I am that ocean now in foam and tide; I am that sun, but now in rays abide. I move and burn, and then reverse my course; I shine and glow and then grow low and hide.
I am that sea now gathered in a tear. I am that universe now centered here. I am that book of destiny which seems To form a lonely dot of hope and fear.
From The Quatrains of Baba Tahir Oryan of Hamadan
Mindfulness in Nature
Everything moves. It's just some things move a lot slower than other things, like the ground, or a mountain, or this chair. But, nonetheless, they all move. Each thing has its interior pulse, its own, active agency. Each thing is an active power, influencing the things around it, the space—Influencing us when we turn our attention toward it.
Things also speak by the way they move, by the sounds they make, like a birdsong. The rhythm of crickets is a kind of voice, and the hooting of owls, but, also, the wind in the willows, too, is a voice. If you listen closely to hear what is being said, what is the meaning. ‘Ah, the wind in the willows, the speech of the leaves is saying that a storm is brewing’, or other such meanings that one finds in the speech of the waves as they crash upon the rocks, or the babbling speech of a brook as it moves over the stones. Mindfulness in Nature, Sensing by David Abram
“Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.” Albert Einstein
By framing the self within a much purer form of energy. a remarkable thing happens. We begin to see a clearer picture of the world and our place in it. It allows expression of an art form known as Compassionate Thought, the realization of the potential we have within our being to be the best that we can be. It includes what we believe was Einstein’s goal - widening our circle of compassion - and ultimately our well-being.
The word "individual" means undivided, Individuality is only possible if it unfolds from wholeness. ... