glad tidings

never unmindful

The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze.

the teacher is conjurer of spirit and enemy to ego

essence

energy

spirit

principles everywhere

the teacher demands the respect you would give an enemy

we've got to be hotter than high school love

thinking stops the flow

the teacher is not a friend

the wise wound

teacher always knows best

if you allow exceptions then you will always pick and choose

The tension is between concealment and revelation.

without early trauma the student would not have the drive to do the work

the good student knows from experience that quick fixes never hold

the statements of the teacher are not opinions to be argued with but pedagogical devices to be taken to heart

in a sense the enemy is doubt

so always give the benefit of the doubt

this is a continuous process otherwise the critical mind has a field day and you will be pinned to the spot by your own opinions

appreciation of difference, not just similarity, is necessary for a more inclusive and compassionate world

the student's most powerful weapon is their love of hard work

ugliness is a refusal to listen

dance with spirit

the wisdom of the group
this is what we miss

In Ireland the song is more important than the singer. The singer’s job is to sing the song. So you never ever put yourself into the song, you put the song into the song. If you didn’t do that, as a singer, people would despise you.

attend class to receive instruction and correction

a chastening rather than pleasurable experience

become attractive to spirit

open to love

listening is not just a willingness to hear but a willingness to be transformed by what you hear

A rare and delicate mood, a feeling of wonderful light-heartedness had taken hold of me.

ego always lies

it never has access to truth

connected but not attached

inclined to gratitude

with fortitude & calm 

and without complaint

I'm less interested in skin than in fascia—connective tissue.

quietly & steadily persevering

never mind

meditation: patiently waiting for the messiah

Imagine a room full of furniture. There is a person in the room endlessly rearranging the furniture, never satisfied. This is the noisy mind. One day the person sees how senseless this activity is so sits down and relaxes. This is quiet mind. Then they notice how cluttered the room is and remove the furniture. Empty mind. Now they begin to sense a universe beyond this room and dismantle it brick by brick. No mind.

technology simultaneously frees up our time and distracts us to no end

flashes of intense living

quiet mind

empty mind

no mind

meditation: exploring the boundaries of consciousness 

only possible with empty mind

only a relaxed body can work on relaxing the mind

This is what life is: the passage of time. It’s not about how to pass the time, but about the acceptance of the time passing. I know people think of my work as spiritual, but really it’s just that I consume time. That’s all.

maybe the meaning of life only reveals itself to a quiet mind

with work the dantien becomes lung, heart and gut

learn to control the mind rather than indulge it 

retrieve silence as a natural state

with daily practice the student develops gravitas

It is not the hearing that improves life, but the listening.

meditation opens long time, where a unit of time is the breath rather than the fleeting thought

choose the choiceless life

practice is all about transformation

on the short term
with practice you become
better at something

on the long term
with practice you become
a better person

I lower myself through
oesophageal stones

into dens of scent

it is not our nature to be egocentric

we work really hard at it for most of our life

the bleat of the bourgeoisie: 

what's in it for me!

The good student practises all the time.
The poor student never practises.
The mediocre student is sometimes good and sometimes poor.

In this sense we are all mediocre students
of one degree or another.

The work is to become a good student.

What's important is that the work gets done, not that you enjoy it.

But if you do enjoy it it may get done better. Or you may get carried away and stray off course.

So be it.

Faith is not a safe harbor but risky business.

the mediocre student feels the value of practice

the good student feels the need to practice

Hope gets short shrift nowadays, but without hope nothing of value would get done. And without hope the teacher wouldn't be able to bear the sight of you.

the teacher knows what is best for you 

expect pain

meditation threads beads

each breath a bead 

eventually you have a necklace 

careful it doesn't break

It must all be considered as if spoken by a character in a novel.

