31 October 2017
30 October 2017
29 October 2017
The tragic fact of life is that the one thing I really need to hear in order to make the change is the one thing I will probably never listen to for as long as I have the strength to resist. This is why the smallest real change takes such a long time, because most of that time is spent beating about the bush.
The basic standing posture of the martial arts is Riding Horse: standing
as though seated on a horse, lumbar spine strong so that the thoracic
spine leans back slightly (arms in front helps align the spine
correctly). Dantien sinks with gravity, heart lifts with spirit, and you
become two balanced but very different vectors.
The known is flat, boring, deplete of energy and spirit. The act of knowing robs and defiles, the way an early photograph was believed by Native Americans to steal their spirit. The unknown, on the other hand, is exciting and unpredictable; dangerous. Spiritual work teaches that it is also more trustworthy because it bestows life and grace – something knowing can never do.
28 October 2017
27 October 2017
26 October 2017
25 October 2017
Thinking is not bad, necessarily, but our inability to turn it off and abide contentedly in internal silence is. The problem with thought, language based thought especially, is that it is only really possible if I create, or find, internal tension – prejudice – to support it. It seems to be incapable of using something as inherently neutral and healing and earthing as the ground from which to spring.
24 October 2017
23 October 2017
Relaxation in Taiji is never a slump into mediocrity, never a settling in the middle, but a vital drift to two extremes. One an extreme of substance, of self, of contraction and withdrawal, of gravity – my own and Earth's. The other an extreme of activity – of light and lightness – of exuberance and expansion – of madness and spirit. For us relaxation is contradiction – the joy and play of being one and the other rather than either/or.
22 October 2017
21 October 2017
Meditation is concerned with movement through time – with process. How do I pass from this moment to the next? We recommend what I call 'becoming amoeba': breaking open and spilling into the unfolding future. This requires full attention to the present moment itself rather than its contents, the sort of attention you only seem to get for extended periods with those with severe disabilities or painful illness/injury, where each breath, each movement, each moment is a laboured ordeal requiring utmost concentration. Such people are really present, and although they may start off angry or bitter or frightened or just plain sorry for themselves, these emotions quickly dissipate since they don't help – they do nothing but waste energy – a luxury ill afforded. And because such people are getting something fundamental right, which most of us get fundamentally wrong, their company should be sought and treasured rather than shunned.
19 October 2017
18 October 2017
So what is it all about? This strange phenomenon called life? What is the meaning of it all? To become animal, or angel, or, preferably, both. To investigate extremes through acts of spirit, rather than stay fearfully stuck in the boring middle. To access and put to use your inner power which is always a power to become, a power to change, a power to switch dimensions, to flip realities and suddenly BE. To confront death, not at some future date but NOW, fully awake and fully alive, and scream FUCK YOU!
17 October 2017
The student must realise that it is her readiness brought about by her own hardwork that stimulates the next stage of the teaching to reveal itself. The teacher has very little say in the matter. Without that hardwork it will, week in week out, become very monotonous. Some students prefer things this way – it's less threatening than the challenge of something new – but I can assure you the teacher doesn't.
A warrior path to develop warrior spirit. The spirit of fighting a battle that cannot be won because somewhere along the line our species took a wrong turn – a selfish turn – and lost the apparatus – the direct access to power – to win through, spiritually, except in the rarest of special cases. And yet, despite being doomed to fail, one chooses to live this choiceless life because without just a little warrior spirit nothing of any true worth is possible.
Sinking, a concept as important in seated meditation as it is in Taiji, involves, as does every action, a relaxed and a tense component. The relaxed component is simply letting go to gravity with a vertical spine; feeling the draw as a flow of energy. The tense component activates the spinus erectus muscles – the pythons either side of the lumbar spine – to extend the bottom end of the spine down into the earth and the top end upwards out of the crown of the head; rather like driving a stake into the ground. Then, as you work, softly but firmly, the energy of the earth coils itself upwards around your spine like a runner bean creeping up a beanpole or like a dozy snake woken by the charmers shawm. Most practitioners make the mistake of allowing the belly to drift up and back in order to alleviate the strain on the legs, in which case this coiling energy has nothing to coil around. Keeping the bum in – sinking the dantien/sacrum down and forward into the posture and leg(s) – corrects this weakness.
I know it's a terribly unfashionable sentiment, but spiritual work must have some abnegative discipline – a sacrificial structure – to be in any way effective on the longterm. A lot of so called spirituality nowadays consists of pampering and indulging the self in the hope that that will stimulate it to reward me with good feelings which I can then chose to interpret spiritually. But such an approach, on the longterm, just strengths and bloats the ego – a sure path to decadence and corruption. Read any well established spiritual or religious text and they say the same thing: prayer is most effective when it is impossible to pray, love is most effective when it seems impossible to love, practice is most effective when it's the last thing you want to do. Yet again it all boils down to giving yourself what you need rather than what you want. This is maturity.
16 October 2017
15 October 2017
In Taiji, overall form stays largely the same but content changes radically. These changes – changes in energy, in spirit, in feeling and emotion – register in tiny fluctuations of form – what my teacher called shimmer – and it is these little changes that give both the work and the worker spiritual life.
Arguing with my brother-in-law yesterday that we ought to give our children more freedom and more responsibility. "Yes, that's all well and good but what happens when something unexpected happens?" he asked, constantly fearful of his own children's safety. "Well that's when we see what they're made of," was my answer. And as I gave his question more thought I realised that the whole raison d'être of the bourgeois life was the minimization, containment and domestication of the unexpected, of spirit.
14 October 2017
13 October 2017
12 October 2017
11 October 2017
10 October 2017
09 October 2017
08 October 2017
07 October 2017
The problem with thinking – and it's a big one – is that it inevitably privileges its own process above all others; it denies the possibility of a realm that cannot be thought – an unknowable; and it assumes that because only humans think, they are therefore naturally more privileged than other entities and objects. Our work aims to focus on that part of us we share with every other thing in the universe – energy and spirit – rather than the agency that sets us apart.
06 October 2017
05 October 2017
First visit yesterday to the family doctor – just for a check up. A beautiful man – Mikki Nissim – appropriate name for a thaumaturge. In one sense brimming with experience and confidence – settled comfortably in himself; in another sense trembling with listening energy – alert to the possibility of the unexpected; and in another sense desperately needing something other to make better sense of life. And this is how we should be: a self built on the past, a spirit glimpsing the future and a soul yearning for God.