The living plasm vibrates unspeakably, it inhales the future, it exhales the past, it is the quick of both, and yet it is neither.

a quivering momentaneity

words unspoken

I can't really teach you anything. All I can do is point out what you already know.

The good teacher gives you not information or knowledge, not even wisdom, but things to practise. What I call points of practice.

I fall, more and more,
Into my own silences.
In the cold air,
The spirit
Hardens.

a mind & body

tempered & honed

by unremitting

discipline

embodied & embedded

discipline without force
now there's a tall order

All the oriental martial arts are founded on Riding Horse, something my teacher assured me I would have to seriously practise at some point otherwise there would always be a hole in my foundation, limiting progress. I realise now that the real value of Riding Horse is not so much the strength it builds in the legs but the way it slowly strips the mind of self-pity. Without the grim discipline of Riding Horse, the mind will never naturally sink & settle in the dantien. Riding Horse is the spiritual heart of our art.

for in the tension of opposites all things have their being

from cowardice to courage
from distraction to concentration

to find the true home you must first leave your false home: tribe  family  self

there may be no unteachable children but there are plenty of unteachable adults

A student asked recently why my Zoom classes are all Riding Horse and variations thereof. Well in Taiji the first thing is sink & relax: releasing to gravity to drain out of the upper body and into the legs, and then through the legs and into the earth. Without this there is no Taiji.

The sanctuary of the heart is dark. Nothing can be seen or known there, nothing sought.

we relax chronic tensions and install a dynamic tension we call concentration

intimate & impersonal

attempts to clarify & simplify will inevitably lose detail & nuance

A good teacher is never afraid to say: I don't know. Then she can either keep mum or waffle on regardless.

A human being is God’s being temporarily clothed in human attributes. God’s being is a human being divested of its qualities.

self-awareness requires awareness of the other's awareness of me

infinity is everywhere if only we wake up

reality renders us speechless
this is astonishment

cogito ergo (hic) non sum : I think therefore I am not (here)

there was something subterranean about him, as if he had an underworld refuge

pray for peace
(start with inner peace)

dantien as seat of soul

passion & faith must run soul-deep

Think 'infinite' not as 'enormously large' but as 'endless' or, as we would say in Taiji, 'open ended.' In this sense everything bar human creations are infinite.

the emptiness of being everything at once

a willingness to live metaphorically

tender & petalling

a weather eye : a weather ear

Prayer is a re-minder. It brings you back to mind as site of awareness & devotion, before you have sullied it with thinking. Prayer is also a remembering; a rejoining with the cosmos; a reaching out & in to the infinite.

I am still the place where creation does some work on itself.

When a true artist steps back from their creation they always say the same thing: That wasn't me.

follow your nose

take up the slack

The teacher offers intimations of what you would experience if only your mind was more focused and your energy a little stronger. You still have to do the work to bring about that inner probity. No one can do it for you.

The Imagination is not a State: it is Human Existence itself.

keep an ear to the ground

tighten your belt

the good student has won the battle over their own incorrigiblity

In the same way that countries that have only known war are terrified of peace, so people who have only known noise & distraction are terrified of silence. The real enemy is always fear.

I have with me all that I do not know
I have lost none of it

if you wish to experience reality in all its visceral intensity then be present at a birth

the birth of each & every moment

like an eager schoolchild on the edge of their seat with interest