Be Water, My Friend: The Teachings of Bruce Lee

“Faith is the maintaining of the soul through which one’s aims may be translated into their physical equivalent.”

When we turn to water, we see a thing that is not in competition with its surroundings but in cocreation and coexistence with it. The water doesn’t desire to best the earth. The water simply is. And the earth simply is.

the mind should stand open and unclouded by one’s previously held preferences, beliefs, or judgments in order to be ready to receive.

“Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system.”

“discernment” is less of a conclusion and more of a process: it’s the ability to make valuable perceptions about something. One spiritual definition even calls discernment “perception in the absence of judgment with a view to obtaining spiritual direction and understanding.”

The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm,

It is not to deny or bury or go around your feelings or your thoughts about those feelings. It is to feel them, acknowledge them, and work with them—to understand what they are trying to tell you about you, about the situation—to let them show you where there is more work to be done without letting them overwhelm, unbalance, or trap you.

Our obstacles are among some of our greatest teachers.

Rituals can be a physical way to acknowledge the passage from one way of being into another.