Have you had a wow moment today?
If you really woke up then every moment would take you by surprise.

work comes out of work

when we give attention to our internal chatter, then we practise mindlessness

full attention is the price of admission to the present moment
anything less and we miss the point

This art has his secret, which is in general not to flaunt substance (charcoal, ink, oil paint) but to permit it to linger.

perceiving mind is of the present

direct the attention away from the chaotic chattering of the ego and into the naturally quiet centre in your belly

Mind in dantien is not the same as dantien in mind; you are not bringing an image of a point in the belly up into the head, but relaxing, quietening and above all sinking the mind into the belly. Mind in dantien is the mental equivalent of Sink & Relax.

thinking mind is always behind the times

success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself

quiet mind seeps into time

mind in dantien is an embodied mind, a mind not just in the body but of the body

the good student flourishes on the minimum of instruction

Once, during a class, I decided to add my tuppence worth to something my teacher had said. He let me finish and then said, "I have problems enough with my own ego without having to contend with yours as well." The class is a fragile site of magical transmission. Best keep quiet and listen or you may miss out on the spirit.

As every poet or painter knows, the best creative work comes from a state of total absorption, when your mind is completely quiet.

I had a nightmare the other night. It was identical to the one that used to wake me as a child.

Fifty years and still no change.

meditation should be an event of spirit
but you can't force it
just wait and hope for the best

life throbs with gifts of spirit 

enter this economy by giving some yourself

Meditation is a time-space where you sit quietly, with as vertical a spine as you can manage without becoming stiff, and allow the body to become a church – a spire – a site of rising, worshipping spirit.

If sex was the great taboo of the nineteenth century, death is the great one of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

basically spirit comes from god and ego from satan
whom do you serve?

make no mistake

when you find energy more captivating than the contents of the mind then progress is assured

ego turns a critical eye on the world and a blind eye to itself 

try reversing if only for a moment

I have my pace and way of living, and I'm not looking for something.

ego is the badge of membership for society 

without it you cannot partake

when you meet someone with spiritual maturity they seem to glow but really they have become transparent 

holding onto nothing

We tend to clench the jaw and the anus. These tensions spread from jaw to cranium, neck and shoulders, and from anus to sacrum, coccyx, sacroiliacs, hips and groin. Part and parcel of the ego: keeping us neat and tidy but also preventing energetic communication with the world. An enormous price to pay.

in breathing become the ocean's ebb and flow

Revelation is a process, more tide than wave.

ego responds to otherness by rejecting or assimilating 

colonising subjectivities

judge yesterday's practice by how wretched you feel today

ego builds the world it can manage 

spirit is of the reality beyond this world

work that has taken you deeper and shown glimpses of a new home will always leave you feeling lost and out of sorts

This journey requires a willingness to say goodbye to life as we know it because our heart is longing for something more.

anything & everything becomes an ego trip : this is why spiritual work is so difficult : only a tiny fraction of practice is true 

the good student knows this and lives with this : their solution is to practise all the time

the main feature of the ego is its incessant chatter : to reinforce itself and block out the other : insecurity

The teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty.

beauty, softness, energy, listening, awareness, truth 

there is a sense in which these words are interchangeable

thinking can have no intercourse with miracles

'bum in' is not really a postural adjustment but a release of the sacroiliac joints

selfishness is inherently ugly

and there is no nobility in bringing more ugliness into the world

speculate about a spontaneously self-generated dynamism, i.e., energy, as the ultimate state of the universe

spirit is always available 

just get in the mood

I think that one’s art is just one’s effort to wed oneself to the universe

practice is a little time each day when you endeavour to be a better person

Given that the student is a real student (willing to practise) there are two prerequisites: a natural inquisitiveness – the ability to start something entirely familiar and quickly find something new and fascinating in it; and the ability to tolerate the intolerable, because pretty soon it all becomes unbearable.

the ego, our window on the so-called real world, is really a kind of fiction

if we used the legs correctly – softly, intelligently – as though they are us rather than belong to us – then mind in dantien would be natural, and the knees would last a lifetime

There is a burden here, and it is the weight of the familiar.

