Practice requires a ritual formality – a structure – about which, within which, the Internal can manifest.

After complaining to my teacher about some injury I'd picked up through practice, he looked at me witheringly and snarled: "The only thing in life you can rely on is pain, so get used to it!"

art for me is the science of freedom

The good student works not out of choice but out of necessity.

If you were suddenly faced with a life or death situation then you'd meet a stranger – your spirited being.

Everyone is an artist. 
—Joseph Beuys 

This doesn't mean that everyone can create good art it just means that it is the responsibility of each and everyone of us to locate something of beauty within ourselves and then share it with the world.

Most so-called spiritual disciplines (sic) I have encountered, especially the wishy-washy New Age varieties, have lacked one vital ingredient, namely spirit.

My refusing to eat meat occasioned inconveniency, and I have been frequently chided for my singularity. But my light repast allows for greater progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension.

Every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food.

This was also my teacher's conviction. He was a strict vegan since the early eighties.

I was recently asked if I'm a Christian.
"Absolutely not!" I replied, "I hate Christ!"
And then I added,
"But I'm totally in love with Jesus!"
That fucked them.

And why am I in love with Jesus? Because every time I call that name he comes. Without fail. Ever since I first heard it. And he places his hand ever so gently on my back and whispers in my ear: "I love you!" And hearing that from him is amazing. It's like he's saying: "It's OK! It's OK to be YOU!"

Free not to do what we want but to do what needs to be done. A freedom structured by a deep sense of service rather than selfishness.

Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.

Socrates was regarded, in his time, as the wisest man in Athens, yet he would always declare: "I know nothing and I have never been anyone's teacher." In other words, wisdom has nothing to do with what you know and everything to do with the process of unknowing – always questioning both knowledge and the values upon which such knowledge is based.

Meditation reveals that we are entitled to absolutely nothing. Even the next breath must be worked for.

We have all been set a Herculean task: become ourselves.

What is the nature of the reality that reveals itself when my ego withdraws? This is the question at the root of all spiritual endeavour.