tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88505280797401588732024-02-23T02:04:22.976-06:00Lit HumLit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.comBlogger458125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-5187383191955498122023-08-12T10:34:00.001-05:002023-08-12T10:34:54.740-05:00How to Create a Masterpiece<p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The Shakespeare way…</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Know little Latin and less Greek. Remove your ego to the extent that you can fully inhabit a saint, a murderer, a queen, a beast, a clown, and everything in between. Be myriad-minded. Cut down on the history reading. Be a passionate lover who distrusts power. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The Dickinson way…</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Make vast imaginative cognitive leaps while wearing white. Listen to a fly or look at gazing grain while contemplating the journey from infinity to eternity. Reject church. Talk regularly with your sister-in-law, God, and Shakespeare. Make your greatest outing the distance between your bedroom and the kitchen. Tell it slant. Much madness is divinest sense.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The Van Gogh way…</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Transition from depicting your family eating potatoes to communing with the divine in a drinking hole. Be sorrowful but always rejoicing. Practice bhakti yoga, approaching everything with awe and devotion. Be on good terms with a relative who makes money. Paint that which is dark, yet color. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The Yeats way…</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Be silly but know your trade. Obsess over a girl who’s completely wrong for you. Dive into the occult. Don’t be content. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The Stevens way…</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Maintain a stable job and the outward appearance of normality. Take long walks. Spend hours and hours in contemplation and concentration. Resist the intelligence almost successfully. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The Kafka way…</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Be obsessive. Become literature itself. When Germany declares war on Russia, go swimming in the afternoon.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The Rothko way…</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Spend long hours staring at a blank canvas. Have a well-worn copy of Fear and Trembling by your bedside. Contemplate inner feeling states and express them in haunting and ecstatic ways. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The Beckett way…</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Completely digest and integrate the Bible, Dante, Shakespeare, Proust, Joyce, western philosophy, and art. Contemplate qualities such as waiting and ending. Express fundamental sounds. Write a play in which nothing happens twice. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The Guston way…</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Spend years telling stories, then years in abstraction, then years telling stories again. Constantly question everything, especially your own motives. Completely strip yourself down and start over again so that each new form is genuinely fresh. Mingle comics and politics with the masters and eternity. Love all things Italian. Cut down on the smokes. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The O’Hara way…</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Enjoy lunch, talk a lot on the telephone, be a fast runner and wear tight jeans. </span></p><div><br /></div>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-30606392431184697862023-07-21T10:27:00.001-05:002023-08-12T10:29:36.008-05:00On the Heart of Creativity<p><span style="font-family: arial;">I think the imagination is committed to the justice of wholesomeness. It's not interested in one dimensional stuff, or reductionism, or one side over against another side. It's interested in where the sides meet, and what they can bring to birth when they cross-fertilize with each other.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And I think that brightness in a poem, in a painting or a piece of music, usually has to sweat its way through underlayers and undercaverns of darkness to come to the top. And when it comes to the top, and when you see it, you can see in it the beautifully sculpted shadow of the darkness of the journey it has made.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And I think that's the heart of creativity. Creativity is listening in to the places where opposites are already dancing with each other.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- John O'Donohue</span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-54411922364740714522023-06-27T09:05:00.002-05:002023-06-27T09:05:38.217-05:00Poem "Ancestry" by Fred LaMotte<p><span style="font-family: arial;"> My DNA results came in.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Just as I suspected,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">my great great grandfather</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">was a monarch butterfly.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Much of who I am is still</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">wriggling under a stone.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am part larva, but</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">part hummingbird too.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">There is dinosaur tar in</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">my bone marrow.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">My golden hair sprang out</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">of a meadow in Palestine.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Genghis Khan is my fourth cousin,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">but I didn't get his dimples.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">My loins are loaded with</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">banyan seeds from Sri Lanka,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">but I descended from Ravanna,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">not Ram.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">My uncle is a mastodon.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">There are traces of white people</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">in my saliva.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">3.7 billion years ago I swirled</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">in hydrogen dust,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">dreaming of a planet overgrown</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">with lingams and yonis.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">More recently, say 60,000 B.C.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I walked on hairy paws</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">across a land bridge</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">joining Sweden to Botswana.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the bastard of the sun and moon.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I can no longer hide my heritage of</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">raindrops and cougar scat.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">My mud was molded with your grandmother's tears.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I was the brother</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">who marched you to the sea</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and sold you.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I was the merchant from Savannah</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and the cargo of blackness.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I was the chain.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Admit it, you have wings,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">vast and crystal,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">like mine, like mine.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You have sweat, dark and salty,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">like mine, like mine.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You have secrets silently</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">singing in your blood,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">like mine, like mine.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Don't pretend that earth</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">is not one family.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Don't pretend we never hung</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">from the same branch.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Don't pretend we do not ripen</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">on each other's breath.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Don't pretend we didn't</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">come here to forgive.</span></p><p><br /></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-77113451690371933852023-05-15T09:56:00.003-05:002023-05-15T09:57:57.024-05:00Reporting Back to Queen Isabella <p><span style="font-family: arial;">When Don Cristobal returned to a hero’s welcome,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">his caravels corked with treasures of the New World,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">he presented his findings; told of his great adventures</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">to Queen Isabella, whose speech set the gold standard</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">for her nation’s language. When he came to Xamaica</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">he described it so: ‘The fairest isle that eyes ever beheld.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Then he balled up a big sheet of parchment, unclenched,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and let it fall off a flat surface before it landed at her feet.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">There we were, massifs, high mountain ranges, expansive</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">plains, deep valleys, one he’d christened for the Queen</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">of Spain. Overabundance of wood, over one hundred</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">rivers, food, and fat pastures for Spanish horses, men,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and cattle; and yes, your majesty, there were some people.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- Lorna Goodison</span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-2035542957532910662023-04-02T17:24:00.000-05:002023-04-02T17:24:15.039-05:00On Education - Rousseau & Strike<p><span style="font-family: arial;">On the "provide-and-prepare" model:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">What, then, must be thought of that barbarous education which sacrifices the present to an uncertain future, which burdens a child with chains of every sort and begins by making him miserable in order to prepare him from afar for I know not what pretended happiness[?] … I hear from afar the clamors of that false wisdom which incessantly projects us outside of ourselves, which always counts the present for nothing, and which, pursuing without respite a future that retreats in proportion as we advance, by dint of transporting us where we are not, transports us where we shall never be.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- Jean-Jacques Rousseau</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">On the "aspirational" model: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Mrs Smith was my ninth grade algebra teacher. To enter Mrs Smith’s class was to enter the Temple of Mathematics. Equations were objects of reverence. There were no attempts to make math fun or ‘relevant’. There was no discussion of how math helped one get a good job. Rather, Mrs Smith was able to point to the goods that made math intrinsically valuable. … I do not recall that Mrs Smith used terms like elegance, simplicity, paradox or power to describe mathematics, but I do know that she showed us that these things were what motivated her about mathematics. … In effect, her message to us was this. ‘Here is what I see in math. There are goods internal to its practice. There are virtues required to realize these goods. Let me help you see them’.