"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us “universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
Albert Einstein
"I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at, and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness, love; you may give it any name you like. Love says “I am everything”. Wisdom says “I am nothing”. Between the two, my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both."
Nisargadatta Maharaj (via slychedelic)
(via guerrillamamamedicine)
"A Spanish scholar of the twelfth century, Moses Maimonides, depicts seven steps in what he calls the ladder of charity and giving: The first and lowest degree is to give but with reluctance. The second is to give cheerfully, but not in proportion to the distress of the sufferer. The third step is to give cheerfully and proportionately, but not until solicited. The fourth is to give cheerfully, proportionately and unsolicitedly, but yourself to put the gift in the poor man’s hand, thus exciting in him the painful emotion of shame. The fifth is to know the object of your bounty, but to remain unknown to him. The sixth is to bestow charity in such a way that the benefactor may not know the recipient, nor the recipient his benefactor. The seventh and worthiest step is to anticipate charity by preventing property. This is the highest step and the summit of charity’s golden ladder."
Degrees of Giving, an extract from “Quiet Thoughts” by Paul S. McElroy
Haruki Murakami: Travelling and making art
What’s the value of writing so far from home? Why have you written so may books overseas? It’s easier for you to write about your own country when you’re far away. From a distance, you can look at your own country as it really is. I wrote “Norwegian Wood” when I was on several Greek islands, and in Rome and Palermo, Italy. “Dance, Dance, Dance” was mostly written in Rome, and partly in London. The first half of “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” was written in Princeton and the latter half in Cambridge. And I wrote “After The Quake” in the middle of Tokyo, in an isolated little house owned by my publisher. I guess I have a nomadic spirit inside me that I can’t keep down. Because I now that each one of those books is connected to each of the places where they were written. When I think of them, the scenes of the locations where I wrote them come to mind.
So, you’re not only traveling physically, you’re actually journeying metaphysically into the self, into the imagination. You told me once that the trip into the imagination is fraught with dangers - like falling into a well, a metaphor you use a lot in your novels and stories. What are those dangers? In almost all cases, the objective of a trip is paradoxical. You ultimately want to return to the starting point safely. Writing fiction is the same; no matter how far you go, or how deep a place you go to, in the end when you finish writing, you have to return to the place where you started. That is the final destination. However, the starting point to which you return is never the starting point where you actually started. The scenery is the same, and the faces are the same, and things placed there are the same. However, something fundamental has changed significantly. That’s what we discover; it’s your discovery. To know that difference is also one of your prime objectives - or at least to acknowledge that difference.
Does that mean that travel and making art are connected by the trip? Yes, in that sense, traveling and writing fiction may be a similar experience. You first start by visiting near by places, convenient places, places everyone knows about, and then gradually, you start traveling to more distant, deeper and darker places - even more dangerous places. Just like a surfer goes farther away from the shore to find bigger waves. That’s probably in the very nature of the traveler and the fiction writer.
From: Popwuping
Read: Haruki Murakami: Nomadic Spirit
"I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on the water."
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
I am a gunshot
brazing the walls of your conscience
This is my train of thought
Invisible graffiti
The fare you paid is not enough
It’s the cost of ignoring me
Pay up
A monologue in “These Vagabond Shoes”,
directed by Scarlett Johansson
A Special Featured in “New York, I Love You”
Coney Island pier picture source
David lives out the “day of his dreams” with his resurrected mommy in the house from his memory. His self and his environment are melded as one psychological whole, a ‘mind space.’ The robot becomes a storyteller, fondly recalling past times.
“He went to that place where dreams are born.” The world inside his head. To enter a dreamworld, and to stay there for Eternity: to become, in dreaming sleep, a disembodied consciousness, never to return to the confines of the body: this is the apotheosis of mind, an analogue of a god.
- Excerpt from A Three-Part Thematic Structure of A.I.: Artificial Intelligence by Jeffrey Scott Bernstein. The three parts being; the heart, the body, the mind.
I love this movie. I am pensive.
