Clearly distinguish full and empty; substantial and insubstantial; body and spirit. This happens naturally on standing or sitting: the body sinks with gravity and the spirit lifts with levity. And even more strongly as the standing body becomes single-weighted: the weighted side becomes full and the free side becomes empty. And on turning the waist: the body is thrown away centrifugally whereas the spirit (mind) gathers centripetally at the still centre.

being in the sense of lightening-unifying presence

the unceasing image of hope 
is our place in the world

Never collapse into dantien. The heart should always lift. The best image I've come up with is the child with a balloon on a string. The child's fist, holding the string, is the dantien; the balloon – buoyant and light – is the heart.

A herd of individuals.

Imagine wearing a weight belt: wide and supportive at the back. The buckle, exactly at the dantien, is tightened with the mind.

we are more pliant than the mercantile notion 
of choice will determine—

Stehender: wie ein Trank den Durst 
durchstürzt ihn die Schwerkraft. 

He who stands: as a drink through thirst 
gravity pours down through him.

consolations & desolations

slipping between 

thought and sensation

Humility is the ability to see and face the truth about yourself. It always marks the beginning of spiritual work. This is why my teacher used to say that the vast majority of his students were not ready to begin. Humility is the rarest of virtues.

What makes art great is not only and not in the first place the high quality of what is created. Rather, art is great because it is an absolute need.

Searching for tension.

the imperialism of reason

The most important word in our work is RESPECT. This is not a sentiment we turn to when we feel like it but a tension we strive to maintain throughout our day. It's what we mean by quiet mind: a sustained concentration on respect. Attention to the needs of the Other rather than the self. It used to be called fear of God.

Relax the mind and tighten the act.

perhaps you might be 

umbelliferous 

flowering to excess 

dill or fennel 

sweet cicely or yarrow 

you might be perhaps

Living on the edge. In the midst/mist of grace.

You are rewarded not according to your work or your time but according to the measure of your love.

A spiritual teacher introduces you to reality. And believe me, despite protestations to the contrary from many an eager student, this is the last thing in the world anyone in their right mind really wants. This is why the teacher must first disguise his intentions and second reveal only the faintest glimmers. So faint or fleeting that the student may not appear to notice. Then it's just a matter of time. Practice helps of course but it's a moot point as to whether it's essential.

The warrior trembles and quakes. The coward swaggers and struts.

If we fill up the heart's space with a fake god no room is left in which the true gods can find an abode.

waiting for intimations

Reality comes crushing in when we're at our weakest, when we no longer have the strength to hold it at bay with wishful thinking.

persistently & courageously

Why is spirit so vitally important? Because spirit is the ingredient that prevents life and especially work from becoming habitual, dull and wearing. Our work (spiritual work) requires us to masterly wield a lightness of spirit that effortlessly lights up (lightens and makes radiant) the dullest of routines.

wonder necessarily abolishes the etiolating veil of everydayness

A culture which values human life above all else will always suppress spirit because spirit takes dangerous risks. Such a culture will be a culture of boredom, depression and avoidance.

the world is disenchanted

Without a root you won't bear fruit.

If the mind is not quiet then you are anxious. The task of quietening the mind (the task that faces us all) starts by looking at that anxiety.

Not only have the gods fled, but the radiance of divinity is extinguished.

Spiritual work is all about tackling fear, facing (up to) fear. If instead we merely push frightening things into the background then not only will our spirits remain under-exercised and misdirected, but as our energy inevitably wanes with age, those things will come crushing back in. It's what we avoid that catches us out in the end.

Modern life turns us into spineless wonders.

If you start advanced techniques before you're ready then it does more harm than good. It may even do irreparable damage.

Meditation yields insight which lends courage.

Full of desire yet free of desires.

an inexorable simplicity

Nothing more tiresome than the company of those without inner quiet, those that neither know nor value solitude.

Listening. Listen with your energy, your spirit.

Originally, an oral transmission had nothing to do with words, with signifiers. It was just magical sounds. And equally magical listening.

Something is always missing. We never know what it is. 

If we did then we'd do something about it. Such is desire. 

No point hazarding a guess. We're always wrong. 

This is the nature of mind: never quite up to the job. Blind spots. 

Spirit is our saving grace. Spirit saves the day.

Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires.

What would I tell someone starting out on this journey? That it all hinges on internal quiet, so better start meditating right away. Without inner quiet you have to take someone else's word for it, and then all you can do is repeat their words. What is the value in that? Far better to find out for yourself.

Live simply so that others may simply live.

And why is inner quiet so important? Because without it you won't feel the energy.

the things that mean most 

are spoken of least

My working thesis (from working rather than thinking) is that a natural energetic connexion with the other is only possible if I first have an energetic connexion with God. If I love you then I must love everything.

Go off grid.

Internal work starts when the mind stops.

the hour of our need

Solitude seeks to silence a noisy world.

Learn to take a tumble.

Bad mind is thinking; good mind is awareness. Relaxation is the process of replacing one with the other.

it is like the reverberation of a bell rung three times 

like the call of a voice the call of a voice that is not there

A slow erosion of all externals until there is no sense of belonging to anything tangible: family, culture, society, place, time. All that's left is the internal: energy – its flows and manifestations.

