"that unspeakable register which is entirely beyond the capacity of language to represent"

Holy day: time off to contemplate the sacred.

Thinking is an exercise in self importance.

Holiday: the same old shit with a different backdrop.

If you have to feel that your God (or lack of one) is better than mine then you are an insecure bigot.

When you stop holding onto them, the frozen moments melt into a continuum of connexion.

The courage to be different.
The courage to be yourself.

Meditation: stop still, calm down, look deep.

If you're used to calling the shots, a control freak, captured by the illusion of independence, then spiritual progress, which is a process of softening, will always be difficult, painful, an affront to the ego. This is because ego inverts natural values – what is felt to be good is in fact bad and vice versa. We are not suggesting that you become perverse enough to worship what feels bad – become addicted to suffering – but at least be suspicious of what you feel and question the values you place on those feelings.

"How can you style yourself a true Child of Fortune and not wish to avail yourself of spheres of consciousness never previously known to mortal man when a veritable smorgasbord of same is laid out for your delectation?"

Each injunction of Taiji – each principle – from mind in dantien to wardoff, from erect lumbar spine to crown suspended, from turning the waist to stepping like a cat, awakens and configures spirit differently. These configurations are all important, vitally so. Together they constitute our bag of tricks, an arsenal with which to stalk and hunt. This is how we engage the world: as warrior never victim.

Mind in dantien. This is not an intellectual exercise but a physical one, or rather a corporeal or somatic one. An awakening of the belly as centre of the universe and molder of the mind. A life that creates anew the world it prowls through.

Progress is an infinite series of awakenings. It just depends how far you want to take it.

Our work struggles to make a life revolving around something a little more worthy than the moaning mind.

"There's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over."

The teacher inspires – fills full of spirit. They show a new world, a different way of being, so ancient, so natural, so full of wonder that all you ever knew pales and withers. You wonder why you've never been here before, and vow never to leave, never to return to the weak bleak cardboard existence that previously passed for life. But spirit has a price and that price is energy, lots of it. To live this life every drain on your energy must be stopped up, and every moment, spare or otherwise, must be utilized to garner power. You must leave the old for good. In all my life I've met three, maybe four, certainly less than a handful, prepared and willing to take the plunge. God bless them.

Declaiming Whitman at full stentorian boom. Nothing quite like it for raising the spirit.