"Quality will come from fidelity."

Don't let the logic of love deteriorate into the logic of human calculation.

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Non-attachment – detachment – is really a severing of egoistic engagement with life so that a spirited and spiritual engagement can take its place.

Poverty, chastity, obedience; detached from world, from body, from mind. What's left? Heart of course. And soul. And love. And God. Quite a lot really.

"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again!’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead, for grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony."

Early walk through the local wood this morning, before it got too hot, with my now 9 year old daughter, she on her bicycle. We sat amongst the trees and she ate her favourite breakfast of cottage cheese, cucumbers and Doritos, washed down with cool water, whilst we chatted about important things – simple virtues. When we got up to return home she looked around and said, "Dad, these trees are better than us." I asked how come, to which she replied, "They spend the whole day with their arms up in the air telling God how much they love him. We do it hardly at all."

Faith fueled by desire.

Love has no object.

"When the spirit expresses itself through the body, it is strengthened."

To say we don’t have time to practise simply means practice is not one of our priorities.

"I find more meaning in the wing of a bird and in the branch of a tree than in five hundred icons."

The only time in our lives when we are totally of one mind and heart for any length of time is when we fall in love. Then we lose ourselves in the beloved and see them in everything and in every moment, especially when apart. They replace our own ego as centre of being. So, to bring the scattered wandering mind under some sort of control one must simply fall deeply in love. This is the rationale behind religion – one falls in love with God.

the inventiveness of love

"Humility cannot be manufactured to order, it can only come as the fruit of a painful confrontation with our inner poverty and weakness, a stripping of all human conceit and all the claims of our ego."

Sit quiet and still and allow the eyes to unfocus. Hood the eyes (almost close them). Now allow your whole being to unfocus. This is scary so you need the stone in the belly to stabilize your being. You effectively enter a cloud. Feel the still quiet centre of this cloud and abide there as long as you can. Slowly the cloud disperses and you're in a room within a mansion. This is the first stage.

"Settle yourself in solitude, and you will come upon God in yourself."