Let go of bias otherwise you'll grow crooked.

The use of language requires a tension which blocks the propogation and flow of energy. This is why energy work commences when the mind quietens and starts to listen. Then what mysterious visitors do I receive?

a debris in the wake 

of eagerness

Accept your lot. Only then can you lighten within it.

The only worthwhile insights are those that come through practice. Those generated by thinking, by thinking things through, are worse than useless because, even if valid, are still tainted by a grasping mind, a mind that wants to know, to understand, and so cannot selflessly love.

A deep, but dazzling darkness.

We are instruments of God, not gods ourselves.

I remember once presenting my teacher with an insight that was purely the product of my clever extrapolating mind. He listened patiently then said: "That's very intelligent, but you have to realise that your intelligence is the worst part of you." An intelligence acutely aware of its own limitations is the only one worth cultivating.

A commitment to stillness, to quietening the mind, to finding God. Real life starts with this. And you don't get much change from thirty years. So no time to lose.

Just persist, and ignore the naysayers.

Passions I allow, and loves I approve, only I would wish that men would alter their object and better their intent.

we cannot bring a culture, a philosophy, to life without feeding it with what it is not

the prison of language

taken by the mystery of what is close at hand

This whole Black Lives Matter thing I find a bit odd. Seeing hordes of indignant (middle-class) people brandishing placards yet obediently wearing facemasks… Each day over 200 species become extinct, every fortnight at least one language (a whole people) dies, every second over 5000 animals are slaughtered for food. Surely they are more worthy of protest? This is the thing about the bourgeoisie: their energy is too poor to face the glare of reality so they concern themselves with relative trivialities.

harmony is hidden beneath the grace of appoggiaturas

It's not nature that loves to hide, it is we who love to shoo it away.

Real generosity gives what it cannot afford to give. Real spirit takes a chance and is always prepared to fail. Like the samurai who, when given a choice between life and death, always chooses death.

If you want to waste your time, attempt to save it; if you want to save time, be prepared to waste it.

Have you noticed that the more affluent the neighborhood the less chance you have of encountering real generosity and real spirit?

In my lifetime, humanity has become a dirty word.

epistemology is alienated from ethics as man is alienated from the world

To get into energy, first get into the body.

Ever get the feeling your own stupidity is sitting on you and you can't breathe?

If education doesn't direct us back to roots and root then it's not worth its salt.

Mens sana in corpore sano. That's the ideal, but for most of us it's more like busy minds inside stupid bodies. And the busier the mind insists on being the stupider the body has to be.

Ever get the feeling the system is sitting on you and you can't breathe?

Psychotherapy sanctions selfishness.

The present is what we are, and thereby, what already we are ceasing to be.

The work offers a new way of being in the world. (Actually a very old and largely forgotten way of being in the world.)

In walking, each step should spread open the foot upon the earth. The heart will then actively open to the space in front. If the feet are enclosed and constrained by shoes (no matter how wide fitting) then the heart becomes stunted.

Finding it difficult to breathe wearing a facemask? Consider it a breathing exercise. Activate the diaphragm and belly muscles to strongly suck the air through the fabric of the mask and into the lungs, then push the breath strongly out. Someone carefully observing should see the mask suck against your face on the in-breath and balloon away on the out-breath. Natural reverse breathing. Eventually you won't want to take it off.

Grace passes by, too modest to assert itself.

The most mysterious part of a teaching is what's known as a transmission of energy. It is a seed of spirit which the teacher plants inside the student. It can take years of regular exposure, or it can transmit in a glance. The only thing for sure is that it requires individual contact – you can't get it from a book or a video. Once planted the seed will start to grow, slowly, very slowly. Practice is simply what you do to tend and nurture and speed that growth: watering, feeding, weeding, debugging. You know you have received a transmission because it eats into every aspect of your being and your life. It cannot be escaped and only gets stronger with time. Attempts to ignore its imperatives will only produce problems later on. It has its own attendant problems of course: it becomes more and more demanding of time and energy, and there's always the risk that it will stretch your spirit to breaking point. But without a transmission there is nothing to take the place of ego, and spiritual work tends to just beat about the bush, missing the crucial point of it all, namely spirit.

Meditation maintains an even keel.

Heaven and Hell have nothing to do with an afterlife. They are versions of NOW. The difference between them is peace of mind. And peace of mind isn't something you can be given, once and for all. It's something you have to work for. And that work is ongoing – never ending.

Counteract weight with another force, so as to do what you wish at last, by means of a weak third force – that is what spirit is.

When we talk about conscience in our line of work we don't mean the superego but the spirit – the natural skeptic suspicious of all established order.

when reality is no longer organized and pacified by the fantasy screen, the experience of the real emerges in a way that is unique for each person

The work is a burrowing machine. Similar to science or art, which burrow into nature and culture. But we burrow into self because we know that everything we perceive of nature and culture is already tainted by self. This is the sense in which our work is religious.

A body is not born until it has danced.

The work must be religious. It must have as it's long-term goal the dismantling of the self.

Science and art take the self as a given. They offer reflections of the dominance of self. They may produce glimpses of truth but offer no path to a living truth, to living a truth.