The artist has no choice but to create. Their creativity is as primitive, basic & uncontrollabe as the sex drive. When it bursts free in the act of creation, anything is possible, and the art created surprises the artist more than anyone.

A healthy psoas is juicy, supple, responsive.

—Liz Koch

When we let gravity take the body then we sink down and the knees break forward. When we let levity take our spirit then the eyes brighten and we look ahead & slightly up. Both gravity & levity take us forwards.

Culture is a poor substitute for Nature.

What we call learning
is only a process
of recollection
—Plato

To get stronger you must endure pain; whoever says otherwise is trying to sell you something.

Resist the herd

Traditionally in Taiji there are no grades or belts, just the appellation Master. My own teacher explained that it is usually bestowed after at least ten years of training, during which time the student has acquired enough knowledge, skill & charisma to successfully hold down a class of their own. Although he later confided in me that a Master is really someone whose spirit has been fully awakened by another qualified Master.

The Other is not an appetite but a generosity.

STAY WOKE

(root out fascism)

& remember:
the ultimate fascist is
not the petty tyrant
but the cruel Ego

Levity is felt as a gentle call, a tender lure.

A barely audible call to prayer.

I relax, open up, become porous: then levity enters  ↑  lifts me almost weightless.

The energy we work with is not qi. It is not in the body, travelling along meridians. It is a function of our relaxed engagement with two fields: the field of gravity from the Earth pulling the body downwards; and the field of levity from the Heavens (the space surrounding the Earth) pulling the spirit upwards. It is my quiet trusting mind that allows & encourages this delicate play upon my being.

The goal of life
is living in agreement
with nature
—Zeno of Citium

God, too, is a metaphor.
—John D Caputo

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: Dad, 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 temperirte alle Eigenschaften, daß sie alle mit einander in einem Liebe=Spiel stunden.)

Seeing the bigger 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