Give your attention to the experience of seeing rather than to the object seen and you will find yourself everywhere. —Rupert Spira

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We’re only finding out recently that a lot of animals have colors and patterns that we cannot see because they’re outside of our visual range. It calls to attention how much of the world we can’t experience because our senses are limited.

When we shine UV lights on them, they glow pink or blue, but these are the colors that we can see…. they could be a bunch of different colors, which we see as all pink.

It’s also interesting to consider that most of these animals are not aware of having glowing patches on their bodies…. isn’t it also possible that we have skin or hair patterns that were not aware of?

(There is actually some research out there to support the idea that our own skin fluoresces as well and that there are gender differences in the pattern and glow.)


—anatomika.science

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Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing.

—Flannery O’Connor

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no(thing not nothing

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When we experience a film, we consciously prime ourselves for illusion. Putting aside will and intellect, we make way for it in our imagination. The sequence of pictures plays directly on our feelings.

Music works in the same fashion; I would say that there is no art form that has so much in common with film as music. Both affect our emotions directly, not via the intellect. And film is mainly rhythm; it is inhalation and exhalation in continuous sequence.


―Ingmar Bergman

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[...] I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.


—Pablo Neruda

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tran(sition

  

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We just sit.

It is like something happening in the great sky.

Whatever kind of bird flies through it, the sky doesn’t care.

That is the mind transmitted from Buddha to us.


—Shunryu Suzuki

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bird sing image

 

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years and distances, stars and candles

   

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Researchers have captured the first image of what dolphins see using echolocation.

"When a dolphin scans an object with its high frequency sound beam, each short click captures a still image, similar to a camera taking photographs,” Reid said. “Each dolphin click is a pulse of pure sound that becomes modulated by the shape of the object."


—John Stuart Reid

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It is no secret. All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man’s hand and the wisdom in a tree’s root: they all arise together.

My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.


― Ursula K. Le Guin
A Wizard of Earthsea

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i give you the end of a golden string, just wind it into a ball ... William Blake

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When you discover
your new work travels the ground you had traversed
decades ago, you wonder, panicked,
‘Have I outlived my vocation ? Said already
all that was mine too say ?’

There’s a remedy –
only one – for the paralysis seizing your throat to mute you,
numbing your hands: Remember the great ones, remember
Cezanne
doggedly sur le motif, his mountain
a tireless noonday angel he grappled like Jacob,
demanding reluctant blessing. Remember James rehearsing
over and over his theme, the loss
of innocence and the attainment
(not by separate note sounding its tone
until by accretion a chord resounds) of somber
understanding. Each life in art
goes forth to meet dragons that rise from their bloody scales
in cyclic rhythm: Know and forget, know and forget.
It’s not only
the passion for getting it right (though it’s that , too)
it’s the way
radiant epiphanies recur, recur,
consuming, pristine, unrecognized –
and remembrance dismays you. And then, look,
some reflection of light, some wing of shadow
is other, unvoiced. You can, you must
proceed.


—Denise Levertov
For Those Whom the Gods Love Less

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Inviting the Wisdom of Death into Life

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The five invitations are my attempt to honor the lessons I have learned sitting bedside with so many dying patients. They are five mutually supportive principles, permeated with love.


Don't wait.

Welcome everything, push away nothing.

Bring your whole self to the experience.

Find a place of rest in the middle of things.

Cultivate don't know mind.


—Frank Ostaseski
The Five Invitations

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window over enchanted seas

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You cannot be frightened of the unknown because you do not know what the unknown is and so there is nothing to be afraid of. Death is a word, and it is the word, the image, that creates fear. So can you look at death without the image of death? As long as the image exists from which springs thought, thought must always create fear. Then you either rationalize your fear of death and build a resistance against the inevitable or you invent innumerable beliefs to protect you from the fear of death. Hence there is a gap between you and the thing of which you are afraid. In this time-space interval there must be conflict which is fear, anxiety and self-pity.

Thought, which breeds the fear of death, says, 'Let's postpone it, let's avoid it, keep it as far away as possible, let's not think about it'- but you are thinking about it. When you say, 'I won't think about it', you have already thought out how to avoid it. You are frightened of death because you have postponed it.

We have separated living from dying, and the interval between the living and the dying is fear. That interval, that time, is created by fear. Living is our daily torture, daily insult, sorrow and confusion, with occasional opening of a window over enchanted seas. That is what we call living, and we are afraid to die, which is to end this misery. We would rather cling to the known than face the unknown - the known being our house, our furniture, our family, our character, our work, our knowledge, our fame, our loneliness, our gods - that little thing that moves around incessantly within itself with its own limited pattern of embittered existence.

We think that living is always in the present and that dying is something that awaits us at a distant time. But we have never questioned whether this battle of everyday life is living at all. We want to know the truth about reincarnation, we want proof of the survival of the soul, we listen to the assertion of clairvoyants and to the conclusions of psychical research, but we never ask, never, how to live - to live with delight, with enchantment, with beauty every day. 

We have accepted life as it is with all its agony and despair and have got used to it, and think of death as something to be carefully avoided. But death is extraordinarily like the life we know how to live. You cannot live without dying. You cannot live if you do not die psychologically every minute. This is not an intellectual paradox. To live completely, wholly, every day as if it were a new loveliness, there must be dying to everything of yesterday, otherwise you live mechanically, and a mechanical mind can never know what love is or what freedom is.

Most of us are frightened of dying because we don't know what it means to live. We don't know how to live, therefore we don't know how to die. As long as we are frightened of life we shall be frightened of death. The man who is not frightened of life is not frightened of being completely insecure for he understands that inwardly, psychologically, there is no security. When there is no security there is an endless movement and then life and death are the same. The man who lives without conflict, who lives with beauty and love, is not frightened of death because to love is to die.


—Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986)
Freedom from the Known, p. 75-77
from Kevin, who walks the walk  

💗

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listen

 

  

   

   

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Listen, my child, to the silence.
An undulating silence,
a silence
that turns valleys and echoes slippery,
that bends foreheads
toward the ground.


—Federico García Lorca

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dear ones

   

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The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction

the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.

Who can deny?
In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in imagination
anguishes
till born
in human–
looks out of the heart
burning with purity–
for the burden of life
is love,

but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
at last,
must rest in the arms
of love.

—Irwin Allen Ginsberg

Song, excerpt

 

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how much of a tree is alive?

  

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Only 1% of a dormant mature tree is biologically living while the rest is composed of non-living, structural wood cells. In other words, very little of a tree's woody volume is composed of "living, metabolizing" tissue; rather, the major living and growing portions of a tree are leaves, buds, roots, and a thin film or skin of cells just under the bark called the cambium.

... these living cells make up a very small percentage of the total volume of a tree's cells. Instead, non-living or "dead" cells comprise most of the volume of a tree, providing vital structural support for the living cells.

Interestingly enough, trees start out in life as a germinating seed with every living cell in hyperdrive, but as a tree seed becomes a seedling, then a sapling, then a mature tree, its living contents become less and less as a percentage of the total volume. Trees increasingly lose their living cytoplasmic cells as metabolism ceases in each cell, and although they are no longer alive, these non-living cells now provide protection, transportation, and physical support for the living ones.

... non-living cells provide a vital role in the process of how a tree grows — from the "heavy lifting" of holding up the tall branches to the tree's bark, which protects the thin layer of living cells underneath.

... New cells are formed and living cells cease metabolization as they transform into transport vessels and protective skin, creating a cycle of creation, rapid growth, slowing metabolism, and death as the tree climbs ever-higher into a healthy, full plant.

For most intents and purposes, wood is considered to be the product of living cells in trees harnessing the environment around them to make proteins and form protective vessels and shells for the trees' sustained growth. Wood is only technically considered dead when it's separated from the tree itself, as it still serves a vital role in the plant's life when attached to living cells in the tree.

