a person's attitude to pain reveals more about his future than almost any other sign I know

relax the mind into the body

real knowledge cannot be taught
you must discover it yourself

it is by metaphor that we grow

A teaching couched in words is mere food for thought whereas a teaching expressed with spirit is a stimulus to action or what my teacher called a call to arms.

The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you and dedicate your life to it.

Discipline gives us the requisite tone. It needs to be constantly renewed – reintensified – otherwise it slackens. Always look to up the ante.

a radical innocence

meditation: relaxing into bicamerality

The most common imperative in a Taiji class is Relax! and the most common response from students is How do I relax?

The instruction is: Put your mind in the tension and it will dissolve. This doesn't really help much because most people nowadays have an undisciplined mind that cannot be still or empty. Most minds are permanently and neurotically full of words and worry. So the first stage to any internal work is learning to quieten the mind, and this requires meditation. Indeed this is the definition of meditation: quietening the mind, or training the mind to be aware rather than think.

not fabrications easy as eiderdown
that prettify lies

meditation is like the rest of life: 99% bullshit you endure for the sake of the 1% pure gold

far better practise something wrong than not practise at all

an adult mind that has previously undergone disciplined training (education) will be easier to retrain than a raw uneducated mind

Relax the jaw by putting your awareness (mind) there. Imagine it melting down into the shoulders. Now relax the shoulders similarly. Imagine them melting down into the hips. Now relax the hips with mind. Imagine them melting down into the Earth. Simple.

excessive talking & thinking 

turn you from harmony with the dao 

cut off talking & thinking

and there is nowhere you cannot penetrate

honour your superstitions – gateways to the real

meditation: sitting still within the seething

Turning and returning in a narrowing gyre
The falcon espies the falconer.

We distinguish two types of tension: 

• unhealthy (chronic) tension – a fearful holding on, especially in the jaw, shoulders and hips; 
• healthy (dynamic) tension – a responsive elastic tone or tautness in the fascia and muscles that enables energy to flow. 

Unhealthy tension always works against healthy tension. It blocks energy.

Too many choices America. It's not healthy!

retrain the mind a site of pure awareness (emptiness) rather than thinking (fullness)

this can be a lifetime's task in itself

difficult & necessary

when the words stop then spirit is never far away

nowhere else you'd rather be
nothing else you'd rather do

growth & comfort do not mix

relax to find the correct tension

dispel despondency

fighting the forces of depression with cheerfulness & encouragement

so much unhappiness is due to confounded expectations so to be happy expect nothing

A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.

principles help you tighten up your act

truth is always unpopular

tension is great as long as it releases when necessary
without tension there would be no work

To break the grip of cultural conditioning – of orthodoxy – upon your being you must become a heretic and an outsider – an outlier. Work on what's culturally unworthy, offensive and taboo.

As I do these things, so shall ye do them, and greater.

it doesn't matter how much instruction you've received, you still have to find it all out for yourself through dint of hardwork

disciplined & rebellious

jesus never meant to be worshipped
he meant to be emulated

A while ago I was driving home tired, drifted off and clipped the central reservation with the car. Nothing serious but it didn't half wake me up, and I was wide awake for the rest of the journey. Sometimes (oftentimes) we need a jolt, a shock, to bring us to our senses and into full awareness. We must learn to do this to ourselves otherwise we fail to make the most of valuable practice time.

impervious in the ordinary way to every form of weather except the dead calm

good energy is the product of correct attitude: a cheerful openness to alterity

meditation: attending the moment as it unfolds

for most 'truth' is a label given to what they have been told is true

ensure your cheerfulness is true and not an attractive front with sinister designs for stealing energy

Space and time
Are not the mathematics that your will
Imposes, but a green calendar
Your heart observes

on the alert for a new model, a new image, because ego always manages to requisition the old one

meditation: training mind to be a source of good energy rather than self-interest

we only get better by pushing through difficulty

In Taiji the mind graciously relinquishes control so spirit can mobilise the energy which then moves the body.

I load myself down with chains and try to wriggle free.

is ego a virus?

when the end is nigh the work takes on a certain urgency

a sure sign of progress is finding more and more of your time being consumed by the work

Quell the infernal internal chatter. It all hinges on this.

It’s so normal to want a better life; it’s so unusual to set out to be a better person.

the good student thrives on the barest minimum of instruction

ego is personal : spirit impersonal

redeeming a remedial soul

It is imperative that the shift from head to heart, which is the intent of the work, goes via the belly.

it is important that the subject open itself up to an alterity and cease being folded upon itself in an interminable and torturous speech

zealous endeavour and assiduous effort

meditation is an acquired taste

Occasionally sit before a mirror so that when the mind seems impossible to pacify, you can glance up and see your calm serene reflection. Fake it till you make it.