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- Kenneth Strike</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">from: </span><a href="https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/our-one-dimensional-schools/" style="font-family: arial;">https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/our-one-dimensional-schools/</a></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-42134436585081584802022-09-21T11:41:00.000-05:002022-09-21T11:41:34.583-05:00An Antidote to Speed<p><span style="font-family: arial;">Japanese haiku, the simple three-line form of poetry, is now the world’s most popular poetic form. Since it first became known in the West one hundred years ago, it has been seen from various perspectives. As a way to convey an aesthetic image, as a way to appreciate nature and as a way to record the Zen ah! moment. Perhaps it could also be seen as a means to appreciate “transience” — a way (or perhaps a practice) to enabling us understand and accept death in our ourselves and everything around us.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Haiku brings us the birth and death of each moment. Everything is stripped away to its naked state. No high tech speed, but slowly and naturally we discover what is simply here, as in meditation: our aging bodies, the afternoon light on the bed sheets, the sound of a siren in the distance. Whatever is contained in this very moment, without adornment. <i>The Tibetan Book of the Dead</i> talks about these momentary bardo states, states of transition from one realm to another, from life to death to re-birth. These states of transition also exist in each moment of our life when we are alive on this earth, each moment containing a mini-birth and mini-death. One result of the shock of September 11, 2001 is a greater recognition of this transience, on an individual, national and world level of consciousness.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Usually it takes a personal crisis such as a death or separation from a loved one to awaken this realization of our true human condition. It is really our inability to accept this impermanence that causes us to appreciate less and suffer more. As Pema Chödron, a Tibetan meditation teacher says, “… happiness lies in being able to relax with our true condition which is basically fleeting, dynamic, fluid, not in any way solid, not in any way permanent. It’s transient by nature…”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>violets, grow here and there</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>in the ruins</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>of my burned house</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>— Shokyu-ni 1713-1781</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">However, in the midst of the speed of post-modern culture, we somehow miss this point. The effect of speed is that it ignores, denies or negates the natural process of life. For things take time to grow: a garden, a baby’s steps, the trust of a friend, the study of a map or the stars, even a good cup of coffee or tea. This was recently illustrated in a Japanese comic strip showing the making of a cup of Japanese tea: a hundred years ago, one hour to make and serve tea in tea-ceremony style; fifty years ago, fifteen to thirty minutes to boil water in a kettle and serve tea in a ceramic cup; twenty years ago, five minutes to steep a tea-bag from a hot-pot into a paper cup; ten years ago, five seconds to get a hot can of tea from a vending machine (See KJ 47, P. 91). Modern civilization’s evolution or ‘de-evolution’?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">A speedy culture ignores natural laws. For through this unconscious addiction to speed and hyper-living, even in the simple act of drinking a cup of tea, the natural process of birth, growth, old age and death is given little attention. No part of this is escaped, but the process is missed. Any transformation emerging from reflection is bypassed. And without self-reflection, especially reflection of our mortality, we cannot really see ourselves or our world clearly. This is where haiku awareness can possibly bridge the gap — as a practice to be more conscious of these momentary states in our lives.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>plucking my gray hairs —</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>beside my pillow</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>a cricket sounds</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>— Basho (1644-1694)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Haiku can be an antidote to the speed of post-modern culture — allowing one to step off the spinning wheel, to stop and breathe deeply and slowly. To note the birth and death of each moment. Whether we write it down, recording it in words, isn’t of ultimate importance, although it may be enjoyable for some. But rather, seeing things around us with ‘haiku eyes’ is of importance.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Haiku awareness can be a vehicle to help bring our attention back to the moment. Reading good traditional or modern haiku can give us a hint as to how to be more present. Haiku’s shortness, too, fits the short attention span of a speedy world. In fact, the process of tracing the rising and falling of this moment’s birth and death is built into this three line Japanese poetic form, which makes it one of the easiest art forms to use, in expanding this kind of awareness.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>rising steam from the bath —</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>spring begins</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>on this moon-lit night</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>— Issa (1762-1826)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Expanding awareness means noticing what is already here in this time and space. Noticing for a few moments, perhaps only for as long as the count of 1, 2 or 3 breaths… Letting the thoughts and sensations of the moment’s sounds and images fade and new sensations arise. Perhaps noting the fading sunlight on the curtain… That moment dies and another is born; no need to catch it but just note its passing, as a thought in meditation, as in a last breath, as in the loss of something which becomes dearer because it’s fleeting.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">This traditional Japanese life view, an acceptance of <i>mujo </i>or transience, is naturally embedded in haiku. This aesthetic in Japanese is known as <i>mono no aware</i>, which roughly translates as “the beauty of dying things” or “the beauty of transient things.” Rather than a traditional Western poetry of denial in ‘rage, rage against the dying of the light’ (Dylan Thomas) or ‘Death, thou shalt die.’ (John Donne), Japanese traditional poetry shows an acceptance and awe of the natural stages of becoming and disappearing in each thing. As in these haiku:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>summer grasses —</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>the only remains</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>of warriors’ dreams</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>— Basho</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>good-bye...</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>I pass like all things</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>dew on the grass</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>— Banzan 1661-1730</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>the dead body —</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>autumn wind blows</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>through its nostrils</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>— Iida Dakotsu 1885-1962</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And although it’s possible to find the opposite view in each tradition, nonetheless, these two views of acceptance and denial still pervade the cultures of the ‘East and West.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Whether we ultimately deny or accept transience, the main thing is to note the passing of things. That in itself is transformative, for it forces us to slow down. For in the speed of modern culture, instead of using ‘saved time’ to be quiet, sit still and just be, as in slower less ‘high tech’ cultures, we instead do another thing — go to another appointment, travel a further distance, and wonder why we have ‘less time.’ Our modern litany is, ‘I don’t have enough time.’ Speed accelerates, draws us into the vortex, so instead of doing less we are doing more.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The speed of Western-style globalized culture has a dehumanizing effect. It ironically defeats our original purpose, to have more time to relax and enjoy the moment. Haiku may be a way to step out of this vortex, if only for a few moments a day. To write it down, or just stop and note the moment’s passing will inevitably force us to slow our pace, so that we can participate in the moment’s birth and death. It is essential for our survival, for even our health & sanity, but above all for our humanness.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>I kill an ant</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>realize my children</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>have been watching</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>— Hekigodo</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">As I look up from writing down these thoughts about ‘haiku and transience’ in Zenpukuji park near my house in Tokyo, the autumn day turns to dusk. I note the pale gray light descending and shimmering in waves across the surface of the pond; the wild ducks floating in the dimming light. I note the stillness and the passing of the light in the ending of the day; the shouts of nearby children squealing with delight. The scene makes me wonder… the ducks or clouds don’t seem to be moving any faster than they did when I was a kid, or I imagine even a hundred years ago, but it is us human beings who are moving faster than is natural.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">We are losing something vital, and we know it; we can feel it, an unbearable emptiness from loss. Empty because we are disconnecting from the slower rhythm of life around us, away from the slower pace of each moment’s passing. This disconnection seems to create a deep, unspeakable loneliness within us. And as we connect more and more to the instant-electronic net, we seem further and further disconnected from the natural net, the web of life. Ironically, in other eras when human beings were more connected to natural rhythms, they wrote haiku but didn’t need to use it, in the way we do today.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">To relax with our true human condition which is itself transient, we must slow down enough to be aware, to feel the gap, the crack in the universe’s egg. For without seeing what is here, we are just speeding past and seeing very little. It reminds me of taking the <i>shinkansen </i>(bullet train) from Tokyo to Kyoto — it saves time, about three hours, but you see a blur instead of relaxing scenery; and in fact, one gets a headache if one stares out the window to see a view at all. We need to slow down, even for a few minutes, with whatever is in our sphere.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Breathing in and out with the ducks across the pond, breathing in and out with the rising and falling of the red maple branches, breathing in and out with the sick spouse or child sleeping next to us, just noting that… This is our heritage as a human being with all the other sentient beings on our planet. And haiku awareness in this post-modern era, can be a vehicle leading us, not back to another slower time which is virtually impossible, but back to this very moment, if just for a moment.