Posts

May 23, 2013

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Mind begins as skin. Skin separates “this” from “that” and so does mind. I’ve been writing about this line of thought now for a few years but this morning I am not going to burden you with these seemingly philosophical ideas. This morning I want to tell you about something that I recently learned from [...]

May 17, 2013

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12:19 PM | Self-Determinism

There is no “and” in Cause-and-Effect. Cause and Effect are one and the same uninterrupted flow of reality. Mind breaks up the flow of this reality into Cause and Effect b/c of its information-processing limitations, essentially, dropping out of the flow of “What Is” to deal with reality (by categorizing it, by breaking it up [...]

May 15, 2013

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11:00 PM | Misadventures of the Mind

Food for thought: “Symbolism must be eliminated. Once we end symbolism, we are also participating in the demise of cultism and superstition. [...] Humans were in a special state of mind when they created symbols. That special state of mind is what I call a neurological misadventure, a diseased state.” (Edgar Ridley, The Golden Apple: [...]

May 14, 2013

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9:17 AM | The Question of Continuity

Sometimes people in therapy want to dig really deep. They wrestle with such existential questions as “Will I die when I die?” I let them wrestle first and keep my mouth shut. Then I socractically prod with such questions as “What is life? What is death? What is this thing you call “I”? But here’s [...]

May 12, 2013

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10:37 PM | Feedback Loop of Awareness

To liberate yourself, meditate. To meditate, liberate yourself.

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12:00 PM | Reflective Eating

Londoner and stuntman Terry Cole holds over 150 Guinness World Records. He also eats glass. “Well,” he told a journalist in an interview, “I eat light bulbs. I mean, I eat glass, not on a regular basis at all. But if the work comes in, then I’ll do it.” (1). Well then, I’m relieved. I’m [...]

May 08, 2013

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9:00 PM | Tools That We Are

Life in the Universe is a norm. Technology, however, is an exception. Our planet, as a sample of species, shows that most of the species are adapted well enough to their environment to not require any extensive technology. For example, dolphins, as cultural and psychological as they may be, require no tools. Our own use [...]

May 05, 2013

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8:52 AM | Flash In the Pan

Each life, subjectively, is an eternity no matter how objectively short it is. No consciousness ever experiences its own non-existence. Subjectively, consciousness is unborn and undying. Thus, all consciousness, subjectively, is immortal even if it is objectively nothing but a flash in the pan. How marvelously this Universe takes care of itself! Mindstream Non-News pic: Richard [...]

May 03, 2013

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10:57 AM | Meditation: “It’s Not New Age nonsense”

In meditation research the news keeps getting better and better: “Previous studies have reported changes to the brain while people practise [meditation, yoga and prayer] activities, but a new study shows for the first time that gene activity changes too. [...] “It’s not New Age nonsense,” says Herbert Benson of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He [...]

May 01, 2013

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1:05 PM | Ring of Silence

Silence has a nice ring to it. Listen.

April 27, 2013

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11:32 PM | Ponder Your Journey, Living Matter

The Celtic classic Book of Taliesin includes a poem purportedly by the sixth-century bard Taliesin, telling the story of his past lives: The second time I was created, I was a blue salmon. I was a dog, I was a stag; I was a roe-buck on the mountain side, I was a treasure chest, I [...]

April 25, 2013

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12:23 PM | Neuro-Trojan Tribe

Human (as a body) is a Trojan horse full of neural legionnaires, a vehicle administered by billions of competing and cooperating neural charioteers. Each “one” of us is a neural “we.” Context: Neural Tribe Related: Brain Isn’t an Organ But an Organization (Somov, 2012)

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12:20 PM | Not Grand Enough

William James, the “grandfather” of American psychology, once said: ”We add both to the subject and to the predicate part of reality” and “[that] enhance[s] the universe’s total value.” What does this mean? To me, this simply means that the universe enriches itself through self-awareness. Too grand? Too mystical? Too anthropomorphic? I don’t think so. [...]

April 24, 2013

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12:59 PM | Become an “Om”nivore (or an Aumnivore)

Whether you are a meat eater, a vegetarian, or a vegan, put some om into your eating. Pay a moment of tribute to the life you consume. Devote a moment of thought to recognition, perhaps “This isn’t just food; this used to be alive” or, as in the case of “live” foods, “This is still [...]

April 22, 2013

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1:14 PM | Santhara & Eating Experiments With Truth

A man is not virtuous because he doesn’t eat meat, nor is he any less virtuous because he does. Jiddu Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living I must reduce myself to zero. So long as man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Ahimsa [...]

