ਦੂਜਾ ਖੇਲੁ ਕਿਰ ਿਦਖਲਾਇਆ
Dūjā khel kar dikhlāiā
You have constructed & staged the play of duality

—Sri Guru Granth Sahib

When my daughter was small she once asked me: Abba, where do the stars go during the daytime? I explained that they are still in the sky, it's just that the sun outshines them. This is meditation. Entering the darkness, the quiet, and slowly growing accustomed to the silence, which, it becomes revealed, is brimming with energy.

Bound by thoughts, we depart from the real;
But sinking into a stupor is just as bad.

—Faith In Mind

I suspect that when Buddhists harp on about happiness they actually mean contentment.

(Happiness is that bright, fleeting feeling that comes with something good happening. Contentment is quieter and steadier. It’s the sense that things are okay as they are, even without anything special going on. You can be content without feeling happy, and you can be happy without being content.)

CENTRAL EQUILIBRIUM

The Divine Light tempered all qualities, so that they all stood with one another in a Love-Play.

—Jakob Böhme

(Das Göttliche Licht temperierte alle Eigenschaften, dass sie alle mit einander in einem Liebe-Spiel stunden.)

See the bigger picture
& the deeper picture
This is the work.

The reason we're drawn to this work is because we've had experiences (usually quite young) of real intensity (if not awakening) that led us to suspect that the normal world inhabited by others is a dull dream compared to what has been revealed to us. Then, try as we might, we just cannot fall back to sleep. When we luckily meet a teacher that talks the language of this awakened world then we have no choice but to follow.

The Father uttered one Word; that Word is His Son, and he utters Him for ever in everlasting silence; and in silence the soul has to hear it.

—St. John of the Cross

Digging down to dredge something up
Reaching up to drag something down

A belief rooted in felt presence rather than evidence.

If you don't believe then you can only worry. It depends how you want to be in the world – joyously or anxiously.

The transition out of willing into Gelassenheit is what seems to me to be the genuine difficulty.
—Martin Heidegger

MEDITATION
Thinking nothing
Feeling everything

What distinguishes us moderns from the ancients is our neurotic need  to control all aspects of life. This is what drives our obsession with technology. Then our only response to things we can't control is worry & anxiety. Ancient man naturally trusted in his own spirit and as a consequence was continuously releasing (letting go) into the future. Heidegger calls this Gelassenheit (generally translated as releasement or letting-go-ness) and he assures us that it is the most pressing concern for modern man.

We lead our common lives, but all around there are hunches and intimations and whisperings of something else. These small, softly spoken suggestions are enough for me to feel that there is some enigmatic otherness to be experienced, and that’s where my belief lies.

—Nick Cave

a magical equilibrium

Wake up the tail.

(Not just the coccyx but the spine down from the ming men:  L3, L4, L5, S1, S2, & beyond.)

MEDITATION
Becoming placid
(serene & untroubled)

In the '60s & '70s John Cage kept a journal of anecdotes, observations & koanlike tales. He called it:

Diary: How to Improve the World
(You Will Only Make Matters Worse)

Heed the call of conscience. It's as close to God as most of us get.

Develop a new image of thought:
neither rational nor dogmatic
but intuitive & imaginative

Il faut être léger comme l’oiseau, et non comme la plume.

—Paul Valéry

Silence is an intimate thing. Most people don’t understand because the default mode is to surround oneself with noise.

When students ask me what spirit is I just say PIXIE DUST and then point them to the scene in Peter Pan where Peter teaches Wendy and the boys to fly (still my favourite scene from the movies – always makes me cry).

Spirit is the magic ingredient that makes the impossible possible. And, when you think about it, what could be more impossible than LIFE.

Love is a state that I would like to exist in continuously.

—Nick Cave

We live in a culture that constantly bombards us with one message: Money solves all problems. As we get older we begin to suspect that this message is largely false and that deep problems can only be solved with LOVE. This is why the culture endeavours to keep us infantile – safely locked in as cogs in the machine. The only way to break free is to quiet the mind & open the heart.

There's a story of an Indian master visiting England in the 1930s and meditating in a house that recently had electricity installed. Afterwards he commented that it would now be impossible for people to quieten their minds.

Spend as much time outdoors, away from electricity & electronic devices, as possible. And this includes smartphones.

Work out of your work.
Don't work out of anybody
else's work.