to create zones of freedom where existence can free itself from the diktats of the commodity

Given that we now reside on an overcrowded planet where the most valuable thing is no longer human life but the environment, it seems not only reasonable but essential that the land belong to those who will best look after it.

But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence... illusion only is sacred, truth profane.

Ludwig Feuerbach, 1843

So the day is nearly done: you've finished all the chores, walked the dog, put the baby to sleep and are ready to meditate before retiring to bed. You light the candle, arrange the cushion, turn off the lights and sit. Before you have time to get comfortable the baby wakes and starts to cry. You patiently attend her until she settles and then resume your sitting. Thoughts that then enter the mind should be attended to with the same loving care that your child received. No judgments, no harshness, just a simple vigilant patience. Meditation, for us mortal folk, is as much just letting the day settle inside you as it is entering that deep but elusive spiritual space.

A good posture isn't only good for she who keeps it. It is also beautiful – gives of good energy to the world simply by being.

We put so much store by partner work because the Other can always wrench (or seduce) us into a space far more nourishing (or interesting) than any of our own making. A move that can always be refused (or resisted), unfortunately.

Head suspended. This means that the muscles in the neck and shoulders are relaxed, and that the head is poised upon the spine – finely balanced. The head can then be adjusted using the muscles in the lower spine and belly (core) – action that brings nobility of bearing and a fiery spirit to the posture.

Beginners' mind – a mind open to any possibility – presupposes humility. Along with patience – the ability to wait and listen.

I wish to caress Time.

A healthy system always contains the seeds of its own destruction.

I would say that at least 95% of life is wasted on self.

Taiji is really very simple and easy. Yet we persist in making it complicated and difficult by saying No at every opportunity without even knowing it. What makes it take decades instead of months is our own stubborn refusal. We think we know best, yet we never do.

with too much certainty
head to toe
I stumble

poetry is the beginning to the primal of life

probity & troth

I never wanted color to be color. I never wanted texture to be texture, or images to become shapes. I wanted them all to fuse together into a living spirit.

Clyfford Still

Ego arises from the misunderstanding that I am a discrete solid object in a world of discrete solid objects. Solidity is the illusion of permanence, and discretion is the illusion of separateness. The work at hand is to become deeply aware of these two illusions working on all levels.

How to get the energy out clean and true – untainted by ego. This is the problem facing us all.

Unblenching

spontaneity constantly grazes risk

Finding out for yourself : what practice is all about : empowerment. There are so many things your teacher cannot tell you, and so many things they won't tell you because such telling would rob you of the power that comes from finding out for yourself.

A glimmer of nitrogen leaves my soul
I walk until my legs are gone
I sing until my throat
is dry and falls apart.
I look into the dark
until the pupils
are as wide as sockets.
Nitrogen leaves my soul,
and my brain
becomes a leaf in the October thrust.

Joseph Ceravolo

Abandonment is letting go of self-concerns. No safety net.

It's all really very simple : energy comes into me, I transform it, and it then leaves me. Three stages, all happening concurrently because life doesn't occur in batches but as a continuous process. The secret to entering this process whole-heartedly, without time off for self-congratulation, is abandonment, and the realisation that spirit doesn't get tired, but it does get bored, which seems like tiredness, but isn't really.

The cold "constringency" of habitus and doxa.

I have the privilege of being able to enter the spell.

Taking a hot shower is one of the most pleasurable events of the day. The warm water coursing over the skin washes away not just the grime of the day or the sleep of the night, but also cleanses the energy and the mind. The sensations are so strong that the distraction of thought is generally absent. This should be how we enter and experience gravity during taiji, the difference being that gravity streams through the body rather than over it.

A true life is one I have fully entered.

Meditation is relaxing into, and thereby becoming fully aware of, God's love.

Love is affirmation : affirming the essential goodness in the existence of the loved one. It is given to us all at birth (God said Good) and our only duty in life is to return it.

What is given up is vain action, and what remains is true activity.

to yield to one's wonderment requires a necessary precariousness

we have to establish rules and simultaneously fight against them

penetrate to the point of zero

Perfect concentration is possible only when you are not.