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>the first mists —</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>one mountain after another</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>unveiled</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>— Chiyo-ni</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">— Patricia Donegan</span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-56632712672491797522022-08-18T13:08:00.002-05:002022-08-18T13:08:48.916-05:00I was heading for another state of feeling not known to me. <p><span style="font-family: arial;">NOW it is a different sort of contest - not what you saw - not what you - we - talked about. Now the contest is between knowing and not knowing. Since you were here - a week ago? - I've painted three pictures - the first - a brick wall, me & Musa behind it. In front of the wall, a sort of scrimmage is taking place - arms, discs, etc., the abstract forces are trying to pile themselves up into a permanent mound - BUT - a hammer looming in from the top-side is definitely hitting this structure, making it seem as if it is crumbling, collapsing. Added to all of this, and below my profile and Musa's frontal view, is a fluttering, a merry mix-up of buzzing insects - bugs - demon bugs - a happy commotion. They, too, seem to be adding (I know they are) to the general dismantling of the piled-up structure. It is a painting of crumbling - of dissolution. As I look at it now - today - I was heading for another state of feeling not known to me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The second picture is of me talking and smoking in a vast blue-gray but dense atmosphere. I am talking feverishly - there is a big pileup of cigarette butts plastered right smack on my cheek - and they form - God knows what - some sort of thick cluster of stuff, which moves in a sort of radial-like movement - in - out - and across (BUT THEY ARE STUCK!). I started to shake when I painted this picture, God, there <u>is no</u> picture plane! It is just real, that's all there is - just real - no plane at all - What nonsense - this idea of a plane - No - all there finally is left is just the moment - the second - of life's gesture - fixed forever - in an image - there - to be seen. (You could put your hand right into the image!)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Everything else is only a notion - a cluster of notions about art, just programming you might say. Well, this smoking talking man set me on my ear - I couldn't wait to start on the next. I decided to do a large one - on the wall this time. It is Thursday - the day you were here a week ago - and I have painted a large - large - cluster of people - beings, in a flood of closeness - there is no picture plane now whatsoever - There is now instead every mood - from anger - to sorrow - to peace - to resignation - to awe - to stillness - no movement, no diagram at all of held ideas - it is a mound of flesh, of eyes, cheeks, ears, bones, craniums - you could run your hand over it all, go into the narrow spaces between the heads, but there wouldn't be much room at all. A feather might barely get in. There is no order especially - if there is an order to it at all, I don't know it - don't comprehend it - it is like nothing I've done before - not one area in this mound stops to let you look at it. Ah, so that's what "art" is - lets you stop - isolate it - lets us "see" it - but here in this new picture there is "nothing" to see - except multitudes of masses, that go on forever - in the mind. There is no plane - at all. You could mingle with this crowd, move into it - submerge yourself in it - be part of it. You would hear voices, murmurs, weeping -</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- Philip Guston</span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-86714008671331412962022-07-06T09:19:00.006-05:002022-07-06T09:19:56.159-05:00Quietly demolishing conventionality and myths of heroic pomposity<p><span style="font-family: arial;">The overwhelming impression conveyed in Dickinson’s letters to Susan Dickinson and to her other correspondents is of someone who couldn’t stand - who had a visceral shudder in the presence of - the flatulent rhetoric of church and state around her. I don’t believe that her feelings toward Susan were modified by Susan’s “availability” after her marriage to Austin. I think they cooled when Dickinson discovered that Susan was conventional in her language and in her religious views, and that Susan tolerated her and enjoyed her poems as one might enjoy the quirky writings of a child.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Susan was not equipped to understand that Dickinson’s genius lay in her brittleness of language, and her refusal to indulge in the dead metaphors and sentimental nature worship that studded Susan’s prose. Dickinson was out to purge her own language of deadness. This is what she meant when she asked Higginson whether her verse was “alive.” This is what she was trying to explain when she told him that she shunned men and women “because they talk of Hallowed things, aloud - and embarrass my Dog.” This is why people constantly disappointed her, including Higginson, who remarked after an intense visit with Dickinson in 1870 that “she often thought me tired.” With Higginson, with Susan, and others, infatuation yielded to a friendly formality, as Dickinson increasingly preferred the company of children, animals, and people of her father’s more restrained generation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Already in her teenage year at Mount Holyoke Dickinson had shown her intellectual honesty in her refusal to count herself among the “saved.” Hollow religious language disgusted her: “He preached upon ‘Breadth’ till it argued him narrow . . . The Truth never flaunted a Sign— / Simplicity fled from his counterfeit presence / As Gold the Pyrites would shun.” Dickinson was immune to the war fever around her as well. Scholars have combed her verse and prose for mention of the Civil War, which coincided with her greatest outpouring of verse. But her inspiration during those years seems to have been resistance to high rhetoric. A reference to bells tolling here and to bullets there have been adduced to show her awareness of the war. (As though she could have been oblivious to it!) But Edmund Wilson may well be right in claiming that she never referred to the Civil War in her poetry. Her father’s commitment to the Whig values of compromise - he had served a term in Congress and campaigned for Zachary Taylor and Henry Clay - may have tempered her response. While Julia Ward Howe was writing her saber-rattling “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and Whitman his “Drum-Taps,” Dickinson was quietly demolishing myths of heroic pomposity:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Finding is the first Act</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The second, loss,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Third, Expedition for the “Golden Fleece”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Fourth, no Discovery—</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Fifth, no Crew—</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Finally, no Golden Fleece—</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Jason, sham, too—</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- Christopher Benfey</span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-91223372436462802802022-06-06T12:00:00.002-05:002022-06-06T12:00:51.853-05:00“I Am Not I” <p><span style="font-family: arial;"> I am not I.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> I am this one</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">walking beside me whom I do not see,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">whom at times I manage to visit,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and whom at other times I forget;</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">who remains calm and silent while I talk,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and forgives, gently, when I hate,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">who walks where I am not,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">who will remain standing when I die.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- Juan Ramón Jiménez</span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-1832732958545590692022-05-05T10:06:00.000-05:002022-05-05T10:06:09.668-05:00Our intimacy with works of art <p><span style="font-family: arial;">Objects of art not merely interest and absorb, they move us; we are not merely involved with them, but concerned with them, and care about them; we treat them in special ways, invest them with a value which normal people otherwise reserve only for other people - <i>and </i>with the same kind of scorn and outrage. They <i>mean </i>something to us, not just the way statements do, but the way people do.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- Stanley Cavell</span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-18017690431500079832022-04-22T19:29:00.001-05:002022-05-05T10:05:28.762-05:00On writers - madmen, recluses, heretics, dreamers, rebels, skeptics...<p><span style="font-family: arial;">True literature can thrive only in places where literature is created not by obedient and reliable bureaucrats but by madmen, recluses, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics. Where a writer must be reasonable, faithful like a Catholic, useful in the present moment, where he cannot flail at everyone as Jonathan Swift did or smile at everything as Anatole France does, there can be no literature that is cast in bronze - there can only be the sort printed on paper, the newsprint sort that’s read today and used to wrap bars of soap tomorrow. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- Yevgeny Zamyatin</span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-73114345490768171792022-03-11T19:19:00.001-06:002022-04-22T19:21:35.338-05:00On toxic masculinity<p><span style="font-family: arial;">Toxic, aggressive masculine energy is the result of society treating boys and men in a certain way.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Traditionally, the playful boy inside a man is gradually suppressed and disciplined by his parents and by society. The demands placed upon him to ‘become a man’ often mean that a boy has to push away his sensitivity, as well as his adventurous, provocative part, in order to become a responsible adult. The responsibility asked of him is often understood in terms of serving his country, religion and family.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The adventurous boy, keen on exploring the new and unknown, gets subdued and this causes deep pain, because the boy essentially holds the key to the man’s soul, his individuality. Being disconnected from your true inspiration causes sadness, anger, and eventually depression and aggression.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Toxic masculinity arises when masculinity is forced into boxes and roles that kill the boy and force a man to enslave himself: by serving the nation, the family, the community, he is forced to deny his individual freedom, and sadly, his ability to express his unique soul’s gifts in this world.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Eventually, the man may start to glorify the very boxes that imprison him. He may become fanatically nationalist, racist, religious or sexist. His behavior may then become explicitly aggressive and destructive, as we see happening now in the war in Ukraine.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- Jeshua and Pamela Kribbe</span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-72949312226665807642022-02-23T10:18:00.001-06:002022-02-23T10:18:33.811-06:00A humble and endearing account of blunders and livelihood<p><span style="font-family: arial;">As I look back over the past years, reflecting on the blunders committed by my awkward self, I remember that at one time it was my ambition to become a high official with a large fief, and at another I intended to enter a Buddhist monastery and lead a life of meditation. But all the while I have lived a life of painful wanderings with wind and cloud, racking my brains over poems about flowers and birds. Since this has become my livelihood, though I am ungifted by nature and without skill, nevertheless, I have now devoted myself to this art alone. