With long dedicated practice the mind quietens, awareness opens & deepens, and the here & now extends spatially & temporally to include everything.

We have language. That is how we have become superficial. We have lost our depth because we have language. There is no language for the silent expression.

awareness   consciousness   love
these are interchange

most hearts are crushed by heavy minds

peace & contentment come when you relocate to dantien

With mind-in-dantien, you see the world as it is, uncoloured by you. It's our way of distancing from the head.

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

cancer is any uncontrollable growth

swirl & sway

the function of internal work is not to become more skilled but more empty

Energy is a label we give anything nuanced that tends to be masked by the noisy mind.

Let us leave theories there and return to here's hear.

our bourgeois comforts are precisely protection against God

meditation establishes the ground from which we spring

most I teach are far too squeamish for the truth

Students must realise that it's not the money they pay the teacher that makes the teaching flow, but the practice they put in before each lesson. Without practice the teacher will not be inspired to teach.

all that will be left of you
will be a tendency to shine

relax recede withdraw into the wings of awareness

find your weakness then work on it

as soon as you look at something you're distracted

Mind-in-dantien does not mean think-about-dantien. It means experience the world as though from the dantien. Put things in perspective.

The true teacher reveals the light whereas the false one stands in its way.

wherever there is touch there is magic

thoughtless awareness

truth is not veracity or actuality but whatever sinks one deeper

When I was a young teenager my mother had a friend from work who would often spend time with us. She was very nice, though a bit posh, clearly a class above, but I liked her. On one occasion we were all out together in the local shopping precinct when she spotted a black person (this was the early 70s). 'Oh I hate the blacks!' she blurted,'They should all go back to where they come from!' She never mentioned blacks again but from that moment on I found it very difficult to like her.

He laughed to free his mind from his mind's bondage.

knowledge & information tend to pedantry – no energy

dantien is a hole in the ground
you must die to get there

a resentful rationalism

We think ourselves so nice & reasonable & respectable, yet it is our lifestyle that is destroying the planet, and as soon as that lifestyle feels threatened we become ugly murderous monsters.

Silence questions certitudes and dissolves apparent binary opposites. It reconfigures absence as presence, emptiness as fullness, quietness as expressivity, stillness as intensity of life.

nothing more beautiful than an empty room

if you feel this then you may possibly commence the work of emptying the mind

indigenous peoples are more in tune with nature – external & internal

hood the eyes: withdraw the line of vision into dantien

Dantien is a dungeon for self. When we finally get down there and throw away the key, the world opens up and we see it for the first time. Then the dragon can fly.

we’re all bozos on the bus

dynamic equilibrium: everything is moving yet the system is balanced
or as my teacher put it:
all is energy and everything is in its rightful place

nowadays people don't want magic they want fun

LIFE'S BREAKTHROUGHS 

1. leave home 

2. find a teacher 

3. commit for life 

4. turn the attention back on the self

The name of our game is balance or equilibrium or harmony. So my sympathies are always going to be with indigenous people rather than with the colonisers who attempt to replace them. Indigenous people naturally live in harmony with their environment.

we are always the problem we are trying to solve in the world

taiji handles the other without getting into a fight

heart & soul

People ask how I find the time to meditate five hours daily. I point out that the average American watches four and a half hours of TV a day. And I don't have a TV.

Living necessitates injustice. My life requires other things – animal, vegetable, mineral – to die. My bourgeois satisfactions require others to live without. My over-consumption steals from planet and from future generations. The ethical life is simply one that strives to minimise injustice.

The best thing you can do for the planet is to stay home.

energy   spirit   softness
if you are not in love with these
then I would prefer not to know you

loving is becoming

Prayer is the lifting of heart to God, or, put another way, prayer is the loving of God.