In other words, although wood is largely made of non-living cells — cells that no longer reproduce but instead transport nutrients to living cells — it is still considered "alive" if it is attached to the tree itself. However, if a branch falls off or a person cuts down a tree, the wood is considered "dead" because it no longer transports living matter through itself.

As a result, wood that has been separated from a tree will dry up as the protoplasm hardens and the protein turns into the wood one might use in a fireplace or for building a shelf. This wood is considered dead, though the piece it was once attached to — if still attached to the tree itself — is still considered alive. 


—Steve Nix

full article

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And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be 

are full of trees and changing leaves.

—Virginia Woolf

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Matter is spirit moving slowly enough to be seen. —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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You are me, and I am you.

Isn’t it obvious that we “inter-are”?

You cultivate the flower in yourself,

so that I will be beautiful.

I transform the garbage in myself,

so that you will not have to suffer. 

I support you;

you support me.

I am in this world to offer you peace;

you are in this world to bring me joy.

—Thich Nhat Hanh

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In fact, my soul and yours are the same. 

You appear in me, I appear in you. 

We hide in each other.

—Rumi

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I am neither young nor old, existent nor nonexistent ... —Thich Nhat Hanh

 

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[...] When a grasshopper sits on a blade of grass, he has no thought of separation, resistance, or blame… The green grasshopper blends completely with the green grass… It neither retreats nor beckons. It knows nothing of philosophy or ideals. It is simply grateful for its ordinary life. 

Dash across the meadow, my dear friend, and greet yesterday’s child. When you can’t see me, you yourself will return. Even when your heart is filled with despair, you will find the same grasshopper on the same blade of grass… 

Some life dilemmas cannot be solved by study or rational thought. We just live with them, struggle with them, and become one with them… To live, we must die every instant. We must perish again and again in the storms that make life possible.

—Thich Nhat Hanh

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from another lovely posting by

Maria Popova at The Marginalian

here

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needful things

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Things that rain, and things that grow. They are all that hold my interest. (Until the things that rain have grown, and the things that grow have poured.)


—Takashi Hiraide

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dear ones

. 

put some honey and sea water by your bed.

acknowledge that your being needs 

sweetness and cleansing.

that it is sore.

that you are soft.


—Nayyirah Waheed

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i am that

 

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The mountains, I become part of it…

The herbs, the fir tree, I become part of it.

The morning mists, the clouds, the gathering waters,

I become part of it.

The wilderness, the dew drops, the pollen …
 
I become part of it. 


—Navajo Chant

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inspir(ation

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In the morning as the storm begins to blow away
the clear sky appears for a moment and it seems to me
that there has been something simpler than I could ever
believe

simpler than I could have begun to find words for
not patient not even waiting no more hidden
than the air itself that became part of me for a while
with every breath and remained with me unnoticed

something that was here unnamed unknown in the days
and the nights not separate from them
not separate from them as they came and were gone
it must have been here neither early nor late then

by what name can I address it now holding out my thanks


—W.S. Merwin (treasure) 
Just Now 

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per(spective

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In this classic masterwork of perspective, Abbott examines the science of multiple spatial dimensions while satirizing the absurdity of truth by consensus and extending a subtle invitation to consider how what we take as our givens limits our grasp of reality, presenting us with a false view of the world warped by our way of looking at it.

The story is narrated by a protagonist named A. Square, a native of Flatland — a world whose geometric denizens only live and see in two dimensions. But the square has a transformative experience that renders him “the sole possessor of the truths of Space.” On the eve of a new year, he has a hallucinatory vision of journeying to a faraway place called Lineland, populated by “lustrous points” who see him not as a shape but merely as a scattering of points along a line. Frustrated, he tries to demonstrate his squareness to their king by moving from left to right. The king, ignorant of directions, fails to perceive the motion and clings to his view of the square as points on a line.

But then the square himself is visited by a creature from another world — a sphere from the three-dimensional Spaceland. The very notion of three dimensions is at first utterly unimaginable to our hero — he sees the visitor merely as a circle. And yet when the sphere floats up and down, thus contracting and expanding the radius of the perceived circle based on its distance from our grounded observer, the square begins to suspect that he, like the inhabitants of Lineland, might be congenitally blind to the existence of another dimension.