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- Matsuo Bashō </span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-70271727472970334602022-01-21T12:11:00.000-06:002022-01-21T12:11:04.225-06:00Jeshua on Body and Soul<p><span style="font-family: arial;">Dear friends, I am Jeshua. I greet you all from my heart. It gives me deep joy to connect with each of you in the here and now. Feel how space and time fall away, how we meet each other, soul to soul, in a dimension beyond the material, beyond the definitions of space and time. We meet on the inner level and I invite you to be here with me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You are infinitely precious, each one of you: the way you are here and now, with the particular qualities you have, the body in which you dwell, the personality that belongs to you. But within that “you-ness” is contained something else, something which transcends all that: it is your soul. Feel your soul, which is also participating in other realities, whose consciousness extends far beyond the earthly, yet still wants to be here on Earth through you. Feel your soul, for a moment, as a field around you and become aware of that field.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Between the earthly and the heavenly are all kinds of layers – levels of materiality – some very rarefied and ethereal, and others very visible and tangible. Feel your body from within. Your body is built from material elements of the Earth, so feel how solid and tangible it is; feel its immediate physical presence.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">It is important to experience your body as a haven, as something in which your soul can live and in which you are safe. Receive your body joyfully and without judging it in terms of health or illness, beauty or self-image; receive it purely as the haven through which your soul’s energy flows and is grounded. See your body as part of your soul, and not simply as a thing separate from you, but as illuminated and quickened by your soul. When you experience your body consciously, you feel lighter and you seem to become more fluid. You are not only your body, but it is a part of you.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">By accepting, from a stance of gentleness and admiration, what your body brings about, and by appreciating everything your body does for you by way of sensations and energies, you raise your body from simply the material to a more ethereal level. And the body becomes happy because of that! Matter wants to be illuminated by consciousness, by love. Imagine that you become aware of all the cells of your body, and you greet them with warmth.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Then become aware of who is doing this, who it is that regards the body and receives it with warmth and appreciation. Feel that consciousness – it is your soul. Become aware that your soul is much greater than your body. Do you see a color or sense an energy when you do this? Direct your attention from your body – although still hold it in an embrace of love – and become your soul. Sense those other dimensions that you are, those that vibrate on a different level of existence than the physical. Maybe you can see yourself appear as a sphere of light or as an angel. Allow a form to appear that suits you, one that represents your soul, that great field rich in experiences from many lives, the wisdom you carry within you, the depth of your feeling. Call that up and let your soul figure appear before you, and enjoy it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Remember who you are, the grandeur of that. Recognize that figure and allow it energetically into the here and now, and let that energy flow through to your heart. The heart is energetically the gateway between the soul and the body, and if you allow your soul energy to enter your aura or energy field, notice that you become more expanded and take up more space. Let that happen, but do not be concerned for you are not limiting anyone else by your doing that. On the contrary, when your energy field – your body and being – is filled with the light of your soul, you become a delight and inspiration to others. It is not a competitive energy, but rather one that desires to inspire and awaken, an energy that takes pleasure if others do it, too.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">When your soul unites with your body, and that very subtle, ethereal level connects with the earthly, sense how that connection can translate into practical ways. Know that it is very important in daily life to keep in touch with this reality, this vibration, this higher part of yourself, and to allow that energy to literally come down and merge with your body and the physical, earthly level.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The next step is to allow that inspiration, that connection with your higher self, to flow into your actions and out into the world in practical ways. But for many of you, when you attempt to do that, the following then happens. Parts of you want to connect with your soul, those parts that are highly developed and want to go along with the vibration of the celestial spheres, but other parts of you become frightened when it comes to setting down that energy on to Earth and among people. You see in the world around you that there is seldom much acceptance for that stunning and unique soul energy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Look at the fields of work, education, and medicine on Earth, and you will see that the concepts which still reign here are concerned with planned structures and theories based on the mental and the rational. Often, the only thing that comes into consideration is the material level, a bleak and barren idea of what it is to be human. Everything is about how dangerous life is, about survival, struggle, and dividing resources such as money, power, and abundance. Diseases are considered dangerous and therefore need to be restrained, and even life itself is a flow that must be tamed – so at that level, there is struggle. Strong emotions and feelings, deep inspirations and visions, are often dismissed as strange, weird, or hysterical.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">In your society, from the bottom up, there is a huge need for inspiration from unique individuals who live from an inner fire and who can no longer adapt to the existing order, because that order no longer fits their needs. More and more individuals feel suffocated, literally, by the existing framework; they can no longer stand it. You see that especially in the generations of children who are now appearing on Earth. They can no longer tolerate that kind of suffocating existence, even on the physical level. They cannot be forced into a straitjacket, which the older generations were able to do.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">In this way, change occurs on Earth where it becomes ever more necessary to integrate the soul’s energy into life. It is no longer a luxury to deepen that energy through meditation and leading a spiritual life. No, it is the mission and vocation of every human being to connect with their soul and to start living from inner truth, because the alternative is no longer viable. On an individual level, people become burned out or frustrated, discontent or depressed, and on a general, societal level, the result is profound problems in dealing with nature and with the resources of Mother Earth. On all fronts, it is now clear that it is necessary to start living differently, from a source that can not be defined by the purely material.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Matter and the material have an important value: it is the form in which the soul wants to express itself. But if life becomes fixated only on the forms – the external – then the forms become impoverished and life is a struggle in which no one will experience sense or meaning. That is why welcoming the soul into your life can not be an extraordinary act, but has to become an ordinary act: an everyday, normal part of education and life. Then the soul becomes the source of endless creativity and abundance that more and more people at all levels now crave.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You become a lightworker when you feel the urge to act and live from your soul, your heart, and from what really inspires you. You become a lightworker when you live from what lifts you above the banality of having to struggle and survive, instead of by fear and by having to pretend to be someone you are not. You can call it being a lightworker, or any other name you prefer, but what matters is that, as a human being, you feel called so strongly to respond to the voice of your soul that you can no longer not do it – you know you can no longer adapt to the old way of being. That means you transition to a heart-based consciousness; that you take a decisive step forward to where you can not turn back.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">This being propelled by a heart borne consciousness is accompanied by peaks and valleys in your life, because there are times when you face deep fears of letting go of the old. The old can be extremely upsetting, yet there can still be a huge fear of the new, the undefined, that which is uncertain. The inspiration, thoughts, and ideas you receive from the essence of your soul sometimes seem to get crushed under that old way of seeing and reasoning that is still prevalent in many parts of society.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">How do you give form to the voice of your soul and remain true to it in everyday life? By feeling the power of your soul; by literally feeling it flow through you. Feel how the Earth and life on Earth craves for inspiration. The moment you choose that inner path of making the connection with your soul, you are really being true to yourself and you dare to be different in an environment where the voice of the soul is not yet heard. When you feel you have heard the voice of your soul, that does not mean you are better than other people. You simply know you are on a path that is, for you, your deepest vocation, a path from which you can not stray. It is a path you have to keep believing in, even when you are judged and rejected by external factors, or from within by voices you have absorbed from your parents or your surroundings.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I call on you to feel the power of your soul and to see the weakness of a life based on fear and struggle, and on hiding yourself. If you hide from the brilliance, the power, and the creativity of your soul, you become unhappy. But you can no longer go back to the old, because you no longer fit in, so you can only move forward. Remember that voice, time and time again, and dare to allow your light to shine. And you do that in the simplest ways: by what you say, by who you are, by what you emanate.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Everything has a vibration. A body in which regular contact is made with the soul, with the origin that enlivens and animates the body, has a different vibration than a body that is plagued by fear or negative feelings. If you are comfortable with yourself, and you appreciate yourself for who you are – your source, your uniqueness – this emanates toward others even though you say nothing to them. Who you are and what you transmit with your eyes and energy field will be seen anyway, wherever you are. Actually, you can never be really invisible, your energy is there, it can not be undone.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The more you dare to touch your earthly being with your soul, the more will it have an outward impact, and you will live your life differently, no longer attached to things that do not nurture you or agree with you. You become more powerful both in what you want and in what you do not want. Your soul becomes more visible to the outside world, and because of that, your light shines more strongly. Always be aware that this light invites other people to believe in themselves and to also begin to radiate their uniqueness. The light of your soul is not competitive or combative.