When I was a teenager I loved browsing through the National Geographic magazine in the public library. I remember one occasion looking at a pull-out photograph of the Amazon rainforest in which two European explorers gazed proudly at the camera. As I studied the picture I suddenly became aware of numerous smaller tribes people standing amongst the trees. I hadn't noticed them before, not because they were camoflaged, but because they looked part of the scene; they didn't stand out as something alien or other; they belonged there. And whereas the Europeans seemed to come out of the photo towards me, the natives literally receded into the trees. In fact they looked exactly like the trees – as though they had extruded up from the Earth beneath their feet. At the time I was struck by how insignificant and primitive the natives looked compared to the civilized Europeans who seemed much more like me. But now, my work, which is my day, everyday, aspires to become as those natives. As naked and as natural as they.

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.

nothing quite as painful as the truth
and if it doesn't hurt then it's trivial

the spiritual life is a life of occasional glimmers

spiritual work has absolutely nothing to do with concentrating the mind to get what you want and everything to do with humbly offering the heart to God

Spiritual work is negative, reductive, subtractive. Peeling away layer after layer after layer until one arrives at pure naked essence. As close to God as we are likely to get.

I must leave Ireland and create in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race!

if the work is about getting your own way then it has no spiritual content

listen not to hear but to connect

always turning the spotlight back on the self
exposing its insidious presence at every level

We all carry trauma. If we didn't then we would be enlightened. The average modern life aims to keep trauma brushed under the carpet: everything is organised so that it never shows its ugly face. This leads to a life of depression, mild or extreme, the price most are prepared to pay for ease, comfort and seeming peace. It takes a special sort of person to willingly open the can of worms, peel off the scab and let the wound weep. And why do they do it? Because some need truth, they cannot live a lie. They much prefer the agony of facing truth to the comfort of hiding from truth. They have what I call soul.

Resentment is a communicable disease and should be quarantined.

if God really loves you he will deny you want you want
with the object of desire comes unforeseen consequences

depression is not a sickness
it is a sin

the work is infinite—endless
never done

The traditional antidote to depression is prayer. Not the occasional prayer but a prayerful life.

I think some of the bees may have escaped from my bonnet.

inspiration   suspension   expiration

pity : piety

quieten the mind and you will hear god whispering just two words: have mercy

After 17 years of grafting away on my own (wandering in the wilderness) I feel that I may now be ready to begin. C'est la vie.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

prayer: quietening the mind
and listening to the heart

in the dwam before sleep

head-mind is dominated by words – lexical thinking
heart-mind is dominated by feelings – pre-lexical thinking

meditation: recalling the blissful reverie you shared with your mother as she nursed you

I just try to remain a good soldier—I mean a soldier of cinema.

meditation: dreaming whilst awake

stalwart & redoubtable

Imagination dead? Imagine!

Since we lost Nature, the senses, especially the eyes, serve to maintain the numbness of our depressive position. Learn to unfocus the eyes, gaze inwards, and FEEL.

La résponse est le malheur de la question.

veil the vulgar glare of self and attend to what shares the space

stop leakage:

leaky gut
leaky heart
leaky head

leaking energy

a capacity to tolerate zero

Taking first watch. A sense that my intense vigilance surrounds and contains an intimate quiet space. This our service.

I don’t know the answers to these questions—I wouldn’t tell you if I did. I think it is important to find out for yourself.

traverse beyond depression and into transcendence
this is not achieved with knowing but by unknowing

faith & discipline – the minimum requirements for any successful course of study

bleed but don't leak

In the beginning Taiji is all about relaxation, but eventually it's about tension. Living like a bent bow about to fire.

I walk along like blood seeking its wound

dantien is the centre about which I cohere
heart is the centre from which I issue forth

see past the infantile ego

endlessnessnessness

The whole gamut of experience, from sensing to feeling, from thinking to doing, distract us from the fundamental fact of being which is being itself. I exist. This is the realisation, the centre, that meditation sinks into then peers out from.

Be just before you are generous.

the first fact of my being is being itself – I exist, I am
the second fact is spirit – I am alive, I am animated

true listening is always ready to agree

embodied & emboldened

We need an ego simply to survive other egos. This is why the bulk of our work must be solitary.

Don't look for meaning in the words. Listen to the silences.

spirit is the leaven
lifting heart to heaven

not obsessed but possessed

the primary function of language is to sing god’s praises

The teacher gives just enough to stimulate, inspire, encourage practise. Any more and the student will think (they've already done the work).