April 21, 2013

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1:28 PM | Mind is a Leg

Mindfulness meditations show that the mind moves, just like the body. Rodolfo Llinas, a neuroscientist and author of I of the Vortex: from Neurons to Self offers a framework that helps make sense of this movement (2002). Llinas proposes thatmind is a kind of glorified movement system that has evolved to assist a multicellular organism with motricity (evasive action). The [...]

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8:17 AM | The Pungency of Eating Ethics

A while back, while peeling a head of garlic I noticed that the cloves had begun to sprout. Tiny green shoots were poking out of their white husks. I broke off several cloves and stuck them into a pot of soil. A couple of days later, tall green blades were proudly sticking out of the [...]

April 16, 2013

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12:52 PM | Paper Tigers

People, in general, and habitually angry people, in particular, tend to take things personally. There is a reason for this: fundamental attribution error (FAE). Taking things personally is a form of survival-oriented meaning-making. If you see a tiger in the wild at a distance, it makes good adaptive sense to ask yourself: “Is it moving [...]

April 15, 2013

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6:51 PM | Resistance-free Survival

“In terms of weight, a raindrop on a mosquito is like a car on a human – and the little suckers get hit every 25 seconds in heavy rain. How do they survive? By not resisting. [...] A drop shoves the bug downward at 100 to 300 times the force of gravity – enough to [...]

April 14, 2013

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12:54 PM | Unprincipled Knowing

Wuzhi is a Daoist wu-attitude (akin to wuwei). Wuzhi is a kind of “unprincipled knowing.” Sounds unethical, doesn’t it? But it’s not about ethics. It’s about knowing the particulars without clinging to generalities. Wuzhi is: the “acceptance of the world on its own terms without recourse to rules of discrimination that separate one sort of [...]

April 11, 2013

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1:28 AM | Awe Out of Nothing

There is no cup independent of the clay that it is made of. The idea of a “cup” can exist independently of clay but not the cup itself. Same with you, Mind. There is no mind independent of the body that it is made of. Except for the idea of “mind” in your mind… This [...]

April 07, 2013

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10:39 AM | All That Can Be, Is

Do you have a favorite thought? Mine is: “All that can be, already is.” This thought of acceptance shines from behind all my other thoughts, it’s the inner illumination of my mind-cave, the interior ambiance of my consciousness. Like that nightlight you leave on when you go to sleep. - Present Perfect

April 04, 2013

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10:55 AM | A Nowless Now

A now without awareness is not a now. A present moment without presence is another reenactment of the past. - www.eatingthemoment.com

April 01, 2013

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12:02 PM | Non-Inflammatory Mind

“Mindfulness meditation may relieve chronic inflammation,” I read in the April 2013 issue of APA Monitor. “According to a study… including people with such inflammatory conditions as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and asthma…based on immune and endocrine markers collected before and after the [8-week mindfulness] trainings, the scientists found that the mindfulness-based stress reduction [...]

March 29, 2013

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11:24 AM | Anger and Fear

In this post I want to briefly share my understanding of the interplay between fear and anger, or, at the risk of sounding a tad too lofty, my philosophy of anger and fear. I call it “sutra on anger and fear.” The word “sutra” is Sanskrit for “aphoristic teaching.” (I don’t speak Sanskrit but I [...]

March 24, 2013

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3:41 PM | Unnatural Art of Meditation

Body is not interested in meditation. Neither is nature that made this body. We weren’t built to meditate. Thus, to meditate is to transcend our nature. Here’s a relevant passage from Paul Ekman. “Breathing we never think about. What we are doing with these meditative practices, such as focusing on the breath, is creating skills [...]

March 08, 2013

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6:12 PM | Reinvent Emotional Eating

Emotional eating is misunderstood and often unnecessarily demonized. However, emotional eating — that is, eating to feel good, often termed “compulsive eating” — isn’t the problem. It’s emotional overeating and mindless emotional eating that can be both psychologically and physically unhealthy. Emotional eating works as a coping strategy and stress reliever if approached with mindfulness and moderation. [...]

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3:03 PM | “I”?

What do you mean when you say “I”? Who is this that is calling oneself “I”? Who is pondering these question? [Notice the familiar, mind-boggling circularity here that clarifies nothing. You ask yourself "What is this "I"?" And then you answer: "That's me." Ok. And who's this "me"? Who is this who said "me" in [...]

March 06, 2013

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4:16 PM | BYOM

Rumi once wrote: “My poems resemble the bread of Egypt – one night passes over it, and you can’t eat it any more. So gobble them down now, while they’re still fresh, before the dust of the world settles on them. [...] And even if you eat my poems while they’re still fresh, you still [...]

March 04, 2013

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10:24 PM | Empty Time Called Future

Food for thought: “Between life and death is always the empty time called future.” - Source: Joost A. M. Meerloo, Suicide and Mass Suicide, 1968