Our spirituality has a physicality, a viscerality and a personality.

John Kells

Internal

The supreme ultimate sacrifice is simply allowing the world (which includes your energy) to reveal itself: hovering between attention and fixation – before fixation. Always before. John was telling me yesterday that when he writes (he writes pretty much every day) he tries to use language to bring alive the energetic space that exists before that space becomes fixed or fixated by language and by thinking. A fixed space is ideal for transferring clear demarked facts, but useless for real communication which has little to do with information transfer and everything to do with creativity – with creating a common energy between and around the communicating entities. Such communication requires a sense of mystery and wonder – a feeling that understanding as such is neither necessary nor beneficial. Joining, and what happens during joining, is always more interesting and more internally nourishing than coming to terms with and thereby being able to repeat or retreat, albeit without the delight of immediacy, past experiences. We use our rational mind to come to terms with things so that they can be bundled up and pushed into the past – discarded – giving room and appetite for new ones. The internal though has no time so no past – just a continuous seamless present which every now and then we catch a whiff of – just enough to bring us out of our senses and into its labyrinths.

For me, playing is about playing with other people.

Derek Bailey (1930-2005)


Photo: Caroline Ross

From my father to my destiny
Short step

From idea to completion
Has no step

From love to serenity
Has a lifetime

From thought to belief
Has no time

From pain to resolution
Has one touch

From dream to dissolution
Has but touch

While thought has respect
There can be no touch

While respect has but spirit
There is life

Where life has but giving
You have destiny

John Kells

My daughter found this in a shop in Brighton. Not sure if it's the right way up or what the character denotes.

Philip Stanley emailed me that I have indeed got this the wrong way up & that when righted the character is fú which means trust.

Before the work comes to you, you have to invent work.

Steve Lacy (1934-2004)


Photo: Guy Le Querrec

Shaolin

Took the kids to see the Shaolin Kung Fu Monks at the Peacock Theatre in Kingsway on Thursday. It's always sort of interesting to experience real expertise, especially the best there is, and these guys were good at what they do – incredibly flexible, athletic and strong, but, as far as I could make out, everything done with a closed (or an unopening) heart. The epitome of the external – a testament to testosterone. They performed against a scaffolding with two female percussionists on a level above their heads. At one point one of these percussionists put down her mallets and moved to the front of the suspended platform on which she was standing and started to slowly move her arms around. At that point I felt her energy reach into me and start to move my heart. I suddenly woke up, ready to experience what I expected would be a superior display of heart-centred kung fu, when suddenly she instead broke into song – she was a singer not a martial artist. It summed up the evening really – all male bluster and rather coarse energy, none of it really refined or alive enough to actually communicate, transform or stimulate engagement. What was beautiful was their sincerity. What was alarming was the seeming lack of spiritual or philosophical content. I couldn't honestly see where all that physical work was leading. The Tai Chi they demonstrated was putrid by the way.

Fontanelle.

Extend to ancestors
And twine the leaves

The mulch of foreplay
Lost beyond the reach

Of what is done
And what is duty
For the day

John Kells

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

grass plaid

first fall
full moon

in the rain
relents

the wind

in the wind
blown
             leaves
birds
      hopscotch
figure
      eights

we are what
the trees have
made us

Jess Mynes

It's in the dead-space that the self resides, mouldering away and sharpening its desires and anxieties.

John Kells

Ward-Off

Real peace of mind comes from relaxing into energy to such a degree that boundaries dissolve and the universe is felt for what it is: a vast ocean of energy containing the myriad creatures, each a condensed plexus of a huge number of connexions. When the mind is relaxed and the heart opens then it becomes the centre of the universe – reaching out and animating everything there is. A consequence of this is that each and every heart is also receiving energy from all around. When this energy is perceived as something fundamentally inalien (akin) to our own then it can be taken on board. Softness is the quality of having these truths abide in your physicality as well as your mind and energy.

