nature will always hide from a noisy mind

if they're not for you then they're against

Each nugget the teacher offers will change your life forever if you work with it. And if you don't then it won't make the slightest difference.

I work to feel better. I produce things to help me to live. Living and working is a matter of coming to terms with, to face up to, what comes out of you.

there's so much going on in the background
meditation brings it forward

D O N ' T   W O R R Y

let everything take your breath away and inspire

A friend here in psychoanalysis – thrice weekly for three years – said yesterday: "At last, I've stopped lying." Quite an achievement, I thought. I'm not sure I have.

What is a transcendental field? It can be distinguished from experience in that it doesn’t refer to an object or belong to a subject. It appears as a pure stream of a-subjective consciousness, a pre-reflexive impersonal consciousness, a qualitative duration of consciousness without a self.

if the critical mind cannot turn back on itself then it does more harm than good

before  beneath  beyond

self-correction may seem an impossibility but it becomes the function of daily practice

When we feel our worst: weak, tearful, vulnerable, defenceless, we are often, energetically, at our best. When you come to terms with this then progress is assured.

before and beneath the cognitive chatter going on up above

cultivate a sense of astonishment

apophatic : cataphatic

yin : yang

turn to heart
tune to earth

Real work starts when forced to look at the self.

Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

When I was young I read poetry for its philosophy – its deep hidden meanings. Now I read philosophy for its poetry – its evocative sensuality. A slow drift from head to heart.

permanently on call

endless patience

to be truly soft you need a core of steel
or maybe granite is a better image

How is it possible to speak of God? But then again, how is it possible not to?

this protracted process of falling in love with softness

detachment & releasement

quality of life depends largely on how you (choose to) respond to stress

not to know or understand but to be in a process of becoming

having the right touch in reading a text, a light touch that does no injury to its subject matter

don't allow yourself the luxury of choice

lives consumed by consuming

there is a real danger in always avoiding danger

positing beauty we create ugliness
positing happiness we create unhappiness

Is there a difference between happiness and inner peace? Yes. Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.

soul: a sense of self antithetical to ego

not for the faint hearted

poetics demands praxis
and vice versa

The only way you'll do the work is if you know you have no choice. No one in their right mind would choose it.

Love is not personal.

prayer is the keeping alive of connexion by intentionally remembering

the emptier the mind
the fuller the heart

God: the (w)holy other

You know how hurtful it feels when you realise the person you are talking to is not listening? This is how the natural world feels all the time. Nature is biding her time.

Humans are no longer capable of creating or sustaining gods.

give new students space & time
and see if they catch the taiji bug

negative & nebulous

spirit is simply the ability to believe : the energy required to sustain an energetic-imaginative reality

If words come into the head then you are thinking rather than sinking. Mutually exclusive activities.

They are so silent they are in another world.

if you wish to get into energy then you must quieten the mind

earth settles us down
sky cheers us up
(when not resisting)

each step forward a release into lightness and light

Relative to the hips, the knees rise. Relative to the knees the hips sink. Levity & gravity. Lightness & heaviness. Different ways of looking at the same phenomenon.

where meaning is so discreet as to become a rarity

to maintain daily practice one must develop a conscience

heed the call to prayer

to connect to the outside we must first connect to the inside

listen
tinsel

silent
inlets

I think I would rather fail to teach a good lesson than fail to light my morning fire.

for me taiji is not a hobby – a dabbling – it is life itself

to connect with the above we must first connect with the below