do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind

There are many excuses not to practice, but they all boil down to laziness.

Enlightened masters are rare because our culture privileges ego and thinking over spirit and compassion.

God didn't create us in his image and likeness, we created him in ours.

I think therefore I doubt that I am.

When you learn to wield spirit then you always feel good – nothing gets you down, not for long anyway, partly because your expectations are so low and partly because spirit always brings you out of the mind and into the body. Then laughter comes naturally and easily, and the front you find yourself using to interact with the external world becomes exuberant if not flamboyant.

Even though we know the external to be unreal, in our sense, we cannot go through life fighting or denying it. We must learn to interact with it and use it, but not to take it seriously, for which we need a sense of humour. We also need to learn to pretend – to act a part – as a matter of course, never letting the external world in on our own internal aspect, our reality. That separation must be clean, and in a way this is what the work does: cleans our connexion to the internal by untangling our connection to the external.

the empowerment of being

Spirit changes everything. We learn this time and time again. It seems to be the way: general forgetfulness interspersed with moments of intense remembering. But what it means is that the reality we think we inhabit is actually a spiritless (lifeless) facade, and real spirited reality is not only completely different but in many ways contrary. The thinking mind cannot see, comprehend or enter into spirited reality, and it either denies its existence at every turn (the non-student) or it pretends to know (the poor student). Our work is to soften mind and awareness so that we can catch glimpses and gradually learn to dwell in the world of spirit.

Have in yourself a task.

Staunchly into the ineluctable!

Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.

What's important for the body and the energy is to reach states where the thinking mind flees. And what the thinking mind hates and fears more than anything is spirit, which is why we have struggled so hard for the last few hundred years to create an environment for ourselves that doesn't require spirit. We've created instead an environment that only needs ego. We no longer have to be spirirted creatures, we just have to be selfish ones.

It takes a lifetime to learn to read, yet most think the job done when they can voice the words on the page.

Honour bound…

leap in the dark

One dwells when one's world shows up poetically, 'radiantly', when it shows up as the 'holy' place that it is.

Despite protestations to the contrary, the last thing the poor student wants is a teacher. Want they really want is a clown: their very own entertainer who will cheer them up, tell them what they want to hear, and provide endless fun.

Suddenly…

Every question a pleasure, every answer a loss.

So as not to become meat we must return the jaguar’s gaze.

Strange isn't it, that for the middle-class, acceptability and individuality amount to the same thing. This started I guess with the beatniks and then the hippies who were trying to express individuality by being different. But it doesn't take long for capitalism (ego) to swallow up difference and market it to the herd as freedom of choice.

We moderns, weak and self-centred, tend to be prone to moods. In fact moods largely rule our existence – they determine both how we feel and how we function. And yet we all know that they are not real – the slightest event can dispel any mood, replacing a sense of self with a sense of the world.

Embrace a life of discipline. It's the only way to break through.

we often forget that mind and body are connected

when waking and dreaming are not distinct 

this is mastery of meditation

Most of us use our best energy intending our own servitude. Victims of socialization – of social conditioning. To liberate that energy, so that it can instead be directed into the work, we must refuse the structures and strictures of our class. This is the only reason I rail so against the bourgeoisie – our class. We need to see how our lack of spirit and our lack of spirituality turns us into egocentric materialists all too willing to exchange soul for social acceptability.

Hanging on the coat-tails of those who fleece us.

The Bourgeois Fallacy, Part 18: Events can be manufactured and purchased at will.

a custom of lurking in weeds

Everyone's busy being inconsequential.

energy so fluid that it is liquid

The good student is born (again) when it finally dawns on her that she has no choice.

When you see a look of faint distaste on your teacher's face the chances are that your ego is making him nauseous.

ordinary consciousness only deceives

Work, for us, is simply the exercise of discipline. Discipline is doing something difficult and onerous for the sake of the greater good. A bigger, better balance.