Become aware of the background, what's implied rather than stated, the less than obvious, otherwise you'll never leave the thinking mind and dwell peacefully in the body.

I will urge my camel on until I am free from the bonds of space and time

practice religiously, that is, whether you feel like it or not

viscoelasticity

through dint of sheer hard work

the world of energy will open up to you only when you manage to break the stranglehold that language has on your mind

I on the earth will go plodding on,
By myself, cheerfully, till the day is done.

stay open otherwise you'll block reality as it unfolds/enfolds

when words cease then the mind works at a very different rhythm
language draws us into the pedestrian – the plod

no matter how tough your teacher was, one day you'll look back and wish they'd been a lot tougher

Two things need to happen to produce decent Taiji: 

• upper and lower bodies need to join 
• left and right sides need to separate

the whole is real : division is conceptual

practice generates interest
but you must discover this for yourself

meditation: becoming naked before your maker

having an opinion doesn't constitute thinking for oneself – if only it were that easy

ego institutes a world so it needn't be bothered by reality

our intellectual imagination has to overflow the humanist imprint

it's not a matter of learning something new but of becoming something old

turning worst enemy (head) into best friend (heart) – this is compassion – yielding

you'll only pin it down if you kill it first

attend the equilibrium : contrary flows creating an illusion of stillness, a reality of softness

at the root there’s no me

spirit is the energy of the liminal
neither one nor the other

meditation: dwelling in suspense and suspension

truth cannot be stated or spoken
it is revealed when you become quiet

Before my teacher started Taiji in 1967 he was a folk singer. I asked him once if he liked Bob Dylan. He said he loved the tunes but not the lyics. I asked why, since Dylan always sang about freedom, and his reply was telling: I already had far too much of that sort of freedom. The ego is not meant to be free. It's job is to look after the animating spirit. It is rightly shepherd of being rather than a being in and for itself. When it gets ideas above its station it desperately needs to be knocked down to size otherwise it will quickly become like a spoilt child.

Small minds cannot grasp great ideas; to their narrow comprehension, their purblind vision, nothing seems really great and important but themselves.

the mind will always find an excuse

weed out the time-wasters

let the words return to what they leave unsaid

All religions say the same: the union of Father Sky and Mother Earth produced us all. Each of us, in essence, a Jesus or a Buddha: children of God, at heart. The task of life is to peel away the endless layers of conditioning so that our essentially divine nature is revealed.

What is hell? Hell is oneself.

If, as the song says, the ugliest part of the body is the mind, then the most beautiful is surely the heart. And the best way to work on the heart is to attend to the needs of the other.

meditation: marvelling at what is revealed when the mind is allowed to clear of the fug of self

when we properly relax, mind as we know it disappears

sitting on the cushion, slipping into a form, should feel like coming home

You’re momentary, ephemeral, 

Aflutter like a flame caught in a gale.

you are god's creation

ego is your creation 

which is more interesting?

work gives hope

meditation: daily soul-searching

To begin with, practice is desultory at best. But slowly, as you start to appreciate its value and its necessity, it will gain consistency and regularity until the whole day contains a gentle thread of concentration.

Language is a genetic defect with no immunology.

the mediocre student wants the teacher to agree with them
the good student wants the teacher to correct them

meditation: conjuring a mirage by presenting a visage

meditation: a time we endeavour to fill with joy

The most important thing in Taiji (as in Life) is listening. Yet we invest so much energy in protecting ourselves from what we don't want to hear.

The touch must be very brave and very gentle.

We are all in love with the sound of our own voice. Why else would we chat to ourselves all the time?

those with big egos don't like to bend their legs

the bourgeoisie demand everything on their own terms

The reason most people don't get poetry is because they can't read. Reading is not just stringing words together meaningfully; it is becoming what those words signify. It is fundamentally emotional (energetic) rather than rational (sensible).

Joy is escaping because we are caught in a swirl of permanent excitement.

just because you understand what the teacher is saying, doesn't mean you can do what the teacher is doing

a tattoo is a useful reminder of how stupid you once were

eschew sensitivity that shrinks from the real

Ego is built upon a foundation of tension in the hips and lower back, so relaxing and softening this area is the most direct means of undermining ego.

swiftly don the armour of your perseverance to still the troubles of your mind

bear in mind that if you disagree you probably haven't listened

never stop delving

the ego's job is to keep out the real by instituting a world

Listening is not simply attending to what the other says, it is putting yourself in their shoes.