30 November 2019


Instead of thinking, become thought, energy, universal mind. The quality that permits this is softness; the technique – yielding.
Touching rather than thinking.
Things generally work out for the best. If you don't learn this then life is hell.
Softness opens a quality of presence within the tangible world.

29 November 2019

Art: not an occupation of the few but the subcutaneous current of our lives, the countermovement to nihilism.

Power of Gentleness: Meditations on the Risk of Living
the apophatic double negative
In Taiji you're sunk when you no longer have any inclination to look down.
If, when you touch another, you don’t disappear in intimate listening, then you’re not alive. This our measure.
Life places gentleness within us originally.

It is a joy to be hidden, and disaster not to be found.
Eventually, the path, the way, the forward motion, of travel, of travail, is the only thing that keeps us from collapsing inward and disappearing. This, I guess, is Time.
A life spent falling in love with yielding.

28 November 2019

Thinking obliterates and eventually extinguishes the light of the Third Eye.

27 November 2019

Don’t put the bird in a cage. Open all the doors.

26 November 2019

Surrender all that you are not.
seclusion, dispassion, cessation, letting go

25 November 2019

Ego is the false idol.
practice followed by more practice
open to the absence of yourself, the unexpected

saved by the doubt built into faith
In the grip of ego.

24 November 2019

A critique of idolatry.
Our only power, to let things be.
a very agapaic eros or erotic agape

Capitalism, Bourgeoisie, Ego. Same parasite, different scale.
self-transformation is built into our bodies
dig deeper, down to the roots
The only way to advance in this game is by erasing one's tracks.
Spirit is the presence of what concerns us ultimately.

I may be a diurnal human being but I am definitely a nocturnal animal.
This forum is my space – notes from/to myself – from my better self to my weaker self, focused self to distracted self, mindful to forgetful. I use it to provide courage in times of difficulty, which, maybe surprisingly, increase as one gets older, rather than decrease. This, for me, proves that I'm getting something right. Ever closer to the fire.
Pray the night away, untouched by the quotidian.
We all need reminding.

23 November 2019

The first duty of love is to listen.

22 November 2019


the bourgeoisie is internal rot
The mind – especially of the intelligent, ambitious student – is wont to extrapolate and assume experience it has never had, in order to spout knowledge and wisdom that it doesn't actually possess. This is pure ego.
The unconscious is not a theatre, but a factory.
Given up everything to follow the thinnest of lines. Probably not wise but so be it.
You won't believe it but
I quench my thirst
by drinking from a mirage.

21 November 2019

For me, question marks are the punctuation of life.
Real intelligence is foresight.
The trouble with feelings is that they're all about me.
Instead of using the legs to prop up a voracious ego, use them to join to the Earth.

life teaches us that being like someone in love is more real, because everything is uncertain

The Zone is that space of pure connectivity where everything feels effortless, natural and foregone. The master is someone who is able to coax students into the Zone. The enlightened master is someone who lives in the Zone.
Civilization (human domestication) has robbed us of both a spirited connexion to Nature and a natural connexion to Spirit. It has robbed us of our gods.
Settle down, open up, and pray.
God is a rather artificial and unsatisfactory stand-in for Nature.
Move with stealth.

20 November 2019


Inertia is a heavy transparent mist 
emerging from his eyes.
darkness too has a mind
Each of us is a collection of habits; some good, some bad. The work struggles to let go of bad ones and adopt good ones. And as we improve – as we age – what was good now appears not so good, and what was once bad may simply have been misunderstood. Measured up – on average – things don't change much.
Like the proverbial cuckold, you are the last to know.
When I stop thinking, I do better.

19 November 2019

Have I been walking in circles again?

17 November 2019

we grow wiser through walking
a pale radiant gold with hints of peach and pink
Once, chatting idly with my teacher, the conversation got around, for some odd reason, to street gangs.
—Were you ever in a gang? I asked him.
—Yes.
—Were you the leader?
—Naturally.
—Did your gang have a motto?
—Yes. (Looking rather sheepish.)
—What was it?
—Never yield!
I dream 
that I am buried 
under the autumn leaves.
My body germinates.

Delving deep reveals something totally at odds with the shallows.
I read recently that the Buddha, when asked for one word to sum up his teaching, chose Awareness. Then I remembered asking my own teacher the same question. I was expecting him to say softness or lightness or yielding or spirit or even love, but instead he said Listening.

