Mechanical existence might be seen as a kind of a ‘plateau’, a flat unremarkable terrain that is bounded by a ‘lip’ which would require a particular type of effort to get over. Our normal understanding of effort is ‘straining to reach a goal’ but this is not the type of…

We see the world in an inverted way. This is very easy to say, very easy to put down in the form of a single, short sentence, but to actually understand what is meant by this represents a change a perspective so radical there very few of us are ever…

When we are suffering from ongoing mental pain and distress then the thing to remember is to be aware of our resistance to this pain and distress. If we aren’t paying attention to our resistance in this situation then our suffering is always going to get worse, not better. It’s…

To the Western ear Daoism sounds worryingly passive — we go along with the way things themselves want to go rather than calling the shots ourselves. …

Normal everyday life is superficial, just as all games are superficial. In a game we go so far into things but no further and that’s what makes the game into a game. The way things are in themselves however is that we can go as deep into them as we…

When we are suffering from ongoing mental pain and distress then the thing to remember is to be aware of our resistance to this pain and distress. If we aren’t paying attention to our resistance in this situation then our suffering is always going to get worse, not better. It’s…

According to psychotherapist Morgan Scott Peck, neurosis is where we take on too much responsibility (where we take on an unrealistic degree of responsibility) whilst sociopathy is where we take on too little (or more often, none at all). This might sound a little over-simplistic on first hearing but it…

Everything is perfect in being what it already is, and it does so without the least bit of effort or straining, without the least bit of impediment from anything. …

There is nothing very mysterious or high-powered about this thing we call the self or ego-construct — we don’t need to be a professor of psychology in order to understand it. Being a professor of psychology wouldn’t help at all. The self or ego-construct is made up of only two…