ALL IS ENERGY AND EVERYTHING IS IN ITS RIGHTFUL PLACE

In Yoga they call this insight Bliss. In Taiji we simply call it Peace of Mind.

It is a product of Internal Work, especially Meditation.

Students believe it the end of the journey but really it is the beginning. The real journey never ends.
Relaxing the Body – relax, let the body be soft, the breath quiet; feel the connection of the body with the ground.

Quieting the Mind – the mind is quiet, eyes at the back of the head, the face soft, the back of the neck long and wide.

Intent – see the posture with your inner eye; imagine the pose.

Rooting – root the feet, activate the inner thighs, root the ball of the big toe.

Connecting – feel the connection from the rooting of the foot through the inner thighs to the belly, through the back and up to the top of the head. Bring the hands up from the feet or from the sitting bones. Keep the lower ribs connected to the hipbones; the back is neutral and quiet.

Breathing – watch the natural breath, inhale and bring the hands up, exhale and go into the pose.

Elongating & Expanding – the back is wide and long, the legs elongated.


—Orit Sen-Gupta, A Little Book of Yoga: The seven vital principles of practice, 2021
Connect and energy will manifest. If there is no energy it's because there's a block or break in connexion.
The function of the internal chatter is to keep the Real at bay.
Pull yourself together
Tighten up your act
Keep your wits about you
Ultima Thule
The next step is always the most difficult. If it's not then you're coasting. Success requires grace – a gift of spirit.
Any creative act is a mischief – goes against convention.
Verum   Pulchrum   Bonum
Attention is a matter of posture more than anything. The military knows this. A readiness to receive orders.
THE BIG SECRET
Do what you're doing wholeheartedly & joyfully.
Then the Spirit will take you where it needs to go.
A respect bordering on reverence.
pay attention
show interest
& you'll learn
The Art of Practice
…& it is an art…
Progress in Taiji is a series of going back-to-square-ones.

—John Kells
Next time round you'll do it that much better because your energy will have improved with all the daily practice you've been doing.
Real peace lies in finding the real war. 
The real war is the one mankind has been waging for centuries if not millennia against the natural world.
Meditation: quietly staring down the tunnel of death
You know sometimes when the light is low or hazy and you're not sure if you really saw something or just imagined it? That's the brink at which we would like to dwell.
'Think' & 'thank' are very similar words. (Same in German: denken/danken). Real (authentic) thinking simply expresses gratitude for being alive. In this sense thinking is a name for any creative (joyful) action.
The paradox of Ego is that on one hand it is identity & individuality (the "I") and on the other it represses energy & spirit to conform to whatever happens to be acceptable & fashionable. Ego, by definition, never really thinks.
Anthropologists tell us that the Ego developed as a response to the growing size & complexity of our societies. So if we want to break the domination of Ego we need to simplify simplify simplify. And this is why monastic life is just that – a life reduced to utter simplicity.
Meditation: an Openness toward the Mystery
Back in Blakeney (~2002), John, trying to figure out why someone who did so much work was making so little progress, said to me: What's holding you back is your inability to visualise.

Visualisation is not seeing in the mind something that isn't there but using the imagination to see something you have been told is there but that you cannot sense yet. You could have been told by the teacher or, more commonly, if you are working, by your own intuition.
Meditation: from Anxiety (Angst) to Composure (Gelassenheit)
In a word, what's it all about? 
Transformation.
The teacher, if they are qualified and if we allow it, will connect us to the source. Then, when we practice, it will not be out of choice but because we are called by that source. From avocation to vocation. We will only do the work if we find it impossible to ignore this call.
Strive to be at your best, even (especially) when you don't feel up for it.
Sink into the Earth, but more than that, sink into your Energy.
The most important thing in life is to go further than your talent will take you. This requires guidance & grace. And a ton of hard work.
Be generous with your energy but never foolish. 
It's a fine line.

Solitude doesn't really mean alone, it means unattached. And what we require is interior solitude – detached from opinion, point of view, information, knowledge, understanding.
Ego must become the object of critique, not its subject. This we call humility. It is a most difficult turn but without it there is no Internal work. And it's shocking how many teachers & therapists find it impossible.
My one talent is an ability to tolerate the intolerable. 
It has proved indispensable.
Resist the urge to pull yourself together. 
Let (the) self go.
The cosmos is breathing out: exhaling, expanding, relaxing, unwinding, entropizing. 
That's what time is – the expiration of the universe.
The Supreme Way is not difficult
If only you do not pick and choose
Awaken (to) the wow factor everywhere.
Energy is all subtlety & nuance – nebulous & numinous.
You know a student is serious when they treat everything – especially teacher & teaching – with utmost respect.
One of the first insights we need to come to on the Internal path is that everyone, literally everyone, has something to teach us.
Soy la que escribe y se escribe
I am the one who writes and who is being written

—Gloria Anzaldúa
Meditation: the less I do, the more that happens.
Prayer is not asking for something but tapping into something.
The meaning of life is to live, really live – become fully alive – wake up. This doesn't mean endlessly scurrying the plane of immanence in search of novelty (such would be decadence) but, through hard won inner silence, transcending & escaping that plane for depth – plumbing the abysses; ascending the peaks.
Artists, martial or otherwise, need great spirit. Maybe this is what distinguishes them from mere mortals.
If (when) you pray, pray for a release from rational presuppositions.