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‘Joy is an immediate thing and by thinking about it, you turn it into pleasure. Living in the present is the instant perception of beauty and the great delight in it without seeking pleasure from it.’

‘It is the struggle to repeat and perpetuate pleasure which turns it into pain. Watch it in yourself. The very demand for the repetition of pleasure brings about pain, because it is not the same as it was yesterday. You struggle to achieve the same delight, not only to your aesthetic sense but the same inward quality of the mind, and you are hurt and dissapointed because it is denied to you.’

‘Have you ever noticed that when you respond to something totally, with all your heart, there is very little memory? It is only when you do not respond to a challenge with your whole being that there is a conflict, a struggle, and this brings confusion and pleasure or pain. And the struggle breeds memory. Anything that is the result of memory is old and therefore never free.’

‘Attention is not the same as concentration. Concentration is exclusion; attention, which is total awareness, excludes nothing. It seems to me that most of us are not aware, not only of what we are talking about but if our environment, the colours around us, the people, the shape of the trees, the clouds, the movement of the water.’

‘If you are learning all of the time, learning every minute, learning by watching and listening, learning by seeing and doing, then you will find that learning is a constant movement without the past. Learning implies great sensitivity. There is no sensitivity if there is an idea, which is of the past, dominating the present. Most of us are not sensitive even physically.’

‘Every other form of understanding is merely an abstraction and I cannot study myself in abstraction; I am not an abstract entity; therefore I have to study myself in actuality — as I am, not as I wish to be.’

‘It is no use sitting in a corner meditating about myself. I cannot exist by myself. I exist only in relationship to people, things and ideas, and in studying my relationship to outward things and people, as well as to inward things, I begin to understand myself.’

‘If you do not follow somebody you feel lonely. Be lonely then.’

‘We are secondhand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment.’

Colquhoun: ‘For myself, the automatism may be significant in itself, but frequently it is no more, though also no less, than a basis upon which a work of art, figurative or non-figurative, may be built. I am inclined to think that the best results will be obtained from interpreted automatism.’

The essay “Children of the Mantic Stain” drew on her experiences of teaching art to school children and focussed on the educational aspects of Surrealist methods “for all who find the actual beginning of a work of art a difficulty”. This was a creative approach for which she continuously advocated, demonstrating automatic techniques for beginners at various talks and via a BBC programme in 1948.’

‘Colquhoun describes how Carl Jung believed that only through a process of intently watching the contents of the alembic would the substance of the alchemist’s own fantasy world be released.‘

‘Automatism, or automatic techniques, are methods of art making which remove the concious or intentional aspects of creation; they include techniques such as decalcomania, in which wet paint or ink is pressed between two pieces of paper, such that the image is created by pressure and appears on both surfaces.’

‘Having worked in a predominantly figurative Surrealist style between 1936 and 1939, Colquhoun later recorded that following the trip to Chemillieu and the discussions around psychomorphology which took place there, she “began to use these automatisms in drawing and painting and continued to do so for twenty-five years.”

‘It is in the nature of all things that take form to dissolve again. Strive with your whole being to attain perfection.’

‘If you just let people talk, giving them your complete and compassionate attention, they will say things of a surprising spiritual depth, even when they think that they don’t have any spiritual beliefs. Everyone has their own life wisdom, and when you let a person talk you allow this life wisdom to emerge.’

‘Compassion is not true compassion unless it is active.’

‘For real communication to be established, you must make a determined effort to see the person in terms of his or her own life, character, background and history, and to accept the person unreservedly.’

‘Remember that your task is not to convert anyone to anything, but to help the person in front of you get in touch with his or her own strength, confidence, faith and spirituality, whatever that might be.’

‘When you leave each thing in its own state, then its shape doesn’t change, its color doesn’t fade, and its glow does not dissapear. Whatever appears is unstained by any grasping, so then all that you perceive arises as the naked wisdom of Rigpa, which is the indivisibility of luminosity and emptiness.’

‘Become as resourceful in inspiring yourself to enter your own peace as you are at being neurotic and competitive in the world.’

‘Have a spacious, open and compassionete attitude toward your thoughts and emotions, because in fact your thoughts are your family, the family of your mind. Be like an old wise man, watching a child play.’

‘Thoughts and emotion are the radiance and expression of the very nature of your mind. They rise from the mind, but where do they dissolve? Back into the mind. Whatever arises, do not see it as a particular problem. If you do not impulsively react, if you are only patient, it will once again settle into its essential nature.’

‘As you continue to practice, then meditation slowly arises. Meditation is not something you can “do”, it is something that has to happen spontaneously, only when the practice has been perfected.’