The talking cure. Now if that isn't an oxymoron I don't know what is. The only thing talking ever cured is the ego.

Bourgeois values seem to open up a vast world – the world of choice. But in actuality they constitute the tiniest and most boring of boxes because they replace spirit and energy with ego and anxiety.

The poor student is the one who nods affirmatively all the time because he thinks he already knows.

catch the somehow meaning of the splintered whole

Pull yourself together. Become internally gathered. This is mind in dantien: a centre about which to cohere, a centre far more productive and useful than the one we generally choose – ego.

the art of facing infinity without flinching

Sleeping during the night is a waste of golden time. Spend two or three of those golden hours keeping vigil. Even if it means going to bed rather early. It's a useful way to think of meditation: Keeping Vigil.

If spiritual work seems to be all spirituality and very little spirit then we would like our work to be the opposite: all spirit and very little spirituality.

The land and sky conferred together 

And sent down a messenger, a strong wind.

seep beneath as ally to the onslaught

Spirit, in a word, is enthusiasm, in its original sense: 'divinely inspired, possessed by a god.'

What do I have against the bourgeoisie? The fact that their basic energy is so poor. They have the spirit of domestication. And they don't realise that without great energy, without a spark of madness, despite their wealth and their health, their hygiene and their niceness, they can't even begin the real work of waking up. To wake up you need a devil inside. You need to be dangerous.

The shining eyes of one about to pounce. This is what we mean by spirit.

In order to intend, one must be the possessor of physical and mental prowess and a clear spirit.

metaphors of wind, breath, spirit and freedom…

The bourgeoisie cherish one thing above their comforts and choices, and that's their fears.

cool as silver

waiting to be gold

Think the unthinkable. The only productive use for thinking.

a glimpse which makes a path for itself

It's taken about 11000 years for humans to evolve from gods into insects. Pretty impressive really.

miracles of trust

unscattering the mind

The only way to get stronger is to struggle with difficulty.

Spirit allows us to face the truth without fear and without depression.

smile without knowing it

Honour love and love honour. Honour love by loving honour more.

What is it that makes a good student? A good student is someone who just wants to study. They feel compelled to study, to work, to practice. It's like a neurosis. The teacher directs their efforts into a teaching that eventually awakens their spirit. Once their spirit is awakened they have an internal transmission. Only good students progress.

It is not the teacher's job to motivate the student.

No one's interested in truth nowadays. People believe what they want to believe. Largely their own publicity.

The error of those of today: they do not know of the long, restrained growth of things and believe they can compel this growth overnight to produce any useful object they like.

Recourse to language indicates a misunderstanding of the issue.

Only one person can transform a mediocre student into a good student and that's the student themselves.

As teachers we struggle with mediocrity. Struggle to help the mediocre students understand in the vain hope they may then do a smidgen of practice. But we know, deep down, that it's highly unlikely to happen, and if it does then it won't last. The efforts we make are purely for ourselves really – honing our impeccability on intractable material.

Have you noticed how people tend to listen to the expert that tells them what they want to hear? We all have an agenda.

What is clear and concise can't deal with reality, for to be real is to be surrounded by mystery.

we will only begin to ‘see’ when we learn to desire confusion rather than flee it

Soul develops when you give voice to spirit. Ego develops when you give voice to mind. So instead of listening to the voice in the head, listen to the song in the heart.

Teaching class is always fascinating. On one level everyone is trying their best to learn the movements, eager and willing, yet on another level they are desperately resisting the energy that those movements are struggling to inculcate in body and mind.

Life is too short to be starting over all the time. At some point you have to admit to yourself: 'This is my thing and I'm going to do it wholeheartedly to the exclusion of everything else.' Otherwise you'll never get anywhere real. You'll never go deep.

an unpredictability of theophanies

There are always two stages to learning a new exercise. Firstly getting the structure correct, solving technical problems and getting it to flow. Secondly fleshing out the exercise with energy by falling in love with it and investing it with real heart and soul. These two approaches tend to work against each other, so once you've learnt an exercise you need to tell yourself: 'Now I can do the thing it's time to discover its internal secrets by really practising it.' Most students never reach this second stage because they insist on moving on before they're ready. Forever starting at the beginning. Never growing up.

