cannot exist. And this is the ego's big mistake because every cell in my body yearns for that centre and cannot be properly still and present until they have it, and so the eternal human struggle for happiness and fulfilment.

Softness is the avenue to essence.

Strength is the ability to support.
Power is the ability to affect change.

Spine, Mind & Energy

One of the features of natural structure – fractal structure – is that parts mirror the whole, and mirror each other. So, my body maps onto each hand, each foot, the head, the spine, each limb, etc. One mapping that Tai Chi and much meditation makes use of is the spine onto the brain. The top of the spine corresponds to the front of the brain and the base of the spine – sacrum and coccyx – to the back of the brain. Heart – mid-spine – is mid-brain, the natural place of rest for a healthy (unneurotic) mind. So, “Heart and mind together” – that famous Tibetan instruction – means thinking has largely ceased, the mind rests mid-brain, and the feelings and awareness rest in the heart. Now in Tai Chi we work on the mind physically – through the body: we pull the mind away from thinking – front-brain – by working on the base of the spine – slowly awakening it with exercise and awareness, and sinking and extending it into the Earth through the supporting leg and heel. When this is achieved then the back-brain similarly awakens and connects to its true source of power – the unconscious, and in particular a mass of primal energy/awareness that resides largely behind us, but which is ours if we have the wit to claim it. Once the back-brain has started to waken then the front-brain can relax into its natural non-thinking capacity which is a divine one: a front-brain tempered and balanced by a weighty awareness in the back-brain stops thinking and opens into a pure vibrant light that sees deeply and affects deeply whatever it sees. The hands are then healing instruments rather than technological ones, and the head receives sensory input into a mind that swells and floods into those senses: the sensory channels become two-way, giving as much as they receive.

Correction

Let yourself receive constant correction. (Correction is an external righting pressure.) This requires us to actively and positively receive the world at all times, something we can only do if we diminish our own sense of independent (disconnected) existence. A moment not aware of the impinging presence of the outside world is a moment of disconnexion.

Spirit

The battle – the fray – is full of spirit but full of lots of other things too: energy, chaos, terror, life, death. But in the midst of the battle there exists a quiet vantage point – the eye of the storm – which is pure spirit and to which the true warrior's spirit is naturally drawn. From this timeless place he coolly watches the ensuing madness, including his own impassioned involvement, and if need be even his own death. Here, because timeless, life and death have no consequence.