Open the toes.

A material approach increases, a spiritual approach decreases. So what about spiritual materialism? This would be the accumulation of spiritual techniques without actually practising them. What my teacher called the weekend workshop syndrome. The whole idea of spiritual work is to learn a simple technique and then practice it daily. The practice is done not to get better (at something) but to gradually diminish the ego.

Come clean.

God is not dead, just disappointed. Depressed.

return to town a stranger

Prepared to listen. Always.

First in the body, then in the mind. This, along with circularity, is the secret of softness, the secret to discovering true mind.

Attention is an energy the spirit directs into the world. Physically it manifests as extension in the spine: the lower spine extending into the tail as the upper spine extends up and out into the senses, into perception. The spine effectively stretches out and away from its centre. Now the self, or the ego, is a tension that gathers into the centre of the spine, and works against the attention, the spirit. Selfishness is inattentiveness to the world around you – a refusal to listen to anything but the self and its allies.

Attentive receptivity (what in Taiji we call listening) is the purest form of giving.

Wandering flushes a glory that fades with arrival.

The soldier receives orders with attention and implements them with intention.

The body does not resist. Only the mind resists. True ratiocination is physical, not mental.

Assume responsibility.

Intelligence and sensitivity are great for developing technique (trickery) : a smart person will generally get the better of a strong one (this, if anything, sums up our colourful history). But when it comes to tackling the self, the ego, the noisy noisome mind, these qualities are a severe drawback. Why? Because they add numerous layers of complexity and subtlety to the ego, so much so that the individual finds it impossible to see through their seductive wiles: the average, intelligent, well-educated, middle-class person really believes that they are their ego, that they are indeed as magnificent as they tell themselves they are – they begin to believe their own publicity – their own lies. This is the real bummer: intelligence and sensitivity bring one to the point of realising that the mind must be quietened, and yet those self-same qualities render the task well-nigh impossible.

The truth is more important than the facts.

Character develops through suffering, not through experience.

Intelligence, for me, is always aware of its own limitations. The same for consciousness and awareness. This is why especially intelligent or aware individuals are generally humble – awestruck by existence, by its never-ending ability to surprise. And this is why what we call negative capability – the ability to trust and work with spirit when we lack sufficient intelligence – is the tool to develop.