31 December 2010

Forgiveness frees me from the past, whilst grace allows me into the future. The present is where forgiveness and grace become one.

30 December 2010

Most importantly mind. State of mind. A mind in control of only itself. Because reality is made in my engaging with it, and this engagement is where my mind is – this is my mind. The mind is never of itself or in itself, it is always spilling into the world, and what spills back is mind but not my mind. If I create reality – if I have the desire – then there is immense intelligence in that creation, not mine but that of me with the other.

28 December 2010

27 December 2010

You know, verse
is a lovely thing.

It issues,
like the vapors,

from the rock

Charles Olson
Root is a point of return
To affirm is to unburden: not to load life with the weight of higher values, but to create new values which are those of life, which make life light and active.

Gilles Deleuze

26 December 2010

25 December 2010

At heart each of us is singular – unique – never a statistic – unaveragable. Essence is that singularity. But we are also bound into a process of becoming, which isn't simply a slow revelation of who we are but, hopefully, a subtle transformation of that essence. Connexion makes this possible. Real togetherness touches and thereby changes essence. Connexion is the possibility of change.

24 December 2010

To say we each have ‘a life’ and to say that we each have an unconscious thus amounts to the same thing.

John Rajchman
The heart is properly nothing, but only when its foundation – the belly beneath it – is something. The belly's confidence allows the heart to hover and receive – touch everything.
this vitality at the heart of things
live as a complex one

23 December 2010

We castigate ourselves with a transcendent that we can never achieve and whose only function is to reinforce that very castigation.

Todd May
When the heart is clear and empty it allows free passage and fills with warmth.
Go deeper. Otherwise it's all lip service.

21 December 2010

Root is a point of departure

20 December 2010

Softness dissolves boundaries. In particular those between me and the world, and between me and my future. A way forward – the possibility of forward.

19 December 2010

Faith seeking understanding

Anselm of Canterbury

18 December 2010

As soon as I dwell in something – a body, a home, an organization, a belief – my being congeals and I begin to lose heart.

17 December 2010

Metaphor instigates metamorphosis – becoming. This is why the imagery we use – the vocabulary – is all important. It is our way of going beyond meaning.
To have gravity strongly without being heavy. For this I need to let gravity flow through me rather than pull me down. This is the first stage of Tai Chi – to relax sufficiently to allow energy to flow unimpeded through the body and mind.

16 December 2010

15 December 2010

The spirit of experimentation
It's not what I do that is important, but the spirit in which I do it.

14 December 2010

Root systems remember the soil
from which they were removed.

Whit Griffin
The pondering reflective mind tends to fall and settle into holes where it quickly chokes on its own energy. A healthy mind roves and swarms over surfaces. In fact for a healthy mind there is only surface, endlessly convoluted and extensive. The first surface is my own body, and all other surfaces are extensions and reflexions of my body's surface. Even the inside of my body is surface – lung and gut – breathing interfaces – where I meet and confront the world beyond – also of surfaces. Yielding is the act of becoming one surface. Only then can I open essence to essence with what it is I touch.
Softness is not just a quality or a principle, it is the key to opening what we call the world of energy. This world is not just a world of which energy is a part – all worlds are such – it is a world in which only energy exists. For example, that red shirt left bedraggled across the chair possesses the energy of red, the energy of cotton, the energy of weaving, the energy of the water, detergent and machine that washed it, the energy of the sunlight and warm air that dried it, the energy of me and my moods that since wore it and flung it, the energy of the shape it now finds itself in, the energy of the friend who wore it before me and gave it to me, the energy of his generosity, the energy of whom he has become in the meantime, and the energy of that becoming, etc. etc. All these energies reside on the object – as though clinging to its surface – or the surface of its fibres. When all are stripped away, assuming such a thing is possible – when I remove its vocabulary – everything that can be said about it – then I have its essence – its singular energy. Of course it is not possible to prove that essence exists because there is no way of stripping an entity of everything it has. But my softness – my total immersion in energy and so my refusal to countenance force or will – provides a surface upon which essence shimmers and reveals itself. Softness befriends.

13 December 2010

the path strewn with a storm's detritus
Sensitivity tempered by principle : principle freed by sensitivity.

12 December 2010

The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass.

Simone Weil
Detachment sustains connexion : cool sustains warmth.

11 December 2010

real & alive
life has
to turn
Without practice – the will to practice – the desire to practice – none of it is real.
Becoming is the path through a plethora of possibility. The path rather than a path because really I have no choice. What makes life difficult – unclear and diminished – is resisting becoming: the path is the same but wet and muddied. How the path is underfoot – firm or treacherous – depends upon my faith.
haunt the fringes

10 December 2010

Practice: repetition with a difference
Friends comfort me in being who I am.
A teacher stimulates me to become something else.
Comrades comfort me in that becoming.

09 December 2010

the limit and the infinite clasped together in an embrace from which things will come

Deleuze & Guattari
Destiny is not a call to act but a call to become

08 December 2010

Spirit and heart are the agents of becoming

07 December 2010

The heavens project onto body and mind as spirals.

06 December 2010

Relaxation, if I get it right, settles me deeper – closer if not into the bone. The emotion associated with this still core is a cool granitic detachment. From here my attention registers and my intention caresses the world. I am the centre of each thread of intent – the more I intend outward the deeper my root, necessarily.
a change of heart
Spirit & solitude

05 December 2010

Magical transformations of the world
Depth of feeling
Hardness is a mind already made

04 December 2010

Motions & aspects
The will to a system is a lack of integrity.

Friedrich Nietzsche

03 December 2010

School tells us things that have already been said, whereas real education releases the passion to makes things anew.

02 December 2010

Love is the excuse we give ourselves for doing something crazy: throwing ourselves into the arms of destiny.

01 December 2010

Destiny is a force compelling me to expose sensitivities out of kilter with those around me. These sensitivities define me in my singular essence – something facts can never do.