In a sense, both real and imaginary, but above all usefully, we, perceiving creatures that we are, function as the sensory apparatus of the Earth. Feel your perceptions, coloured by your mood, passing down through your body and into the Earth, feeding her; a well-deserved return for your continuing sustenance.

There is a system of images which I term my perception of the universe, and which may be entirely altered by a very slight change in a certain privileged image – my body. This image occupies the centre: by it all the others are conditioned; at each of its movements everything changes, as though by a turn of a kaleidoscope.

as steady as a great tree
branching into delicate life

We've all got holes to fill
And those holes are all that's real

With the work, we feel ourselves live in things even as things come to live in us according to a radical immanence.

An indefatigable spirit.

shining points around which the others form a vague nebulosity

An aspect of rooting we call localisation – a pinning of my being to this exact spot. In this sense, rooting shrinks my space into an intense point from which my spirit – my gaze – can only expand forth. Hence, the focus of root turns to an expansivity of spirit. The Internal can only exteriorize – it is already in so can only come out. This is the constant folding of reality upon itself, or rather the ever turning inside out. Invagination.

To find, or establish, the trigger that both rouses the spirit to a state of intense excitement, and drives the root deep down into the Earth. This, in a nutshell, is the problem of all spiritual and martial work: how to unify into a complementary pair, the two primary drives of Root and Spirit.

To begin with in taiji we sink and relax in order to establish gravity as the dominant force in our life. We endeavour to relax so much that gravity is perceived as a constantly flowing energy streaming down through the body, from the headtop to the soles of the feet, and into the Earth. This streaming energy gradually realigns the skeleton and cleanses the flesh and organs. Once the path through the body is clear, and the root is well established, a rising energy will also be perceived which we call spirit. Now, as my teacher would delight in saying, we are ready to really begin.

In a world dominated by spirit, that is, in a real world, then ch'i is mere window dressing.

If there is anything abject or ingratiating about my supplicancy then the root will rise and the spirit will sink. I must implore with power.

We must place ourselves as if before the dawn of the world, at the moment when still anonymous perception awakens itself from its own stupor, from its own birth.

If you were to ask the average middle-class person what they most value in their life they would generally answer: Freedom of choice. If you ask a spiritual master the same question they would probably reply with Freedom from choice.

In taiji we conquer fear by reversing a movement, a flow, a circuit.

Selfishness – self-centredness – is infantile behaviour. Thence the world full of spoilt brats. It takes more than time to grow up.

to harmonize oneself with the central incomprehension that carries the work to the heart of the darkness that it confronts