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Finally, look at a situation in your daily life in which you feel you withhold your inner light, in which you keep yourself back and do not allow yourself to be seen. What would happen if you allowed your light to be seen? If you were completely relaxed in the situation and did not hold back your light? If you did not contain yourself, but would allow yourself to be more spontaneous? What would you say and do? Realize that if you allow your soul’s energy to enter into your humanity, you are going to express your feelings in plain, honest language, and that is not always what is called “politically correct”.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You can sometimes feel it very spontaneously: “No, I don’t feel like it; no, I don’t want to do this”. It is also important to express these feelings in relation to others and to be very clear where your boundaries are. The soul’s energy works by its true nature, as does the child in you who has clear feelings about what it does and does not want. It is when you allow that higher vibration, that rarefied energy, to manifest that you become very human, that you make use of the language of your emotions, of your inner child.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Do you trust it? That energy comes from within, it is real! Then you become spontaneous in the purest sense of the word, because you are then listening to your feelings and giving expression to them. And when you do that, you give the other person space in which to express their feelings, while you stay true to yourself. You do not accept being fitted into a mold that does not suit you.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">It is the deepest desire of your soul to be here and now through your earthly body, and to be expressed and visible through everything that is earthly. Your soul wants to embrace the earthly life, to make of it something pleasurable and new, and to give off sparks of consciousness on Earth. This can be a source of joy, and although you also go through fears that hinder you, always take a step forward – dare to do it. In fact, you can not go back. When you experience the power of your soul in your daily life, you essentially feel that you are being carried forward. The light wants to express itself and knows how, if you dare say “yes” to it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Thank you for your presence and for this being together that I feel deeply within my heart.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">via Pamela Kribbe</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">www.jeshua.net</span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-1548739323003780532021-12-15T12:02:00.001-06:002022-01-21T12:05:28.520-06:00Half-Light By Frank Bidart<p><span style="font-family: arial;">That crazy drunken night I</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">maneuvered you out into a field outside of</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Coachella - I’d never seen a sky</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">so full of stars, as if the dirt of our lives</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">still were sprinkled with glistening</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">white shells from the ancient seabed</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">beneath us that receded long ago.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Parallel. We lay in parallel furrows.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- That suffocated, fearful</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">look on your face.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Jim, yesterday I heard your wife on the phone</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">tell me you died almost nine months ago.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Jim, now we cannot ever. Bitter</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">that we cannot ever have</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">the conversation that in</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">nature and alive we never had. Now not ever.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">We have not spoken in years. I thought</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">perhaps at ninety or a hundred, two</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">broken-down old men, we wouldn’t</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">give a damn, and find speech.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">When I tell you that all the years we were</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">undergraduates I was madly in love with you</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">you say you</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">knew. I say I knew you</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">knew. You say</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>There was no place in nature we could meet.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You say this as if you need me to</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">admit something. <i>No place</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>in nature, given our natures.</i> Or is this</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">warning? I say what is happening now is</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">happening only because one of us is</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">dead. You laugh and say, Or both of us!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Our words</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">will be weirdly jolly.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">That light I now envy</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">exists only on this page.</span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-44706604088346837072021-11-22T10:35:00.000-06:002021-11-22T10:35:36.054-06:00Resist through art, joy, faith, and love<p><span style="font-family: arial;">This moment humanity is going through can now be seen as a portal and as a hole. The decision to fall into the hole or go through the portal is up to you.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">If you repent of the problem and consume the news 24 hours a day, with little energy, nervous all the time, with pessimism, you will fall into the hole. But if you take this opportunity to look at yourself, rethink life and death, take care of yourself and others, you will cross the portal. Take care of your homes, take care of your body. Connect with your spiritual House.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">When you are taking care of yourselves, you are taking care of everything else. Do not lose the spiritual dimension of this crisis; have the eagle aspect from above and see the whole; see more broadly.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">There is a social demand in this crisis, but there is also a spiritual demand -- the two go hand in hand. Without the social dimension, we fall into fanaticism. But without the spiritual dimension, we fall into pessimism and lack of meaning. You were prepared to go through this crisis. Take your toolbox and use all the tools available to you.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Learn about resistance of the indigenous and African peoples; we have always been, and continue to be, exterminated. But we still haven't stopped singing, dancing, lighting a fire, and having fun. Don't feel guilty about being happy during this difficult time.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You do not help at all being sad and without energy. You help if good things emanate from the Universe now. It is through joy that one resists. Also, when the storm passes, each of you will be very important in the reconstruction of this new world.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You need to be well and strong. And for that, there is no other way than to maintain a beautiful, happy, and bright vibration. This has nothing to do with alienation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">This is a resistance strategy. In shamanism, there is a rite of passage called the quest for vision. You spend a few days alone in the forest, without water, without food, without protection. When you cross this portal, you get a new vision of the world, because you have faced your fears, your difficulties.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">This is what is asked of you: </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Allow yourself to take advantage of this time to perform your vision-seeking rituals. What world do you want to build for you? For now, this is what you can do -- serenity in the storm. Calm down, pray every day. Establish a routine to meet the sacred every day.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Good things emanate; what you emanate now is the most important thing. And sing, dance, resist through art, joy, faith, and love.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- White Eagle, Hopi indigenous</span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-13821607358663961572021-10-12T09:47:00.007-05:002021-10-12T09:47:53.213-05:00The spaciousness of farce<p><span style="font-family: arial;">On the other hand, for the cultivated person who at the same time is free and easy enough to entertain himself independently and has enough self-confidence to know, by himself, without seeking the testimony of others, whether he has been entertained or not, the farce will have perhaps a very special significance, for the fact that it will affect his spirit in various ways, now by the spaciousness of the abstraction, now by the introduction of a palpable reality. But of course he will not bring with him a readymade mood and let everything produce its effect in relation to that, but he will have cultivated his spirit to perfection and will keep himself in the state where not one single mood is present, but the possibility of all. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- Kierkegaard</span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-84058317679774152482021-09-28T08:58:00.000-05:002021-09-28T08:58:31.863-05:00The image and feminine values / masculine values and the written word<p><span style="font-family: arial;">To perceive things such as trees and buildings through images delivered to the eye, the brain uses wholeness, simultaneity, and synthesis. To ferret out the meaning of alphabetic writing, the brain relies instead on sequence, analysis, and abstraction. Custom and language associate the former characteristics with the feminine, the latter, with the masculine. As we examine the myths of different cultures, we will see that these linkages are consistent. ...</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The introduction of the written word, and then the alphabet, into the social intercourse of humans initiated a fundamental change in the way newly literate cultures understood their reality. It was this dramatic change in mindset … that was primarily responsible for fostering patriarchy. ...</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The Old Testament was the first alphabetic written work to influence future ages. Attesting to its gravitas, multitudes still read it three thousand years later. The words on its pages anchor three powerful religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Each is an exemplar of patriarchy. Each monotheistic religion features an imageless Father deity whose authority shines through His revealed Word, sanctified in its written form. Conceiving of a deity who has no concrete image prepares the way for the kind of abstract thinking that inevitably leads to law codes, dualistic philosophy, and objective science, the signature triad of Western culture. I propose that the profound impact these ancient scriptures had upon the development of the West depended as much on their being written in an alphabet as on the moral lessons they contained.