Attentiveness is the heart's stillness, unbroken by any thought.

The teaching's confirmation is not the approbation of the good student but the mockery of the poor student.

Practice improves your energy which then allows understanding to deepen, adjusting your vocabulary. This is why we mistrust words – their meaning is always changing. They don't just mean different things to different folks, but they also mean different things from day to day.

Thinking for the biosphere means thinking against humanity.

We enter the land of silence by the silence of surrender.

 

breakdowns & breakthroughs

The poor student smiles and nods at all the teacher utters, belying the fact that they're not listening. If they were listening then they'd be quaking in their boots.

Learning to do without.

The good student, on one level, resists the teaching. This is because, like all students, they have an ego, and they dread the work the teaching demands. But on another level they know that they have no choice, so, sooner or later, they cut the crap and get to it.

compel the fire to leave its refuge

 

the difference between the carefree manner of people living on land and the precision of anyone living at sea

Quieten the mind otherwise the plaintive cry of the heart will never be heard above its clamour.

If anyone makes himself his own master in the spiritual life, he makes himself scholar to a fool.

Sinking is humiliation. Earth (gravity) ever bringing us down, bringing us low, reminding us where we'll end up. It is something we must be brave enough to allow and endure, not because we're devils for punishment but because we've been taught that it is the only way to access the subtle rising energy we call spirit. This is a refined form of fighting spirit, which makes our whole being tremble with rawness and tenderness, with real life and deep emotion. It is what enlightened masters embody and become.

sursum corda

I have no answers. I have only methods. There is no point telling a student something. Much better give them the means to find out for themselves.

There are changes detectable only by those willing to make the effort.