I cannot budge, but I have to move, so I turn.

Each chronic tension in the body represents the stable base or foundation for a construction – a self-image. These constructions layer upon each other and result in the complex ego we all possess – full of its own tensions and inconsistencies. When, through the taiji or whatever, we begin to dig into such an area to release it, the associated image becomes apparent and will gradually dismantle, though not without a struggle. This always takes time, so patience and perseverance are of the essence.

What one perceives and conceives depends primarily on one's energy and spirit.

A person is at their best when they are nothing.

He did not think, he perceived his mind functioning.

Heart is drawn, never pushed.

Listening precedes hearing. I listen and I may or may not hear something. Listening, in order to be an activity that takes me closer to the truth, must be active (moving) and transformative (willing to change). When I listen I don't simply open my auditory receptors and allow information to enter, I move towards the potential sound source and allow myself to be transformed by the energy of the sound source so that we are at least on the same wave length. Then and only then can hearing take place. My teacher would often say: Don't listen to my words, listen to the energy. And it was always THE energy, never MY energy. The energy between us conjured up especially for that occasion.

The successful work of art is finished not when it finally conforms to the artist's design, but when that design has finally been obliterated by the processes the artist sets in motion.

When I turn on the light at night the cockroaches and mice scurry for cover. The light I shine upon the world doesn't just illuminate, it dictates.

One is attempting to keep the vitality of the accident and yet preserve a continuity.

If the day writhes, it is not with revelations.

The proverbial spelæan who plucked up the courage to leave his cave and join the world at large, eventually tires of the sterile glare, and creeps back to explore the deeper recesses of his grotto, where he discovers hidden passageways leading who knows where.

I hold it imperative to evolve an instrument of thought which will aid in cutting through all cultural opiates, past and present, so that a direct, immediate, and truly free vision can be achieved.

For us humans – always on the lookout for profit – tension is our attempt to cheat the law of karma.

Tension results when mind, in the form of self-image, is at odds with body, energy and destiny.

Everything has an external and an internal aspect or component. And I mean everything – creatures, objects, events, relationships, connexions, equations, circumstances, etc. The external can be visualized as a box or container, and the internal as a butterfly trapped inside the box. The butterfly is delicate, complex, beautiful, with a life of its own – an unpredictability, whereas the box is regular, simple, hard, and uninteresting. The box and the butterfly are totally different from each other, so different in fact that they effectively belong to different worlds. The box has little awareness of the butterfly – maybe if the creature awakens and starts to flutter around then the box may feel a little of the activity, but because they are worlds apart, those feelings make little sense. Science is the study, and thereby the celebration, of the external, so much so that it denies the internal even exists. Art – the creation of forms so unstable their magical contents are always spilling forth – is the celebration of the internal. The teacher's job is to waken your butterfly. Your job is to break the box and set it free – let it be.

To see life not as a string of arbitrary pleasures and pains but as a slow and inevitable process of waking up.

Language keeps you in your place.

Spine – the most delicate and sensitive part of the body – can adequately support neither a heavy heart nor a heavy mind. Lightness is a necessity.

Light mind is inconspicuous. By remaining quiet and attentive it facilitates maximum connexion between me and my environment.

Truth is simply the work that needs to be done.

In bondage : to softness.

Light cancels out hope.

The teacher's job is to upset the student – knock them off balance. It is the only way the student eventually finds the ground.

what we take to be
is a project or performance
of what we do with our minds
or what our minds do with us

The arbitrariness of order and the forgetfulness of truth.

If one-mind is mind unified in stillness and silence, mind devoid of dualism, inclusive mind, then no-mind is that mind pulverized into so many pieces it becomes dust, a mind so relaxed it no longer exists, as such. This process of fragmentation is what takes courage because it only happens when I abandon myself to life and its forces – when I am fully prepared to lose my mind.

God is the ultimate symbol of ego. The force for good. The drive to eradicate the possibility or proximity of death. As soon as God is proposed the universe is dualized and we are as far from enlightenment as possible.

Monotheism signifies the victory of ego over spirit.

Thought cannot owe nothing.