The fetters of reason.

Most operate from habit rather than principle, so they don't add up to much. If you embrace a set of principles and honour them with practice then you will slowly become worthy of them.

The softest, liveliest and (therefore) most interesting people in Israel are the immigrants, especially the illegal immigrants. But I suspect that's true of all developed countries.

You will not be good teachers if you focus only on what you do and not upon who you are.

The heel provides support but the ball offers energy. The calf – the heart of the leg – pumps energy from the ball up to dantien.

Find it difficult to meditate? Mind always noisy? Then just set yourself a rule: Sit until the mind quietens, if only a little. It's amazing what you can achieve if you don't give yourself a choice.

I remember one time about 1971, me and a group of other boys were scrumping a local orchard. The owner saw us stealing his apples and gave chase. We ran like the wind, terrified but thrilled, down one street, up another, but we couldn't shake him off. As we approached the next T-junction the boy at the front, whom we were all following, turned right and so did we, but as we did I noticed one of our group instead turned left, stopped running and just sauntered away. Of course he wasn't even registered by our pursuer who continued to give us chase, eventually catching us and calling the police. Afterwards I was full of admiration for that boy's ability to just sever himself from the safety and support of the group – the stupid herd – and save his own skin. I think that was the moment I realised that thinking outside the box, against the trend, is always a good idea.

The worst crime is turning a blind eye.

It is important that we discover an educational method where people learn to learn and go on learning their whole lives.

Quiet mind. Find it difficult? Then look at it differently. Instead of thinking in terms of achieving inner quiet, which is a pretty passive concept anyway, think in terms of being alive in the moment. Just sit, dwell in the moment, and enjoy it. Why not? Marvel at the miracle of simply being alive and aware and happy. It won't last, but nothing does.

Cultivate the dark side. Without it we become plastic.

Spirit is the animus – the animating principle – the spark of life. It tends to get lost in the effects of spirit which is why spiritual work, concerned with spirit in its purest form, cultivates peace and quiet, and simply observes the life force, whose glorious dance keeps us going.

If you find yourself presented with a choice then it's too late – spirit has already fled, and whatever you choose will have no power. 

reinvest in the spiritual

Rational thought is a way of fossilizing God’s dynamic flexibility.

The wealthy are disadvantaged in two obvious ways (and we bourgeoisie are all wealthy nowadays). Firstly their wealth inevitably protects them from the Real. This is what wealth does: it protects, which then compels those protected to purchase simulations of reality (hence tourism). For example, imagine driving somewhere and the car suddenly breaks down leaving you stranded in a thoroughly undesirable neighborhood. You are now in the midst of the Real, and if you have any balls whatsoever that encounter will rouse your spirit and turn you into something that shocks both those you may be with and yourself. After the event (that is just what it is: an event) you will look back and appreciate it as one of life's peak experiences, even though at the time you were probably both pissed off and terrified, and you will realise just how miraculously well your spirit handled the situation (or not). But such events cannot be manufactured. You can't pretend that the car has broken down because at the back of your mind you know you have an escape route. So everything the wealthy purchases is, if they're lucky, a simulation of something real, and if they're less lucky, a simulation of a simulation. 

And secondly, the wealthy are at a spiritual disadvantage because they really believe their wealth can solve all their problems – they believe that money can buy anything desirable, including health and including love. But real health always contains the possibility of unhealth, of death, and real love always contains the possibility of if not hate then at least loss and abandonment. The rich will inevitably use their wealth to reduce such possibilities to zero, not realising that in the process they rob the health and love of all risk, all spirit, all reality. They turn all they touch into a simulation, a pretend, a vulgar copy.

Better the pain you choose than the pain you don't choose. 

