despite all the barriers of common sense

A quiet mind observes with no desire to comment or judge or criticise. This is compassion—listening. Ultimately it observes itself.

Become aware as leaves are aware
and fine as flowers are fine
and fierce as fire is fierce
and subtle, silvery, tinkling and rippling
as rain-water
and still a man,
but a man re-born from the rigidity of fixed ideas
resurrected from the death of mechanical motion and emotion.

if you wish to feel energy then you must first quieten down and open up, and then have the courage to connect

a poetic image is not just a pleasure
it is a becoming

open the heart and take in the whole of what's there

For me, energy and poetry are pretty much the same thing, and I tend to use the words synonomously. It's all about touch, feeling, heart and, ultimately, soul.

I have become the very lack of me

attend the fringe of feathers : the peripheral vision

in the world yieldingly : unselfconsciously

behind that noisy anxious mind there is a good mood trying to peek out

It's not what you do that matters. It's the quality of the mind you do it with.

seek out the depths of things: irony will never reach down there

Time and again, if we care to notice, it becomes revealed that we don't see what's there: we see what we expect to be there.

paring down

god is a figment of my imagination as i a figment of his

When an insight is taken to heart you don't have to work on it – it will work on you. This is what we mean by falling in love with the work.

                 we can never know,
we can but touch, and wonder, and ponder, and make our effort

we talk to ourselves to protect ourselves from the imagination – from spirit

don't spoil it by trying to feel it

without daily discipline we remain outsiders

It's not about learning what to do but how to do it. Will its doing help you become a better person?

as the ones who greet, the angels bring the joyous to shine, in the clarity of which the ‘nature’ of things and humans is preserved as hale

Just how quiet does one need to be to plumb the depths?

teacher sees where you're going wrong and redirects

When you find yourself silently talking whilst walking then rather than consolidating resentments, recite some heartening text you've learnt by heart – poetry or scripture – or address the earth, the sky, the river, the trees.

the mind we uncover is neither clever, knowledgeable nor cultivated but empty

free minds must learn that it is reasonable to bind their minds to a new teaching and that new responsibilities fall to the freely bound minds

most of us are crushed by the heaviness of our own inner noise

having a knees-up

becoming phenomenologist

The true function of mind is to praise God. Not necessarily with prayer but simply by being intensely awake & aware. Awake to Nature, especially the nature of mind.

I think about myself getting out the way as much as possible.

stopping the mind is effectively renouncing freewill and embracing destiny

soft in the head

natural mind is a fluid medium

Nietzsche lost his mind when he saw where we're heading

What we learn over time is that meditation practice isn’t about producing any particular experience, but about understanding the mind and the nature of experience itself.

the vast vault of sky invites the soul to soar

this is both 'suspended headtop' and 'pluck up the back'

weaning off culture and on to nature

It is both vital and crucial that your practice be social as well as personal. Interacting (playing) with others. Touching Others. Getting feedback.

Everyone wants to know but no one wants to practice. Yet the only thing worth knowing is what to practice and how to practice. Then you find out for yourself.

a health and wholeness found only in exposure to a beyond

gnosis—praxis  (γνῶσις—πρᾶξις)

without this dialectic there is no useful change

an awakeness that bristles with nervous sensitivity

stop being so full of yourself

the only way to systematically cut through ego is with disciplined work

the stream is towards the gods, not backwards, towards man

if there are words then you are anxious

called upon to fight

sink & relax:
dropping a level
dropping a rank

The first stage of taijiquan is learning the form. This is a test — a sign that you are serious enough to practice.

Man is only perfectly human
when he looks beyond humanity.

mind in dantien is our way of pulling ourselves together

heart is the intersection of head and belly

if the work doesn't cheer you up then you're doing it wrong

In my experience the devil's hour is the best for meditation: when most are fast asleep and the world is full of dreaming.

To plant a foot firmly on earth—that is the ultimate achievement, and a far later stage of growth than anything begun in your head. We grow down, and we need a long life to get on our feet.

Strange isn't it when a loved one dies. Their body may be mouldering in the cold clay yet they live more warmly in your heart than you ever allowed in life.

each of us a world

when you allow the sacrum to sink then the heart lifts the earth up to heaven

We have three dantiens: belly, head, heart. The belly connects to Earth, the head to Heaven, and the heart to the Other.

dao is a way of walking

the course a life should slowly take is from the material and into the spiritual – into heart

a strange beauty

meditation:

sit down
shut up
listen!

sacrifice the self on the altar of nobility

hear it in the deep heart’s core

worship is allowing yourself to be overwhelmed by the infinite

love & sacrifice

thymus: the gentle flame that flickers behind the sternum

Taiji is all about balance, natural balance. The teacher's job is to point out where your balance is off — in what way you are biased. Correction is a movement into something more natural.