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Goddess worship, feminine values, and women’s power depend on the ubiquity of the image . God worship, masculine values, and men’s domination of women are bound to the written word. Word and image, like masculine and feminine, are complementary opposites. Whenever a culture elevates the written word at the expense of the image, patriarchy dominates. When the importance of the image supersedes the written word, feminine values and egalitarianism flourish.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- from The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by Leonard Shlain</span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-7963470348058519532021-08-16T08:34:00.001-05:002021-08-16T08:34:28.469-05:00Onto a Vast Plain - Rainer Maria Rilke<p><span style="font-family: arial;">Onto a Vast Plain</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You are not surprised at the force of the storm —</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">you have seen it growing.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The trees flee. Their flight</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">he whom they flee is the one</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">you move toward. All your senses</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">sing him, as you stand at the window.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The weeks stood still in summer.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The trees’ blood rose. Now you feel</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">it wants to sink back</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">into the source of everything. You thought</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">you could trust that power</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">when you plucked the fruit:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">now it becomes a riddle again</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and you again a stranger.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Summer was like your house: you know</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">where each thing stood.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Now you must go out into your heart</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">as onto a vast plain. Now</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">the immense loneliness begins.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The days go numb, the wind</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Through the empty branches the sky remains.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">It is what you have.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Be earth now, and evensong.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Be the ground lying under that sky.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Be modest now, like a thing</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">ripened until it is real,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">so that he who began it all</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">can feel you when he reaches for you.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- Rainer Maria Rilke (Translated by Joanna Macy)</span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-22644183232806595152021-07-19T10:00:00.003-05:002021-07-19T10:00:47.718-05:00School failed me, and I failed the school. - Einstein <p><span style="font-family: arial;">School failed me, and I failed the school. It bored me. The teachers behaved like Feldwebel (sergeants). I wanted to learn what I wanted to know, but they wanted me to learn for the exam. What I hated most was the competitive system there, and especially sports. Because of this, I wasn’t worth anything, and several times they suggested I leave.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">This was a Catholic School in Munich. I felt that my thirst for knowledge was being strangled by my teachers; grades were their only measurement. How can a teacher understand youth with such a system?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">From the age of twelve I began to suspect authority and distrust teachers. I learned mostly at home, first from my uncle and then from a student who came to eat with us once a week. He would give me books on physics and astronomy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The more I read, the more puzzled I was by the order of the universe and the disorder of the human mind, by the scientists who didn’t agree on the how, the when, or the why of creation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Then one day this student brought me Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Reading Kant, I began to suspect everything I was taught. I no longer believed in the known God of the Bible, but rather in the mysterious God expressed in nature.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The basic laws of the universe are simple, but because our senses are limited, we can’t grasp them. There is a pattern in creation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">If we look at this tree outside whose roots search beneath the pavement for water, or a flower which sends its sweet smell to the pollinating bees, or even our own selves and the inner forces that drive us to act, we can see that we all dance to a mysterious tune, and the piper who plays this melody from an inscrutable distance—whatever name we give him—Creative Force, or God—escapes all book knowledge.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- Albert Einstein</span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-89722648883525293012021-06-14T12:05:00.000-05:002021-06-14T12:05:06.895-05:00Thunder (Nag Hammadi Codex VI, 2)<p><span style="font-family: arial;">I was sent out from the power</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and have come to you who study me</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and am found by you who seek me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Look at me, you who study me,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and you who hear, hear me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You waiting for me, take me into yourselves.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Don’t banish me from your vision.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Don’t let hatred enter your voice against me</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">or let anger enter your hearing.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">In no place, in no time, be unknowing of me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Be alert. Don’t be ignorant of me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the first and the last.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the honored and scorned.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the whore and holy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the wife and the virgin.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the mother and daughter.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the members of my mother</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and the barren one with many sons.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I have had a grand wedding</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and have not found a husband.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am a midwife and do not give birth.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the solace of my labor pains.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am bride and groom,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and my husband produced me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the mother of my father</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and sister of my husband,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and he is my offspring.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am a slave of him who prepared me</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and ruler of my offspring.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">He produced me earlier yet on my birthday.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">He is my offspring to come,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and from him is my power.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the staff of his power in his youth</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and he the rod of my old age,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and whatever he wants happens to me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am a silence incomprehensible</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and an idea remembered often.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the voice whose sound is manifold</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and word whose appearance is multiple.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the utterance of my name.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Why do you who hate me love me</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and hate those who love me?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You who deny me confess me,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and you who confess me deny me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You who tell the truth about me lie about me,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and you who lie tell the truth.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You who know me,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">be ignorant of me, and those who have not known me,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">let them know me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am knowledge and ignorance.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am shame and fearlessness.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am shameless and ashamed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am strength and fear.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am war and peace.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Hear what I say.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the disgraced and the grand being.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Consider my poverty and wealth.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Don’t be arrogant when I am cast down on the earth,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and you will find me in those who are to come.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Don’t stare at me lying on a dung heap.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Don’t run off and cast me away.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">In the kingdoms you will find me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Don’t stare when I am cast with the disgraced</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">in the most sordid places</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">or laugh at me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Don’t throw me out among those violently slaughtered.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am compassionate and cruel.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Be careful.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Don’t hate my obedience</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">or love my self-control.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">When I am weak, don’t forsake me</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">or fear my power.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Why do you despise my fear</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and curse my pride?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am a woman existing in every fear</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and in my strength when I tremble.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am a woman, weak,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and carefree in a pleasant place.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am senseless and wise.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Why have you hated me in your counsels?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I will be silent among the silent</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and appear and speak.