My teacher's rationale behind practice.

It is generally understood in this game that progress only comes through suffering. And I always say to my students: 'If you look back at the formative events in your life then it's unlikely that you would have chosen any of them at the time.' Progress always has to be forced upon us. And it's the same with the teaching. The teacher seduces the student in with false promises and downright lies, and then, when they least suspect it, springs upon them a teaching from which they will never find rest or peace. As we say, it's not the student that finds the teaching but the teaching that finds the student.

It is by logic we prove, it is by intuition we invent.

If you believe it then it's real. If you think it then it's unreal (trivial). Faith creates the Real, and vice versa.

We are like passengers on a small pleasure boat sailing quietly down the St Lawrence River towards the Niagara Falls, not knowing that the engines are about to fail.

Practice gives you the means to live. It is not an end in itself.

Clearly distinguish teacher from teaching. Success depends upon this. Fall in love, deeply, with the teaching but see the teacher for what she is – mere channel and servant.

Originality takes us forward, not because it thinks what was never thought before, but because it thinks in harmony with the ‘origin.’

The teacher rouses your spirit/energy, and opens up a world where ego not only has no dominion but is an embarrassing hindrance. The student then goes away to practice, which means rehabilitating the ego in the light of the new experience. So what has really changed? What value does practice have? Practice is just your way of surviving the constant onslaught of the teaching without putting up defences, without getting cynical or jaded. Each time you practice, the ego weakens a fraction, and in time it may largely fall away, especially when it's not needed. This is the only sure way to proceed – gently, gently – little by little.

Are you courageous enough to admit spirit into your life as absolute driving and ruling force? That is the question.

How many young girls want to be ballerinas when they grow up? And yet what percentage have what it takes? Body type, looks, charisma, intelligence, drive, focus, commitment, courage, passion for training, time, financial support, luck to remain injury free, contacts… The road to success for the professional dancer is literally strewn with failures. It's the same with our work. The chances of any of us having the complete package is pretty slim, and so we just have to plug on with what we have. Humility is really just the courage to be realistic and face the inevitability of failure with dignity and humour, with an equipoise of gravity and levity.

The difference between a friend and a teacher is that a friend appeals to your ego whereas a teacher threatens your ego. A friend helps you feel good about yourself whereas a teacher makes you feel alive in a way that no one else does.

Love is important not as one of our feelings, but as the transfer of all our interest in life from ourselves to another.

In order to handle spirit – our own in particular – most of us require a level of physical, mental and emotional strength/fitness far in excess of what we have. And this strength doesn't come from training but from living – from taking risks.

It's a fine line between self-improvement, self-realisation and self-obsession.

The practical philosopher (which we must become on this path) is able to distil general principle from particular experience.

Each moment, breath, movement is an opportunity for energy to bloom and flourish. But we generally refuse because we're too busy getting what we want.

imaginatio vera

Back to basics. Back to our roots. Back to the root. Let that radical edge sharpen with time and practice. Don't let spirit flag.

The fullness of time.

Capitalism assumes that competitive avarice will regulate the planet in the way that 'survival of the fittest' has regulated it since life began. But there is an enormous difference between survival and greed. We must begin to appreciate that our survival depends upon the survival of the biosphere which our greed is quickly destroying. Yes, we are all guilty because we all chronically overconsume – we are all collaborators.

Compared to what the future holds this corona is like a barely discernable breeze.

Hubris calls for nemesis…

None of us can study anything properly unless we do it with our whole being.

Working hard but making little progress? The chances are you're not resting intelligently enough.

When your mind is in the right place (dantien) and you understand how sinking lifts the spirit then every action through the day can be directed to spiritual ends. This is constant practice.

To find ease we must face difficulty, to find peace we must face pain, and to find love we must face fear. It's obvious really.

The astonishing reality of things 
Is my discovery every day. 
Everything is what it is, 
And it’s difficult to explain to anyone how much this gladdens me 
And how much this suffices me.