15 November 2019

To move well, the knees need to be very active.
I consider myself eternally blessed to have had a teacher who always put spirit first. He couldn't do it any other way.
living in harmony with the world means accepting capitalism as a given

14 November 2019

To what extent is it not all about me. This is the measure of the quality of the work.

Turning a blind eye.
Becoming nonentity.

Giving the game away.

13 November 2019

Not under the law, but under grace.
the unfolding intimacy of the One who has chosen to dance within us
Happiness is believing in a bright future. What the Christians call Hope. And why not?
McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality
I remember, over 30 years ago, my teacher telling me to watch a dancer student of his as she did her Taiji Form.
—What do you think? he asked.
—She moves beautifully.
—Yes, but no Internal content.
—Why is that?
—She's not in love with Taiji, she's in love with herself doing Taiji. There's a big difference.
only silence is praise

Happiness requires us to find joy (lightness), rather than fear (heaviness), in change. An underlying impatience, or irreverence, always threatening to fuck the status quo.

12 November 2019

What else can the unscrupulous master do with the incorrigible student but take their money and tell them how well they're doing?
Any system that fails to put spirit centerstage is fundamentally reactionary.
Archive fever: documenting a work, a life, a folly.
If it doesn’t defeat you, silence opens the door.

11 November 2019


It’s best to hold all ideas lightly, not to presume too much of our capacities.
Legs project up to sternum. Arms extend down to sacrum.
Born-awkward.

10 November 2019

Those who live in comfort have put up formidable barriers to God. As they approach death and their energy weakens, these barriers will fall and realisation will come, fear not.
'God' is just a name we give to the oneness of it all.

Love of God is a disturbance in the heart that drives us closer to awareness of God. Unfortunately it never feels like love at the time.

09 November 2019

Now is life very solid, or very shifting?

08 November 2019

The Now contains both the afterglow of the Past and intimations of the Future. Living in the Now requires attendance to both rather than neglect of either.

06 November 2019

humility is beatness
Use the in-breath to draw forward into life, the out-breath to drive down into Earth.

The Enlightenment dared us to think, but there will always be a religion and a God for those who wouldn’t dare.
What's amazing about breathing is that it exchanges with the world. On the in-breath the world comes into the body and on the out-breath the body goes out into the world. Without this constant exchange then life would cease. Breathing is one of the surfaces where we seep and merge into the world.

If you want to see good posture then watch an experienced rider atop their steed. The horse for them is what our legs are to us: not only a moving support but a trusty and vital provider of energy and spirit. A good rider really sits into the horse, and the horse really thrusts up into the chest (heart) of the rider.

When spirit rises the nostrils flair, the airways dilate and the muscles tauten. Preparing for maximal oxygen intake. Readying for fight or flight.

05 November 2019

we must come to grips with the dark center, the unlit core, the concealed depths, of our lives

I rise and take my place between the earth and sky.

Crouching tiger, hidden dragon. There's a wonderful instruction in that title.
At the pentecostal core of matter, a fire wind 
whirligig, centrifuge of joy, 
is You, Love, a lung 
pumping light, auric squalls 
inflating eyes in my skull’s raw coal.
About the one thing you can't teach is the wound – the broken heart – without which the work never really ventures into the Internal. And bear in mind that most with a wound spend their life trying to patch it up in order to carry on as others. It is rare to find a student who naturally intuits that the wound is the way, that, for them at least, real life begins when the scab is peeled away and the wound is allowed to bleed or weep into their life. The struggle then for the teacher is to prevent such a student slipping into morbid narcissism.
perhaps a stone, a leaf, a pinecone, or a flower


We lost Nature and gained Culture, lost God and gained Self. Rather a poor return don't you think?

04 November 2019

I live alone, mentally clothed in the skins of wild things.
the slow exhalation of self

03 November 2019

Inhibit the desire to show off. Eschew social media.

02 November 2019

The mind is the chief architect of one’s own happiness and suffering.

01 November 2019


Their eyes burn like the eyes of animals brushing through leaves on the scent of the prey.
Spiritual openness and receptivity cannot be sustained without a root, an anchor, a core, a deep inner gravity and stillness. Part of the mind opens up like an ever-blossoming flower whilst another part holds on for dear life. A state of equipoise – a beautiful and natural home for a mind finally free of anxiety.