liveonearth | Entries tagged with awareness

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness,
and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.
Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things
cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth
all one's lifetime.
–Mark Twain

Crossposts: https://liveonearth.livejournal.com/1440037.html

Whenever I bemoan the culture of "safe spaces" and "microaggressions" on college campuses, said Andrew Sullivan, people argue that "the real world isn't like that." But that's no longer true. More and more of our public discourse is now shaped by the neo-Marxist Left's "identity-based, 'social justice" worldview, in which all interactions are defined by a hierarchy of power and oppression. Free speech itself is falling into disrepute, as a tool of the patriarchy. When some feminists recently got wind of a forthcoming Harper's essay criticizing the #MeToo movement, they not only personally vilified author Katie Roiphe, they also tried to force the magazine to drop the piece before publication--a "real-world echo" of students shouting down speakers. Writers, like students, now know that one "incorrect" opinion on sensitive issues of race and gender can result in "instant social ostracism" and demands they be fired--so they remain silent. Men cannot discuss sexual harassment; whites cannot talk about racism. The goal of our society is not "the emancipation of the individual," but permanent placement of the individual in the proper identity group: white, black, brown, female, gay, etc. "We used to call that bigotry. Now we call it being woke."

--Summary of Andrew Sullivan's article (NYMag.com) from The Week February 23, 2018.

Crossposts: https://liveonearth.livejournal.com/1439631.html

"A single dot on a canvas is not a painting and a single bet cannot resolve a complex theoretical dispute. This will take many questions and question clusters. Of course it's possible that if large numbers of questions are asked, each side may be right on some forecasts but wrong on others and the final outcome won't generate the banner headlines that celebrity bets sometimes do. But as software engineers say, that's a feature, not a bug. A major point of view rarely has zero merit, and if a forecasting contest produces a split decisions we will have learned that the reality is more mixed than either side thought. If learning, not gloating, is the goal, that is progress."
--Tetlock, Philip and Gardner, Dan, in p269 in Superforecasting; The Art and Science of Prediction 2015.

Crossposts: https://liveonearth.livejournal.com/1439152.html

Your confusion is not pathology, it is path. It has something to show you that clarity could never reveal. The nature of chaos is wisdom, but you must provide a home for it to receive its mysteries.

Your feeling of disconnection is not neurotic, it is intelligent. It has something to show you that oneness could never reveal. If you will practice the yoga of non-abandonment and provide safe passage – it will disclose an unmet doorway.

Your loneliness, your shakiness, and your fear are not mistakes. They are not obstacles on your path. They *are* the path. The freedom you are longing for will never be found in the eradication of the unwanted, but only in the core of the love and information it carries.

There are surges of somatic activity that contain very important information for your journey. If you will offer safe passage for the unknown aliveness, you will meet the messengers of illumination. Nothing is missing, nothing is out of place, and nothing need be sent away.

Yes, you may burn until you are translucent, but it is by way of this burning that your wholeness will be revealed.

~ Matt Licata

Crossposts: https://liveonearth.livejournal.com/1429814.html

SOMETIMES

Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest,

breathing
like the ones
in the old stories,

who could cross
a shimmering bed of leaves
without a sound,

you come
to a place
whose only task

is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests,

conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests
to stop what
you are doing
right now,
and

to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,

questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,

questions
that have patiently
waited for you,

questions
that have no right
to go away.

~ David Whyte

Crossposts: http://liveonearth.livejournal.com/1429029.html

"Times are difficult globally;
awakening is no longer a luxury or an ideal.
It’s becoming critical.
We don’t need to add more depression,
more discouragement,
or more anger to what’s already here.
It’s becoming essential that we learn
how to relate sanely with difficult times.
The earth seems to be beseeching us
to connect with joy
and discover our innermost essence.
This is the best way
that we can benefit others."
~ Pema Chodron

Crossposts: http://liveonearth.livejournal.com/1426082.html

“Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.”
― William Martin

Crossposts: http://liveonearth.livejournal.com/1424409.html

We might think, as we become more open, that it's going to take bigger catastrophes for us to reach our limit. The interesting thing is that, as we open more and more, it's the big ones that immediately wake us up and the little things that catch us off guard. However, no matter what the size, color, or shape is, the point is still to lean toward the discomfort of life & see it clearly, rather than to protect ourselves from it.
~Pema Chodron

Crossposts: http://liveonearth.livejournal.com/1422828.html

It’s fantastic to look at people and see that they really, deep down, are enlightened. They’re It. They’re faces of the divine.

And they look at you, and they say ‘oh no, but I’m not divine. I’m just ordinary little me.’ You look at them in a funny way, and here you see the buddha nature looking out of their eyes, straight at you, and saying it’s not, and saying it quite sincerely.

And that’s why, when you get up against a great guru, the Zen master, or whatever, he has a funny look in his eyes. When you say ‘I have a problem, guru. I’m really mixed up, I don’t understand,’ he looks at you in this queer way, and you think ‘oh dear me, he’s reading my most secret thoughts. He’s seeing all the awful things I am, all my cowardice, all my shortcomings.’

But that’s not what he’s looking at. He’s giving you a funny look for quite another reason altogether. He’s giving you a funny look because he sees in you the Brahman, the Godhead, just claiming it’s ‘poor little me’.

~ Alan Watts, Lectures on Zen/Spiritual Alchemy

Crossposts: http://liveonearth.livejournal.com/1422033.html

What I Have Learned So Far

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.

Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don’t think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of — indolence, or action.
Be ignited, or be gone.

~ Mary Oliver

Crossposts: http://liveonearth.livejournal.com/1421294.html

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

~ Rumi

There is no need to run outside for better seeing...

Rather abide a the center of your being.

For the more you leave it the less you learn.

Search your heart and see...

The way to do is to be.

--Lao Tzu

Your vision
will become clear
only when
you can look into your own heart.
Who looks outside, dreams;
who looks inside,
awakes.
--Carl Jung

I call it conscious realism: Objective reality is just conscious agents, just points of view. Interestingly, I can take two conscious agents and have them interact, and the mathematical structure of that interaction also satisfies the definition of a conscious agent. This mathematics is telling me something. I can take two minds, and they can generate a new, unified single mind. Here’s a concrete example. We have two hemispheres in our brain. But when you do a split-brain operation, a complete transection of the corpus callosum, you get clear evidence of two separate consciousnesses. Before that slicing happened, it seemed there was a single unified consciousness. So it’s not implausible that there is a single conscious agent. And yet it’s also the case that there are two conscious agents there, and you can see that when they’re split. I didn’t expect that, the mathematics forced me to recognize this. It suggests that I can take separate observers, put them together and create new observers, and keep doing this ad infinitum. It’s conscious agents all the way down.

--Donald Hoffman, Professor of cognitive science UC, Irvine,

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/

NY TIMES OPINION PIECE: MOLLY WORTHEN SAYS STOP SAYING “I FEEL LIKE”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/opinion/sunday/stop-saying-i-feel-like.html

The PC-ness and softening of modern verbal communications has results in a net loss of meaning. We can fix this, if we want. Behind the cut is a good article arguing for awareness of this one particular phrase. "I feel like" is often used to replace the words "I think", and it is not a feeling at all. Feelings, that is emotions, are quite distinct from thoughts and judgements. To be clear in our communications requires that we recognize and communicate that difference.

( Read more... )

When Shiva the Great Yogin chooses
to become the Lord of the Dance, Nataraja,
the universe appears as Consciousness
in its most ecstatic forms:
as art and play, as knowledge and beauty,
as the very embodiment of awareness
in the form of the Self.

—From Clothed in Consciousness:
Nataraja in the Tantric Tradition
by Dr. Douglas Brooks

You can't talk about the ocean
with a frog who lives in a well;
he is bounded by the space he inhabits.

You can't talk about ice
with an insect who was born in June;
he is bounded by a single season.

You can't talk about Tao
with a person who thinks he knows something;
he is bounded by his own beliefs

The Tao is vast and fathomless.
You can understand only by stepping
beyond the limits of yourself.

From the Chaung Tzu. 17
via Stephen Mitchell, The Second Book of the Tao.

Originally posted by

bobby1933 at But I Don't Know The Frogs Language Or Mind, And Can't Know What The Frog Knows.

May the Infinite Light of Wisdom and Compassion so shine within us that the
errors and vanities of self may be dispelled; so shall we understand the changing nature of
existence and awaken into spiritual peace.
--Unknown

I've been trying to be polite. I am more dedicated to my own practice than to any teacher. I've studied under many teachers, and in many schools. Some new teachers were far better than some veterans. Every teacher teaches me something. Every school has taught me something.

Sometimes the thing I learn is a negative. Part of growing up and separating from your parents is deciding "I don't want to ever do that." What I have been learning recently is that many teachers are so busy teaching that they don't take the time to breathe. That is to say, the best teachers are the ones who are truly present with us in the practice, and not simply filling airspace with instructions.

My yoga practice involves tuning in to my own inner voice, and being present with my breath and body. This was a great learning for me, because I grew up very American, unaware of my body, or worse, in denial of it.

( Exhale, inhale... )

"Isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you
were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed,
eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part
of it?" ~Richard Dawkins

"A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe
as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves
of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.
Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge."
~Carl Sagan

"Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger
than we can imagine."
~Sir Arthur Eddington (1882 - 1944)

"Not only are we in the universe, the universe is in us. I don't know of
any deeper spiritual feeling than what that brings upon me."
~Neil deGrasse Tyson
www.tinyurl.com/TysonSpirituality

“Spirituality is about being awake. It’s the attempt to transcend
the mundane, sleepwalking experience of life we all fall into, to
tap into the wonder of being a conscious and grateful thing in
the midst of an astonishing universe. It doesn’t require religion. ”
~Dale McGowan, author of "Atheism for Dummies"

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INTERESTING TIMES

are better than no times at all.

Entries tagged with awareness

QotD: Travel Kills Bigotry

QotD: neo-Marxism = social justice today

QotD: If Learning, Not Gloating, Is the Goal

QotD: Your Path

Poem OTD: Tiny Frightening Requests

QotD: How to Help

Poem OTD: Treasure the Ordinary

QotD: Chodron on Reacting to Catastrophe

QotD: Enlightened Deep Down

What I Have Learned So Far by Mary Oliver

Rumi: Guest House

QotD: Lao Tzu on Being

QotD: Awakening

QotD: Unified Consciousness

"I feel like" is obfuscation and wimpiness, try "I think" instead

QotD: Nataraja

Perspective is Everything

QotD: Dispell the Vanities of Self

Yoga Beef: Let Me Breathe

Quotes on Religion and Spirituality