Bourgeois depressives – is that a tautology? Bourgeois warriors – is that an oxymoron?

Sacrifice (the core of nobility) as a grounding, regulating principle has largely disappeared from our lives.

With over-population and ease of mobility we provide the perfect breeding ground for viruses to propagate, evolve and spread. Finally human beings have a function.

Life, at any level, at any stage, is something to treasure and marvel at rather than something to feel entitled to.

Could it think, the heart would stop beating.

Spirit is the bane of ego, and vice versa. Which one wins the day – takes your life – is entirely up to you.

The Rise of Homo Sentimentalis

The bewilderment of breakthrough. That feeling of loss and uncertainty after the first flush of excitement has subsided. This is what happens when you venture into the wilderness – into unknown, uncharted territory. It requires a strong centre and a fearless spirit – a focused dantien and an open heart.

Psychotherapy is a massage for the ego. The complete opposite to spiritual work.

The purpose of existence is for the soul to ‘realize’ its own divine origins through a gradual, ascending return to God via a series of spiritual stages and stations.

Symmetry in taiji is always between movements – each movement beautifully balancing its opposite in a poised resonant harmony.

The long term project of taiji is a light mind – a mind so unbearably light that it is ever ascending to God. The first stage is hence relaxing and allowing heaviness down to Earth.

the dizzying infinity of God

It figures that Nietzsche, the great Dionysian man of passion, was manic depressive – prone to ecstatic highs and suicidal lows. Our work stretches such passion into patience, like leaping in ultra slow motion, every moment intimately bound to the previous and the next because they're all part of the same thrust and flow of energy. If you have that energy flowing through you – if you've made your leap – then you'll do the work willingly and with joyous acceptance because you know, deep down, that you no longer have a choice. Such is the nature of commitment.

This is a time without events and destiny.

You must change your life.

The only sure way to quieten the mind is to get into energy – to become imbued in something far more sensuous and enjoyable and real than the thoughts in the head. But it's only really possible to feel energy if the mind is quiet. This is the sort of quandary that life and spirit are designed to solve. Humans, at their best, excel at this sort of problem solving.

Nowadays we have more money than sense.

Strength is generally at the service of ego. This is why those times of illness, injury and exhaustion – times when we are brought low – are so important. Then spirit can slip in and subversively undermine the ego. At the time it isn't registered as such, and it's usually well after the event that we begin to realise that the gentle, seemingly pathetic work we did whilst weak and barely able to function, had such value.

the undulations of the imaginary

Take your chances.

I've met a few people in my time who volunteer in hospices, helping the dying. (I can think of no work more worthy, or more instructive.) What they have all said to me is that terminally ill children generally die with far more grace and joyous acceptance than do adults. If this is the case then we adults learn very little from living life. In fact you could surmise that all we really learn is fear and anxiety.

from veil to veil

A hero refuses fear when everyone else is afraid. Consequently they stick out from the crowd, from the herd. They are afraid neither of being alone nor of being different. In fact they yearn for solitude and authenticity.

An event, at its extremest, is an encounter with death. And every event contains an element of this. Mindfulness is a technique for transforming the dull and ordinary into magical events – sparks of life, intimations of mortality.

We are so close to the gulf that we do not have a run up that is adequate for the take off and for the breadth of the leap.

A mind so light, so bright, so slight, that ego can find no purchase.

Nothing protects the stupid from their stupidity—not even not having read Nietzsche...

Mind in the head presses down on the heart – depresses it – whereas mind in the dantien buoys up the heart.

Only when heaviness settles in the belly will energy rise like a smoke smarting the eyes or a fragrance flooding the nostrils.

In taiji we are constantly uprooting the self.

Like a child's smile – unassuming yet disarming.

Only when the mind stops will you notice energy.

Depression is just top heaviness. To combat, strengthen the legs by sinking into them. The legs should undermine your own mental heaviness, your own stupidity.