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Greeks, why do you hate me?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Because I am a barbarian among the barbarians?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the wisdom of Greeks and knowledge of barbarians.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the judgment of Greeks and barbarians.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">My image is great in Egypt, and I have no image among the barbarians.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am hated everywhere and loved everywhere.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am called life and you have called me death.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am called law and you have called me lawlessness.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am one you pursued and seized.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am one you scattered and gathered together.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am one before whom you are ashamed,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and to me you are shameless.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the woman who attends no festival</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and whose festivals are many.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am godless and one whose god is great.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am one you studied and you scorn me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am unlettered and you learn from me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am one you despise and you study me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am one you hide from and you appear to me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">When you hide I show.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">When you appear I hide. . . .</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Take me into understanding from grief,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and take me from understanding and grief.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Receive me into yourselves from other places</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">ugly and destroyed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And steal from the good even in their ugliness.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Out of shame take me to yourselves shamelessly.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Without shame and with shame, rebuke what is mine</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">in you</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and come to me, you who know me</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and you who know my members,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and make great ones among small first creatures.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Come to childhood</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and don’t despise it, because it is small and tiny.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Don’t turn away the great in parts from the small,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">for the small is known from the great.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Why do you curse and honor me?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You wound me and have mercy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Don’t separate me from the first you have known.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Don’t cast out or turn away,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">turn away and not know. . . .</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I know the first ones,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and those after them know me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am perfect mind and rest. . . .</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the knowledge of my search,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">the finding of those who look for me,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">the command of those who ask about me,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">the power of powers</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">in my knowledge of angels sent at my word,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and of gods in their seasons sent by my counsel,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and of spirits of all who exist with me</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and of women who live in me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am one who is honored, praised, and scornfully despised.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am peace, and war has come because of me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am alien and citizen.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the substance and one without substance.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Those unconnected to me are unfamiliar with me,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and those in my substance know me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Those close to me are ignorant of me,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and those far away have known me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">On the day I am close to you, you are far,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and on the day I am far, I am close to you.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am . . . within.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am . . . of natures.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am . . . of created spirits,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">the request of souls.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am control and the uncontrollable.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am union and dissolution.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I abide and dissolve.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am below and they come up to me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am judgment and acquittal.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am sinless,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and the root of sin comes from me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am lust outwardly, yet within me is control.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am hearing for all, and my speech is indecipherable.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am an unspeaking mute</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and enormous in my many words.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Hear me in gentleness and discover me in roughness.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the woman crying out</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and cast upon the face of the earth.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I prepare bread and my mind within.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the knowledge of my name.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the one who cries out</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and I listen.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I appear . . . walk in . . . I am . . . the defense.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am called truth and iniquity. . . .</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You honor me and whisper against me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You, the vanquished, judge those who vanquish you</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">before they judge you,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">because in you the judge and partiality exist.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">If you are condemned by one, who will acquit you?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">If acquitted by him, who will arrest you?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">What is in you is outside,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and one who fashions you on the outside</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">shapes you inside.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">What you see outside you see within you.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">It is visible and your garment.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Hear me, hearers,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and find out about my words, you who know me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the hearing all can reach;</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am speech undecipherable.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the name of the sound</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and the sound of the name.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am the sign of the letter</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and the designation of the division.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I . . . light . . . great power . . . will not move the name . . .</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">to the one who created me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I will speak his name.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Look at his words and all the writings completed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Be alert, hearers and angels and those sent</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and you spirits arisen from the dead.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I alone exist and have no one to judge me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Many pleasures exist in many sins,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">uncontrolled passions and disgraceful desires</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and brief pleasures</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">embraced by people until they sober up</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">and float up to their place of rest.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">There they will find me and live, and they will not die again.</span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-23564554571040006322021-05-14T10:32:00.000-05:002021-05-14T10:32:20.531-05:00The Kingdom of Astonishment<p><span style="font-family: arial;">This is not the spiritually materialist mindfulness practiced by corporations seeking to improve employee productivity. This is not the sterile “peacefulness” that helps you better accommodate oppression. No, this is ecstatic participation with the natural world. This is the inter-penetrative experience of awe that only occurs when you realize the world is a polyphony of aliveness. “Split a piece of wood. I am there. Life up the stone and you will find me there,” instructs Jesus. The “me” he speaks of is not himself, but the kingdom of astonishment. The fragrant pith of the cedarwood entering your nostrils is the kingdom. The awe you feel at the moonlight-silvered grub under the stone is the secret gospel. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">We live in a moment when we are woefully blind to the kingdom. Sensory gating, the neurological process of filtering out “redundant” stimuli from our sensual experience to create a homogenized reality, has been tightened by patriarchy and civilization. We quite literally do not see “what is in front of our faces”. Reading stories of miracles in older texts we laugh at our ancestor’s “belief” in magic. But what if the magic was still there? As we codify expectations, we limit our ability to experience surprise and awe. In short, it gets harder and harder to change our minds and experience the marvel under a stone or in a piece of wood. We expect the ordinary, and receive it in return, growing increasingly despondent each day, even when just beyond our blinders mountains move and kingdoms explode from mustard seeds. Lucky that our brains are malleable. There are still methods of “dilating” into greater participation with the divine animacy of the natural world.