Naturally the head is a space of intense clarity & brightness, ever shining forth in compassion & enthusiasm. But nowadays it is a space of darkness – full of worry, resentment, angst – separation.

A burgeoning heart
(literally: sending out buds)

The teacher sees something special

glimmering beneath your ego

A flourishing heart
(literally: sending out flowers)

DAODEJING   Chapter 41 starts:

上士 闻道 勤而行之
中士 闻道 若存若亡
下士 闻道 大笑之。
不笑不足以为道。

The superior man, upon hearing of the Way, diligently practices it.
The average man, upon hearing of the Way, is uncertain & doubtful.
The inferior man, upon hearing of the Way, laughs loudly at it.
If he did not laugh, it would not be the Way.

(Often translated with good student, mediocre student, poor student.)

Think of the adjectives superior, average, inferior as describing the quality of the person's mind/energy/spirit. The superior man has more enthusiasm & focus that the average, whereas the inferior man just cannot see beyond his selfish concerns.

CONSISTENCY & INTENSITY

We usually focus on what we're doing or where we're going, but God's primary concern is who we're becoming in the process.

—Mark Batterson

Softness transforms force into energy. When the softness is active – a melting softness – we call this yielding.

We all need a teacher – someone who knows us better than we know ourselves.

Allow the practice to transform your mood

Do not be ·shaped by [conformed to; pressed into a mold by] this ·world [age]; instead be ·changed within [transformed] by ·a new way of thinking [or changing the way you think; ^Lthe renewing of your mind].

—Romans 12:2

From The Expanded Bible

(The superscript L indicates a literal translation of the original Greek)

The big breakthrough comes when we relax the mind sufficiently for it to start working for us rather than against.

GRAVITAS
a natural pull into the lower dantian, especially when threatened or alarmed;


LEVITAS
the desire to reach out & touch; the life force (spirit) making itself known
(modeled on gravitas & levity)

likestretchedelastic

Open is broken. There is no breakthrough without breakage.

—Norman O Brown

People express surprise that I no longer listen to music, and then ask why. Well, I've found that the silence music drowns is far more open than the music filling it. Always. And OPEN, more & more, becomes THE word in this work.

THE GOOD STUDENT

• Intelligence to mistrust the rational dualistic mind.
• Courage & vision to persevere through thick & thin.
• Stomach for rigorous discipline & hard work.

head   heart   belly

Always looking to simplify the life

MEDITATION

Watching the silt settle
& the brightness rise

We are often, I think, deceived by the ease of speech. Words such as God, nature, love, spirit, heart, death . . . take almost no effort to utter. They stand ready at our disposal, respond to our command as we combine them with other words to form grammatical sentences. Soon we believe in an equivalence between our grasp of these words and that which they signify. This shallow relationship to language and meaning itself produces atheists. What after all is ‘God’?

—Luke Fischer

It matters little what you do
but the mind you do it with

Work with the gravitas of ritual

Reading Lawrence before bed last night. This phrase still in my head this morning:

there is gladness in spite of ourselves

Spirit calls from outside our comfort zone.
Which is why we rarely heed it.

We live a life ensconsed in the house of language, too short-sighted to suspect that it is only the gate lodge to a vast estate we inherited at birth.

pay attention to details others overlook

Poetry is the natural way of speaking
of an enlivened consciousness.
—Luke Fischer

a vast blue cloudless sky

The perfect image of open