Each day He is upon some new task.

give one another your hand and place your finger on your lips – that's the way to make the surest vows

Spirit enters through the cracks in your armour. Without those cracks there is no spirit.

Get out of the head, get out of the heart, get into the belly. Eventually head and heart will fill with what belongs rather than with what you want to put there.

Spirit is buoyed up by sinking. One of the many paradoxes of taiji, which becomes obvious only through practice.

Negative capability. Negative theology. Negative feedback. Feel not just the value but the absolute necessity of unknowing, of not knowing, of not needing to know, of how knowledge is the death of spirit. This is hope.

If one remains silent for a year, one unlearns how to chatter and learns how to speak.

You can't fill the belly with energy and attention if you stuff it with food. Always under-eat. Keep yourself hungry and use the hunger to focus mind in dantien.

Remember that in taiji everything should be natural. So most of the work is struggling to find the mind that allows it to all happen naturally. Such a mind is relaxed of anxiety but tense with spirit.

Magical realism. Spirit reveals this to be tautology.

Taiji – your taiji – should become a vehicle for your spirit. A means to expression at the deepest level. A path to liberation from ego.

a society founded on something other than wealth as value

Always with a song in the heart. Ever with a prayer on the lips.

Serious illness is often just the body saying "I can't go on being slave to this shitty mind." The illness, when used correctly, focuses the spirit on changing the mind – a task that is only attempted when you know you have no choice.

see in spirit something that connects us with nature, not something separating us from it

If you come to class but refuse to practice then somewhere inside you are smirking: at the teacher, at the teaching, and ultimately at your own spirit. You are taking without giving. Such behaviour accumulates bad karma and will eventually backfire. If it isn't already.

an utterly unknowable, unthinkable God, bereft of all names and attributes

Snap out of it! Whatever it is, for God's sake, snap out of it.

Depression is the natural and inevitable side-effect of residing in the head. So, if you're sensibly unwilling to spend the rest of your life indulging some form of antidepressant, be it Zoloft or weed or shopping, then find a new home. We suggest the dantien. But beware because you can't dwell there the way you do in the head. To dwell in dantien requires spirit rather than thinking, a whole new ballgame, a new way of life, way of being. What Heidegger called 'authentic being.'

Hark!

the whole aim of a system is to reach a point where one is free of it

Indulging in convenience weakens both body and spirit. If that isn't obvious then you're not aware.

I hear the grinding, but I don't see any flour.

The ignorance of selfishness, the selfishness of ignorance. There's nothing uglier.

With practice the mediocre student slowly becomes a good student. Without practice the mediocre student quickly becomes a poor student.

Silence is of the gods; only monkeys chatter.

Respect must be exercised and practised if the student wishes to progress. The first line of respect is to do your homework: sacrifice valuable time for the noble cause of diminishing ego and liberating spirit.

Eyes like fingers, fingers of the mind, fingers of the blind – touching, feeling. Touchy-feely.

Worship softness.

calling & scolding 

sparks from speckled fire

Truth is not a matter for verification but a matter of heart.

Weekend workshops tend to attract two types of student: those that want to learn techniques they can take home and practice, and those that want a special experience they can talk about at dinner parties. Unfortunately these two types do not really mix, so you tend to notice a natural segregation taking place over the weekend.

Undivided attention is a thing of the past.

The very last thing people want nowadays is to come into the fullness of their spirit because this would bring a responsibility to use that spirit in the sacrifice of self at the altar of risk.

The ego wants to be god, wants to rule from on high. This is why sinking and relaxing, getting beneath things, under-standing, is such a radical and potentially spirited prospect. It undermines the ego, self, subject.

Meditation enables one to observe first hand the tragic consequences of withdrawing the mind into thought.

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.

Civilization reveals that the long-term result of the institution of ego is depression and dissipation.

The thinking mind shrinks from touch because touch pulls it out of itself – breaks its spell. 

The compassionate mind is always drawn into touch because it lives for connexion and reciprocity.