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- Sophie Strand</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">from</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">https://www.facebook.com/sophie.strand1/posts/10225969809498508</span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-11746283701882579722021-04-02T10:38:00.001-05:002021-04-02T11:05:32.585-05:00Meanderings around sweetness and sarcasm <p><span style="font-family: arial;">Esteemed Gentlemen,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am a poor, young, unemployed person in the business field, my name is Wenzel, I am seeking a suitable position, and I take the liberty of asking you, nicely and politely, if perhaps in your airy, bright, amiable rooms such a position might be free. . . . Large and difficult tasks I cannot perform, and obligations of a far-reaching sort are too strenuous for my mind. I am not particularly clever, and first and foremost I do not like to strain my intelligence overmuch. . . . Assuredly there exists in your extensive institution, which I imagine to be overflowing with main and subsidiary functions and offices, work of the kind that one can do as in a dream? — I am, to put it frankly, a Chinese; that is to say, a person who deems everything small and modest to be beautiful and pleasing, and to whom all that is big and exacting is fearsome and horrid.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- Robert Walser, from "Job Application”</span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-8427834865211242052021-03-01T07:41:00.001-06:002021-03-01T07:41:38.956-06:00Playing with Children<p><span style="font-family: arial;"> Early spring</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The landscape is tinged with the first</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">fresh hints of green</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Now I take my wooden begging bowl</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And wander carefree through town</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The moment the children see me</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">They scamper off gleefully to bring their friends</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">They’re waiting for me at the temple gate</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Tugging from all sides so I can barely walk</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I leave my bowl on a white rock</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Hang my pilgrim’s bag on a pine tree branch</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">First we duel with blades of grass</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Then we play ball</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">While I bounce the ball, they sing the song</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Then I sing the song and they bounce the ball</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Caught up in the excitement of the game</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">We forget completely about the time</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Passersby turn and question me:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">"Why are you carrying on like this?"</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I just shake my head without answering</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Even if I were able to say something</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">how could I explain?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Do you really want to know the meaning of it all?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">This is it! This is it!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- Ryōkan</span></p><div><br /></div>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8850528079740158873.post-70224161658288735242021-02-11T09:13:00.004-06:002021-02-11T09:13:49.615-06:00Are you a Mystic?<p><span style="font-family: arial;">22 Characteristics of Mysticism:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Experience: The mystic respects discoveries of the rational mind, but they are keen on experience. Mysticism cannot be read about or learned objectively. The mystic trusts implicitly in their own experience which is a trust of the universe and of oneself. The anti-mystic may protest that one’s experience is “subjective” and therefore unreliable. The authentic mystic, however, argues that both the right brain and left brain are necessary for comprehending reality. This argument is based on the next characteristic of the mystic which is</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Nondualism: The mystic seeks unitive experiences. As Fox reminds us, “All mystical experiences share in common the perspective of nonseparation or nondualism.” Ultimately, the mystic experiences what mystic and Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn calls Interbeing—the reality that everything is interconnected. (More on this below.)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Compassion: Because the mystic has experienced the interdependence of all living things, they invariably develop compassion for all beings because for them, no being is separate from another. The mystic recognizes that the wellbeing of all must be taken into account.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Connection-Making: Because the mystic seeks unity and unitive experiences, they seek to make connections where connections have been lost. Mystics are often found in the so-called “helping professions” in which connection-making is fundamental; however, artists may also be diagnosed as mystics, for they too are essentially connection-makers by way of the imagination.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Radical Amazement: Awe is one of the most prized emotions among mystics. Fox describes it as, “a reverential fear based on a realization of the greatness of our existence, of our being included in the amazing twenty-billion-year drama that is the universe.”[2] While the mystic respects rational analysis, their psyches are large enough for awe, and they revel in it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Affirmation Of The World As A Whole: The mystic affirms not the world laid waste by human neglect or greed-induced destruction, but a world that is whole and connected. They facilitate and strive to promote human connection and the wholeness of the Earth community. The mystic loves immersing themselves in nature because they experience viscerally and erotically that they are intimately connected with it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Right Brain: The mystic affirms and delights in the qualities of the right brain: Art, music, literature, dancing, and deep embodiment appeal to them instinctively. Intuition is the crown jewel of the right brain, and scientists tell us that intuition may be the highest form of intelligence.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Self-Criticism: The mystic is self-critical without being judgmental. They understand the reality of the human shadow and are actively engaged in shadow healing. They are vigilant about projecting their shadow onto others and are willing to take a hard look at their own belief systems.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Heart Knowledge: The mystic values heart knowledge and heartbreak over intellectual knowledge. They have experienced viscerally that to ignore or minimize the heart in favor of reason diminishes their humanity and compassion.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">A Return To The Source: The mystic may have many names for the Source, but they live their lives with reverence for something greater than the rational mind and human ego.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Feminist: To be intimately connected with “the mysteries” is to have moved beyond patriarchal consciousness. Mystical awareness is inherently feminine and honors the feminine in the Earth and in all living beings. As stated above, the mystical inclination is relational; it fosters connection, and helps heal division and separation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Panentheistic: The mystic knows that all life is sacred because the sacred abides within all people and things. Panentheism is not atheism, nor is it the notion that the sacred is somewhere “out there.” Most atheism is a rejection of theism which usually celebrates divinity at the expense of the body and the senses. Matthew Fox writes, “I do believe that if the only option I was given by which to envision creation’s relationship to divinity was theism, I would be an atheist too.”[3] To paraphrase Fox, the “God” you don’t believe in is the “God” that I don’t believe in.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Birther Of Images: Every mystic is an artist because the mystery is found and expressed through images. Images, not complete sentences uttered in linear fashion, most aptly convey what is happening in the inner world. The mystic thinks and feels poetically and values poets, or as James Joyce called them, “priests of the imagination.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Silence: Mystics love silence and solitude. While the mystic may be extroverted and enjoy the company of others, they require silence. A left-brain culture, says Fox, is a culture ill-at-ease with silence because it is devoid of mysticism. The mysteries are not ubiquitous in the din of industrial civilization, but rather, in the silence.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Nothingness and Darkness: The mystic knows that light is not found in light places, but in the darkness. They understand that they lived nine months in complete darkness before bursting forth into the light of birth. They have experienced firsthand the treasures that darkness holds, and they open to what it may ask of them next.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Playfulness: Mystics enjoy fantasy and play. They do not repress their childlike spirit in order to appear mature or reasonable or spiritual. Humor is an essential nutrient for the mystic’s wellbeing.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Justice and Activism: The mystic is not an apathetic person who is oblivious to the world around them. Because they passionately crave the mysteries, they also crave justice and mercy for all beings. Many Christian mystics, such as St. Francis, Hiledgard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Hellen Keller, and others were also activists and pioneers of social justice movements.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Prophetic: The mystic is a prophet—a word with two distinct meanings. One role of a prophet is foretelling or the ability to see and forecast the future. Another role is forth-telling which is to speak truth to power, to say what is so, and to call out injustice.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Being-With-Being: The mystic is committed to being present with other beings—to fully listening to them and offering presence and acceptance even when nothing else can be done and when disagreement and division seem insurmountable.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Cultivation Of The True Self: The mystic understands the difference between the false self or the human ego and the sacred or True Self. Their lives are committed to the painful journey of daily surrender of the false, egoic self to the Sacred Self.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Universal Consciousness: The mystic may prefer one tradition over another, but they absolutely honor all traditions. They are committed to inclusivity and acceptance of all beings.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Animals: Mystics love and protect animals. Because they honor their own animal bodies and their own animal natures, they befriend and work for the safety and protection of animals. A mystic will almost always have one or more animal companions or be in daily contact with animals in their natural habitat.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">- from "The Coming of The Cosmic Christ" by Matthew Fox, via Carolyn Baker </span></p>Lit Humhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15874450288224688235noreply@blogger.com0