outside all sweetness and light
inside as cold as the arctic wind

the work helps us understand why this must be so

a saint is someone who through dint of practice has transformed all their resentment into compassion 

this their miracle

spirit opens up risk

what makes it so difficult is distraction
so become undistractible

A sense that you may take leave beneath thorn and elder, and stray beyond the verge of yourself.

an emptiness pregnant with potential
but a potential free of thought

practice with love
no sense of punishing

mindfulness starts as a level of care
later it develops into compassion

tense shoulders indicate head-mind
relaxed shoulders heart-mind

The land inhabits, just as it is inhabited. Everything is reciprocal. Equal and opposite.

body-as-one-unit is only possible when the body is unified with the other components of being – mind spirit energy – and when that being is itself in harmony with the rest of creation

dantien is like the eye of the storm – a quiet place inside for mind to settle, observe and direct the party

don't worry 

ruminate

rain as image of gravity – falling 

running faucet as image of gravity – flowing 

tears as image of gravity – breaking

Single the sky, pulled taut above earth 

single the sky, above water. Bound 

to bark and leaves. You are solo.

belly a cauldron of steaming rice 

steam rises, smarts the eyes 

eyes tear

tension, hardness, force
all feed the ego

de (virtue) is the quality of harmonising with dao (way)

in walking let go the self & flow from the earth
as though by magic

form can be formless

we have experiences not to form opinions or garner dinner party material but to change 

in this sense every experience, if you use it right, can be a point of practice

only by taking the teacher's word for it do you then have the courage and interest to do the work of finding out for yourself

knowledge is not information you contain but a change you undergo

we are the only creatures on the planet who produce waste that cannot be put to good use by any other creatures 

we are inherently toxic and unnatural

The artist’s technical problem is how to transform the material with which he works back into the sphere of the spirit.

it all starts (and ends) with one simple instruction: sink & relax
without that it's all pie-in-the-sky

practice is the process of finding out for yourself

meditation: let the dust settle

When an experience ends, the long process of rumination, digestion, transformation commences. This can be difficult – even painful. But if you smother it, by rushing into the next experience, you will forever remain shallow.

An Age of Perfect Virtue

there was a time when reaching a ripe old age meant you'd got something right 

nowadays it just means you have access to good healthcare

humanity and nature don't really mix

sit, breathe and unwind

this lonesome journey into wholeheartedness

The most important tool the artist fashions through constant practice is faith in his ability to produce miracles when they are needed.

the last thing the comfortable classes want nowadays is a teacher

disappear into energy

the work peels away culture and exposes nature

follow the way of heaven rather than the way of men

covered more and more with the cloud of his own obscurity

make the world a better place 

it's the least you can do

sometimes you have to go backwards to find the right path

remember it's a process 

ups & downs

live a quiet life 

die a quiet death

a teacher of the internal will always make life uncomfortable – this is their job

Entering the meditation hall 

I see my true self.

As I sit down

I vow to cut off all disturbance.

all our problems stem from tension in the legs

imagine headtop as skylight

in one sense rooted in the here & now where everything matters but in another sense embedded in deep time – a geological time – where nothing really matters

the heart
can hear

the next level is attained when you accept that it will probably always elude you

language was invented to make anxiety acceptable

sink & relax

mind in dantien

energy not force

everything from spirit

there comes a point where you simply relax into who you are rather than hold onto an image of who you'd like to be or who you think you are

then you're inside gazing out rather than outside trying to get in

consciousness is a fundamental quality that exists everywhere and in everything

you are the way you are not because of who you are but because of what is on your mind and until you let that go you will never really know anything

it's okay to be human but try your best not to be

anxious mind is in ego, relaxed mind in heart

two rules: the work must get done; never work against the grain

become expert at getting in the mood

the ancients believed that the ability to think and the functions of the spirit all evolve from the heart

trust your destiny – your connexion with the dao

always perfect despite what you think

our only hope – as individuals and as a species – is to learn to sink into energy

practice: going through the motions

if you can't meditate sitting down then you won't be able to meditate standing up

the perfect man uses his heart like a mirror without rejecting or welcoming anything

ego is made up of layer upon layer of anxiety