An infolding of gravity.

We don't realize it but most of our energy is spent preventing the future from unfolding the way it should – resisting our destiny – hiding from what we are.

Let taiji do the breathing for you.

…faith…is an openness to love, love as giving what one does not have and receiving that over which one has no power…

"He is just like a work of art. He does not really teach one anything, but by being brought into his presence one becomes something."

Neither resist (go against) nor assist (go for), but turn. This is yielding. The turning creates a vortex which draws the world's energy in (centripetal) as it throws my energy out (centrifugal). This exchange – this turn – means that both parties are transformed, and that a relationship has been created, established, deepened, without which it cannot be called yielding.

The most important concept in taiji, the one without which it cannot possibly be called taiji, is yielding: turning the world to one's advantage without in any way resisting or going against it.

The Internal is that which cannot be externalized, explicated, explained, isolated, represented... It accompanies everything: a whisper, a trace, a touch (of humour), and is intensely alive, quickly retreating into the shadows when approached coarsely, yet venturing out with a delightful grace when it has the space and inclination. We value softness and lightness, and do all in our power to develop them, because they encourage the Internal. It doesn't matter what you practise: taiji, yoga, meditation, painting, healing, unless the practice is inspired and enlivened by the Internal it doesn't amount to much.

The more still and disciplined my dantien, the more my heart is free to move.

…we find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates…

A made up mind cannot listen, so the first stage to listening is unmaking the mind.

Meditation is a natural process of sitting and waiting, patiently, for the knot to unravel.

Ideally, Platonically, perfectly, I am all heart, a fount of loving energy, endlessly transforming the world around me. A sacred heart. Sin is any act that takes me away from this, any thought even. In fact thinking, especially reflective thought, is itself a sin because it diverts and contorts heart energy for its own selfish ends, it cannot help but, that's what thinking is – self-serving, a survival mechanism. So when I think, when I shift from heart to head, that beautiful heart energy that should be radiating out, instead twists and wraps around myself, drawing in to the head where it feeds the mind. We all break out of this pathological loop regularly, daily, whenever experience forces us to forget our own self-interest for a moment. But we then slip back into the mind, forget our heart's involvement, and mentally process the experience: organize it into a form that can be stored and profited from. We do this – compound our sin, make it respectable, admirable even – largely because we believe there is no choice, or because the alternative – remaining in and with the heart – is deemed impossible. Spiritual work is any practice that endeavors to get back to heart where we belong – a journey home for the proverbial prodigal son.

Is all the teacher asks is that each day you spend a little time alone, put aside your fears and problems, and remember your true loving nature. Is this too much to ask?

Yielding enables me to survive the onslaught that unjudgemental listening opens up. It enables me to face reality and be truly myself – all heart.

"There's still a sense that you need to keep some of the unknown because that's where the soul resides, or something."

an affirmation that interrupts time

breach the horizon of expectation

…not knowing is the ultimate resistance the event can put up against the economic accounting of time…