Develop theurgic power.

above the sacred place, incense again…

Everything a springboard into something quite different.

It isn't the ups and downs that make life difficult; it's the jerks.

Uncover meaning through mindful, careful, attentive doing. It is the only way. Thinking is indulging in something similar – the worst form of laziness.

Bourgeois Fallacy, Part 17: People different from me must be suffering.

the simultaneous transcendence (tanzih) and immanence (tashbih) of God

Use feet and legs to hug the ground rather than to push away from it. More like hands and arms.

If you find yourself unable to do something because you're overweight then lose weight, as a matter of urgency. I remember many years ago on the 253 bus passing through Manor House, a heavily obese lady struggled off the bus, causing some delay. As the bus set off a teenage lout put his mouth to the open window and yelled: 'Lose weight you fat cunt!' A little brutal, I thought, but what terrific advice!

We all put our minds in the dantien, at least once a day, assuming a healthy diet. This is when we shit. The way we grip our guts and squeeze is pretty much how we locate and squeeze the dantien when we project spirit and attention up and out.

Never lock the knees, unless you intend to.

Both aspects – on the one hand, a delicate torsion and, on the other, a minimal indication of weight – help define a subtle equilibrium, a relation of imaginary forces, inwardly felt, which can only be described as unimpeachable pleasure.

Nature bellows – screams in agony – and we look on in faint amusement.

When there are no longer forces in play to temper and control the ego then the species will weaken. This is ontogeny and phylogeny opposing.

A flat even surface underfoot weakens dantien, dampens spirit and encourages the projection of ego. The afternoon promenade.

Everything in our culture, our society, our unnatural environment is designed to bolster the ego. We stand no chance really of ever becoming free.

The medium of touch is the skin. The organ of touch, however, is an invisible membrane: the illimitable surface where sensitive life is emergent in matter.

a rejection of reason, almost aesthetically motivated

The vast majority if not all of our problems can be put down to one thing: lack of spirit. Spirit gives us speed, liveliness, awareness, tone, fearlessness, pluck, connexion, unity.

Spirit, dantien, thymus, even mind, are, for all intents and purposes, muscles, and like muscles they require exercise, nourishment and rest.

Dantien and thymus are a corresponding pair. Unless you can push down into the dantien, push down with the dantien, the thymus will not lift correctly.

(mistrust of metaphysics and rationality, insistence on openness, the idea of 'God' as a construct, a hidden divinity in the soul, a radically generous hermeneutics...)

Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a world?

Don't get too comfortable.

Start the day with something bitter. As my daughter said to me once: I have to start the day with coffee and a cigarette otherwise I don't shit.

Humble means admitting, deep down, you were wrong.

Without error there can be no brilliancy.

Depression is simply lack of tone. An inability to return energy.

Meditation is a vain attempt to make sitting respectable.

At last we have a classless society: a mass of self-interested individuals with zero class.

Dwell in reciprocity.

the wish is gift to the 

spirit, is where we may 

dwell as we would

That niggling doubt – maybe it was all for nought – is our saving grace.

the patience of mourning

Turning the waist in taiji obviously distributes movement centrifugally out from the spine. But perhaps more importantly it gathers mind – perceptions, thoughts, feelings – into the spine, and, crucially, out of the frontal cortex. We are sensitive perceiving creatures in taiji rather than thinking, contemplating beings. Not because thinking is wrong per se but because it is slow and never lively.

The courage to be difficult, to look for difficulty, to generate problems.

Poetry is the happening of truth.

Thinking is a veil between reality and the self. It hinders the true, lively functioning of the mind. It has become possible (and necessary) only because we have designed lives for ourselves that don't require spirit, don't require intense awareness and awakeness. In fact life has become so unnatural, so unreal, that it really helps to sleepwalk through it. Modern life is one of almost total avoidance.

The courage to be different, to step out of line. Not necessarily different to others but different to yourself.

God has given you a favor that guides you toward truth. There is no greater grace than that.