So the universe contains a vast array of hearts, each with a jewel of essence at its core, and the fundamental law of the universe is giving: each heart is a process of opening and unfolding, allowing energy from its jewel to emanate forth and connect with other hearts. Hence the universe is awash with heart energy, nourishing all entities. A third heart comes into existence when two entities focus their hearts on each other in an intense act of joining and sharing we call communication. The energy from each nourishes and stimulates the other to such a degree that a third heart springs into existence.

In the same way that the food you eat must reside within your body long enough to absorb its nutrients, so heart energy entering you from outside or from inside – from your own jewel of essence – must reside within for a time before passing on its way. The receptacle for the energy we call Ward-Off. Like a large bowl, the shoulders falling away from the spine and into the elbows helping the heart to open and give. The curved containment of the arms cradles, protects and gathers the energy, giving it shape and preventing it dissipating aimlessly. Eventually ward-off is simply a feeling of fullness in the heart.

The Third Heart

A truly loyal friend sees nothing in his friend but his heart.

St Aelred of Rievaulx (1109-67)

For Aelred, the perfection of human friendship is an epiphany of the real presence of Christ. Christ, he says, makes the third between us. In this Christian vision, all true friendship will "begin in Christ, continue in Christ and be perfected in Christ." It is a beautiful and profound understanding of the humanity of the risen Jesus.

These quotes, sent me by Dick Fletcher, are from The Good Heart by the Dalai Lama.

There's far more to a human being than a mind clothed in a body.

John Kells

Energy & compassion

The energy we talk about has nothing to do with ch'i or chin. Chin is the Chinese word for a body energy that correct body usage, coupled with a loose but toned relaxation, will whip up from the ground, through the muscles and tendons and into whatever physical task is being attempted, whether it striking or punching another person, or simply shoveling dirt or chopping wood. With chin the ground is being utilized, through gravity, as a firm purchase, from which to apply our own energy. The energy is generated in the legs by straightening or bending them (like pumps), and the waist turns to whip and direct it through the relaxed upper body and out of whichever hand (or, at a higher level, from any point on the body). Chin is energy, as is ch'i, and they are both wonderful, in their way, but they are not internal and they are still forceful. The energy we work with – the energy between – is an energy that pervades the universe. It is everywhere. It's function is to bring things together through bonds of connexion. We feel, connect to, and use this energy through the heart. And this is the most important point I could possibly make to a student, that entering this world of energy to the point where it becomes you (and you become it) is the most compassionate act you could possibly make; all other compassionate acts stem from this, and without this there is no compassion, only kind or good deeds, which may well come from the heart but not from a heart joining and becoming through the energy between, i.e. not from a heart behaving naturally. Another important point is that to choose not to enter the world of energy (and it is a choice – first made long ago in most cases but reinforced every instant) is to constantly retreat: is to apply a negative force to counter the natural and powerful bringing together of energy. This negative force is the thinking mind.

Reply to Tim Walker

It's a matter of energy Tim, not mind or concentration. It's often when your mind wanders that you stop imposing your personality – your self-image – on the situation, and allow your energy to interact as it wants to. Your energy is like a repressed child always being put in its place by an over dominant parent – the thinking mind. Not only does your thinking mind background your own energy, it also does it to other energies. As I've said before, thinking and energy are almost mutually exclusive. There is nothing wrong with discomfort either. It is often just your energy wrestling with something that's not quite right about the situation – trying to find a way to make it right. Your energy, in fact any energy, has a mind and wisdom of its own completely separate from the mind in your head. It has the ability to think and solve energy problems, such as how to connect (the thing it wants to do more than anything else) with a seemingly unconnectable situation, or how to transform an uncomfortable situation/relationship into a more harmonious one. Heartwork is all about letting the energy alone so it can do its thing unimpeded by the coarse horrors of the thinking mind – always self-interested, always hard, and always too late.

Change

Comments below may interest.

perhaps we fall back into our throats, our muscles warm extensions urging the grass to sway

Catherine Meng