Spirit is the spark of courage that takes you beyond what you know.

unflinching, unhesitating, and unwavering

Perhaps nearness to death will bring light into my life.

Compress time. Squeeze out deadspace. Join into one flow. Then stretch it out as much as possible. This is meditation.

Wherever there is choice there is indecision. Then energy inevitably leaks.

Your Taiji, in its own little way, re-enchants the world.

Tread lightly

Movement is good for the body. Stillness is good for the mind.

Minds too heavy to see their place.

Mind, at its best, is a lightness, a slightness, a gentle tightness – a configuration of spirit – a heuristic activity.

a mind of obedience
an energy of obedience

In the world playfully.

in the work it is truth that is at work

In the world prayfully.

it takes so long just getting ready to begin

The older you get, the more total the work, the life, the everything.

from the earth
back into earth

the main point of any spiritual practice is to step out of the bureaucracy of ego

less boundary than fragrance

Sink & relax. Sink in the sense of immersion or envelopment as much as sinking down. Sinking into. Like sinking into unconsciousness.

Let the Earth's song sing up into you. Only then will the Earth receive yours.

The more advanced you become the simpler the work but the deeper you take it.

I’ve always felt that I have a world of warriors right behind me, hovering at my shoulders.

Worry is mind distracted by itself. It is marked by a shift of attention from energy to talk.

Ultimately it's all about sacrifice. Yet all we really need to sacrifice is our right to worry. Can you get by – indeed flourish – without that?

it's all in the quality of the return

It is the teacher's job to wrench you out of your box – to confound rather than confirm – so expect the unexpected, expect discomfort.

understanding isn’t something we possess but something we do

with respect to

Slow down, relax, breathe and smile. Come back to your energy. Exist responsibly and respectfully. An ethical comportment. 

Sometimes an instruction can feel strange and unnatural. Our task is not just to do as we're told but, through practice, to find the mind for which such an instruction is the most natural thing in the world. This, ultimately, requires a change of heart.

Meditation

Feel the perineum between the sitting bones. Imagine it getting tighter and heavier, pulling up into itself but wanting to sink down to the floor. Next feel the headtop. It is probably further back than you think. Place a middle finger gently to help locate it. Imagine this point opening and lightening, like a blooming lotus that wants to float to the ceiling. The line between headtop and perineum should be vertical, and all three dantien (belly, heart, brain) are on this line. Occasionally sit in front of a mirror to make sure your head is straight. Be quiet and still, yet attend the breathing, the part that is obviously moving. Feel the simple pleasure in exchanging with the world. Something enters; something leaves. Give to the exhale completely, hold nothing back. Feel the breath organically marking time. Smile deeply. Empty the head, fill the belly but dwell in the heart. Return to your compassionate self.

Don’t assume the posture of a wilted flower.

spaces that resonate with stories

Force offers short term solutions but creates long term problems.

Live with death by your side, spurring you on. Nothing focuses and hones the spirit quite like the promise of death.

Spiritual work prepares you for death. Death is ever present for the spiritual adept, so when it comes it's no big deal. The modern bourgeois desire to live long – to avoid (facing) death for as long as possible – is fear based and has no spiritual content.

remain within the nimbus of your silence

move soundlessly

The end of the line is madness. Not many have the heart or stomach for this.

the more gilded your cage the less inclined you are to leave it

Practice is done in solitude. It is antisocial – time spent reaching beyond the human and into the natural. The main thing keeping us trapped in the human is language.

until this love becomes a wide and silent adoration

Spirit pulls things together. Spirit pushes things apart. This is the paradox at the heart of the work, at the heart of everything.

We are out of control. We desperately need to be reduced. As individual Egos and as the over-dominant species.

spirit is the frisson between yin and yang

Your best weapon is your smile. It doesn't cut or stab, it softens and melts.

find the work for which you are suited and do it

Practise what you preach, otherwise you're nothing but a charlatan.

gratuitous acts of kindness kindle an infectious spirit

It's just a matter of time. Time and timing.

Give yourself to your connexions. Let them run the show. Heaven and Earth. Only through connexion do we come to the fullness of our being, of which consciousness is a tiny part.

what is being left behind no longer has the old attraction

there is a charge to stillness and a release to movement

a light touch, a delicacy and reserve

freedom is the absence of choice

An aching desire to worship. This brings us to our work. The need to empty of self in order to fill with something unimaginably better. Human giving rather than human being.

If you look too deeply everything breaks your heart.

stepping stone rather than set in stone

Take the spotlight off ego/self and put spirit/energy centre stage. This is practice.

Passing through the legs and into the ground rather than sitting atop them.

When mind is empty, heart and head are one.

as if all my pores were undiscovered ears

Always overriding heart with head? Time to turn the tables. But for heart to be an effective leader it needs to become really big, big enough to embrace and hold a world. Similar to the head but softer, much softer.

Can't get something off your mind? Calling out for prayer.

a fresh slant on a familiar practice

A phenomenology of spirit. Looking minutely at the working and workings of spirit. But the spirit of heart (compassion) rather than the spirit of head (mind).

If you lived in outer space, there would be no uprightness.

In meditation we attend the breath. As the breathing relaxes and the out-breath extends, it harmonises with the breathing of your energy – your craniosacral rhythm. Like sitting on the beach and watching the waves.

Ego: a cesspool of desires, choices, opinions, doubts and complaints.

We use force, we try to control, all to get our own way. By doing so we don't let things happen for us – we scupper our own luck, our hap.

The teacher strives to give the student glimpses of their true self. The student finds these glimpses difficult and demanding, and struggles to assimilate them into the false self – the Ego. This is the endless battle between teacher and student. We are all, ultimately, poor students.

constant spirit & steadfast energy

The only way to encounter true self is to forget false self. We achieve this by losing ourselves in practice.

Instead of spending a life collecting experiences – moving from one sensation to the next – work to produce good energy and understanding.

Work is the refining of energy. The transformation of coarse into fine. It has a good effect.

The critical mind sees separation and so produces separation. The compassionate mind sees unity and so produces unity.

surrounded by the magnifying energies of silence

Depression is a luxury we can't afford. Time is too short. Our responsibility is to ensure we have energy positive enough to do life justice. To always give something back.

Worry is whatever prevents us seeing the bigger picture, from realising compassionate mind.

Live today as though there were no yesterday. No habits to repeat. Everything for the first time.

Wear yourself out. This is life. Giving till there's nothing more to give. Then having the good grace to die.

If we possess our why of life we can put up with almost any how. Man does not strive after happiness; only the Englishman does that.

Spirit always struggles to escape the box it finds itself in. This is its nature. This is Life.

Those with great spirit generally have very messy lives. This is because spirit, if nothing else, causes trouble. But they also understand life sufficiently to have it no other way.

Spirit is the spice of life. Without it things are flat, predictable, tasteless.

Never fight the Ego. It fights dirty and you'll never win. Just learn to ignore it. This is practice. We just get on with it despite the protests.

multiple witnesses around the central masquerades of reality

Taijiquan is a martial art. It is not about happiness or peace or harmony, it is about fighting. Are you ready, willing, itching to fight? The bourgeoisie find this really distasteful, and that's all the confirmation we need. As the Daodejing tells us, the Dao resides in those places the respectable fear to venture.

Spirit is the source of endless invention. This is why someone with spirit is never bored and never idle. A living teaching is one with spirit.