advance from duplicity to simplicity
30 June 2017
29 June 2017
28 June 2017
27 June 2017
26 June 2017
25 June 2017
24 June 2017
23 June 2017
20 June 2017
19 June 2017
18 June 2017
16 June 2017
15 June 2017
14 June 2017
13 June 2017
12 June 2017
Personal God is simply agent allowing possibility of impossible. In particular, for our purposes, the possibility that seemingly ingrained and recalcitrant patterns can be broken; the possibility of real change. The actual existence of such a God is unnecessary, but love for / belief in certainly is, though it can take a multitude of conceptual forms. The energy for change comes from belief rather than being.
11 June 2017
10 June 2017
09 June 2017
What is truth? Whatever we're running from. So, to begin the revolutionary turn towards it, something absolutely fundamental in habitual nature must be reversed. I suggest switching the dominant activity of mind from idle thought (worry) to prayer, where prayer is simply the lifting of heart and mind upward – into the void beyond. No need to mention God, if you find the possibility of absolute authority – absolute otherness – disagreeably beneath (rather than agreeably above) you.
08 June 2017
07 June 2017
What you are, really, deep down, beneath the crap, is far far finer, infinitely richer, than any image you could possible hold, desire or create for yourself. Spirit – your energetic signature – which, whether you like it or not, inevitably colours everything you do, is beautiful and unique and deserves to be honoured as such. So, when we say be here now – in the present – we simply mean dwell in your energy rather than in self image.
06 June 2017
05 June 2017
"I was looking at the hyacinth, and as I gazed at the form of its petals and the strength of their curve as they open and curl back to reveal the mysterious flower-centres with their anthers and eyelike hearts, abruptly I found that I was no longer looking at it, but was it; a distinct, indescribable, but in no way vague, still less emotional, shift of consciousness into the plant itself. Or rather I and the plant were one and indistinguishable; as if the plant were a part of my consciousness. I dared scarcely breathe, held in a kind of fine attention in which I could sense the very flow of life in the cells. I was not perceiving the flower but living it. I was aware of the life of the plant as a slow flow of circulation of a vital current of liquid light of the utmost purity. I could apprehend as a simple essence formal structure and dynamic process. This dynamic form was, as it seemed, of a spiritual not a material order; or of a finer matter, or of matter itself perceived as spirit. There was nothing emotional about this experience which was, on the contrary, an almost mathematical apprehension of a complex and organized whole, apprehended as a whole. This whole was living; and as such inspired a sense of immaculate holiness."
The lazy student. The student who, for whatever reason, does not practice; the student who gives nothing back. The longer it goes on the less likely they are to ever start. In a class situation they are tolerable, but privately (and it is strange how it's always the lazy students that demand private lessons – as though that privileged exposure compensates somehow for lack of practice) they are, believe me, far more trouble than they are worth (than the money they pay you).
04 June 2017
03 June 2017
Gravity bears down through body, and thymos (life) gushes up, distributed by waist (core strength & turning moment), pooling at heart. A trigger of compassion, vulnerability, hope, and heart opens upward in affective (so effective) prayer. Grace, the answer to prayer, then befalls and blesses. At our best, we are simply machines – transducers – converting gravity to grace.
02 June 2017
01 June 2017
The fundamental fact of us all – more fundamental than the air we breathe, the food we eat – is gravity: the fact that we are fashioned from matter, and so are tugged at by heavy objects, in particular the Earth. The gravitational field of the Earth pulls us directly downward upon its surface, and this surface – the ground – kicks up into us, equal and opposite to gravity itself. We call this upward force thymos because, if the spine is strong, healthy and erect, a steady stream of energy flows up through the body to gather naturally in the thymus gland in the upper chest. In its simplest form Taiji is a sequence of movements designed to distribute this thymic energy through the upper body and into the Other, using mainly turning actions from the core (belly/lumbar spine).