When he returns to Flatland and tries to awaken his compatriots to the revelatory existence of a third dimension, he is met only with obtuse denial and declared mad. Decrees are passed to make illegal any suggestion of a third dimension and all who make such claims are to be imprisoned or executed.

The square himself is eventually thrown in jail, where he spends seven years and composes Flatland as a cautionary memoir he hopes will inspire posterity to see beyond the limit of two dimensions.


—Maria Popova
Edwin Abbott Abbott, 1884
Flatland: A Romance in Many Dimension

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full article at

brainpickings

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things thinging in a worlding world

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My argument has five components, each of which corresponds to a key word in my title. First, I want to insist that the inhabited world is comprised not of objects but of things. I have therefore to establish a very clear distinction between things and objects.

Secondly, I will establish what I mean by life, as the generative capacity of that encompassing field of relations within which forms arise and are held in place. I shall argue that the current emphasis, in much of the literature, on material agency is a consequence of the reduction of things to objects and of their consequent ‘falling out’ from the processes of life. Indeed, the more that theorists have to say about agency, the less they seem to have to say about life; I would like to put this emphasis in reverse.

Thirdly, then, I will claim that a focus on life-processes requires us to attend not to materiality as such but to the fluxes and flows of materials. We are obliged, as Deleuze and Guattari say, to follow these flows, tracing the paths of form-generation, wherever they may lead.

Fourth, I shall determine the specific sense in which movement along these paths is creative: this is to read creativity ‘forwards’, as an improvisatory joining in with formative processes, rather than ‘backwards’, as an abduction from a finished object to an intention in the mind of an agent.

Finally, I shall show that the pathways or trajectories along which improvisatory practice unfolds are not connections, nor do they describe relations between one thing and another. They are rather lines along which things continually come into being. Thus when I speak of the entanglement of things I mean this literally and precisely: not a network of connections but a meshwork of interwoven lines of growth and movement.

[...] These considerations lead me to conclude that the tree is not an object at all, but a certain gathering together of the threads of life. That is what I mean by a thing. In this I follow – albeit rather loosely – the argument classically advanced by the philosopher Martin Heidegger. In his celebrated essay on The Thing, Heidegger was at pains to figure out precisely what makes a thing different from an object. The object stands before us as a fait accompli, presenting its congealed, outer surfaces to our inspection. It is defined by its very ‘overagainstness’ in relation to the setting in which it is placed (Heidegger 1971: 167). The thing, by contrast, is a ‘going on’, or better, a place where several goings on become entwined.

To observe a thing is not to be locked out but to be invited in to the gathering. We participate, as Heidegger rather enigmatically put it, in the thing ’thinging in a worlding world'. There is of course a precedent for this view of the thing as a gathering in the ancient meaning of the word as a place where people would gather to resolve their affairs. If we think of every participant as following a particular way of life, threading a line through the world, then perhaps we could define the thing, as I have suggested elsewhere, as a ‘parliament of lines’ (Ingold 2007a: 5).

Thus conceived, the thing has the character not of an externally bounded entity, set over and against the world, but of a knot whose constituent threads, far from being contained within it, trail beyond, only to become caught with other threads in other knots. Or in a word, things leak, forever discharging through the surfaces that form temporarily around them.


—Tim Ingold
Bringing Things to Life: Creative Entanglements in a World of Materials, excerpts
University of Aberdeen, July 2010

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you must have a place

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The mythologist Joseph Campbell was asked by an interviewer how a regular person could preserve his sense of the mythic when so many feel too besieged by the claims of every day living.

He said, "You must have a place to which you can go, in your heart, in your mind, or your house, almost every day, where you do not know what you owe anyone or what anyone owes you.

You must have a place you can go to where you do not know what your work is or who you work for, where you do not know who you are married to or who your children are."


—Joseph Campbell

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