Silence, itself, is an answer.
I have been thinking about my relationship to embodiment lately. I would like to become more attuned to the experience of my own embodiment. This seems to be the throughline into my need for being more present, which has been a part of integrating with my shadow. Earlier today I entered a more embodied state, and the words “embodied cognition” rang through my head. This felt right to me at the time — “embodied cognition” is an appropriate word for the experience I was having — that of feeling into the experience of the moment with a focused, relaxed state…
I woke up with a start in the middle of the night to an alarming dream. In the dream, I was driving down the highway, when I was alerted to brake at an obstruction in the road. When I pressed the brakes, however, there was little let-up in the speed and I was suddenly inundated with flashing red lights. The vehicle was spinning out of control down the road, while I was praying to God for help. Before I awoke back into my body, I said something to the effect of “Lord hear my prayer”, while my entire body was…
I do not feel motivated to write today. I do not feel motivated to do very much. Overall, I feel pretty frayed and unhinged, with a streak of apathy. Thumos levels are down. I hope this changes later, but maybe it won’t.
In last week’s entry, I made mention of unnecessary suffering, but I didn’t talk very much about necessary suffering, which is in service to spiritual growth. Scott M. Peck makes this distinction, as well, down to using the same term that I have also used in this framing, which is existential suffering. …
The ocean is a desert with it’s life underground
And a perfect disguise above
Under the cities lies a heart made of ground
But the humans will give no love
You see I’ve been through the desert
On a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert, you can remember your name
’Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain
-A Horse With No Name, America
These lines are hitting hard with me today. I’ve been feeling the turbulence of the ocean surface lately, untethered from my anchor at…
Last week I was in a lot of emotional pain, and wrote an entry in response to a need for getting in right relationship with it. I arrived at the notion that purposeful pain meant taking the energy of pain and using that as fuel to catalyze transformation. It is a matter of experience that when the energy of intense emotional suffering is channeled in a certain way, it can act as a power-magnet for rapid self-change. I have found this to be true in many cases — the change does not last, however, unaided by wisdom.
For instance, I…
This has not been a good week for me. I do feel I have accomplished something by acquiring a job above the pay that I would have otherwise been stuck with without my digital marketing training. There are major props in that and cause for celebration. However, I am still living at home with a stress-inducing family, feeling quite alone in my experience. My new manager can be quite difficult as well, making it hard for me to feel celebratory.
Upon reflection of this, what comes to mind is the idea of a thin margin of balance between resistance and…
Virtue is not the adoption of ethics. Virtue is not found in the utterance of words. Virtue is not what virtue claims to be. Virtue is the moment claims of virtue cease to be.
Empathy is the phenomenon of dissolving emotional boundaries past the threshold of one’s own self-concern. Empathy is not, however, entirely selfless. This is because the very concepts of selflessness and selfishness lose their distinctions in empathetic relating. This is approaching the love of the mystic, which is not merely a matter of degree of empathy, but of dimension.
Ponder the sage who says: “When you first meet him, he may seem to be different from you. He is not. He may seem to be very much like you. He is not”.
