do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind

There are many excuses not to practice, but they all boil down to laziness.

Enlightened masters are rare because our culture privileges ego and thinking over spirit and compassion.

God didn't create us in his image and likeness, we created him in ours.

I think therefore I doubt that I am.

When you learn to wield spirit then you always feel good – nothing gets you down, not for long anyway, partly because your expectations are so low and partly because spirit always brings you out of the mind and into the body. Then laughter comes naturally and easily, and the front you find yourself using to interact with the external world becomes exuberant if not flamboyant.

Even though we know the external to be unreal, in our sense, we cannot go through life fighting or denying it. We must learn to interact with it and use it, but not to take it seriously, for which we need a sense of humour. We also need to learn to pretend – to act a part – as a matter of course, never letting the external world in on our own internal aspect, our reality. That separation must be clean, and in a way this is what the work does: cleans our connexion to the internal by untangling our connection to the external.

the empowerment of being

Spirit changes everything. We learn this time and time again. It seems to be the way: general forgetfulness interspersed with moments of intense remembering. But what it means is that the reality we think we inhabit is actually a spiritless (lifeless) facade, and real spirited reality is not only completely different but in many ways contrary. The thinking mind cannot see, comprehend or enter into spirited reality, and it either denies its existence at every turn (the non-student) or it pretends to know (the poor student). Our work is to soften mind and awareness so that we can catch glimpses and gradually learn to dwell in the world of spirit.

Have in yourself a task.

Staunchly into the ineluctable!

Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.

What's important for the body and the energy is to reach states where the thinking mind flees. And what the thinking mind hates and fears more than anything is spirit, which is why we have struggled so hard for the last few hundred years to create an environment for ourselves that doesn't require spirit. We've created instead an environment that only needs ego. We no longer have to be spirirted creatures, we just have to be selfish ones.

It takes a lifetime to learn to read, yet most think the job done when they can voice the words on the page.

Honour bound…

leap in the dark