dear world

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The reciprocal truth of the observer changing what is observed is that what is observed changes the observer. This was a view espoused by Goethe, and not just in the obvious ways you might imagine.

According to him, we literally grow faculties. 

He held that an object properly contemplated generates in the beholder the faculty proper to its own perception: ‘Every new object, well contemplated and clearly seen, opens up a new organ within us’. 

Contemplation of the world in a spirit of openness and humility fundamentally enlarges our being, where dogma and complacency simply narrow it. Equally it enables the greater reality of the cosmos – whatever it may be – to fulfil itself through us.


—Iain McGilchrist
The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World

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People say “what can I do”……

All the important changes happen from within ourself, not out there…

So my recommendations might be simple. Begin by cultivating a sense of awe and wonder, rather than clever, clever knowingness about the extraordinarily complex and beautiful cosmos, which it is a pure gift that we have been given a life in.

Think about what we are to do with it and in order to do that well, have compassion to others and all the living world, not a sense of aggressive embattlement against forces that we quite probably misunderstand.

And to begin to adopt a sense of the little that we know….in other words a kind of, not willing ignorance, but the beginning of true knowing which is when we recognise how little that we know….that is the first step towards true knowledge.

For this to happen, we need to understand ourself anew….know thyself….we need every insight we can get into what we are doing to ourself, to life itself and to our inexpressively beautiful and complex world. I hope I may have here offered one such insight however small.

The work is great, but we are capable of greater things than we know.

—Dr Iain McGilchrist
Darwin Lectures 2024

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One regret, dear world

That I am determined not to have 
When I am lying on my deathbed 

Is that 
I did not kiss you enough.


—Hafiz

 

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wait

buffleheadcabin

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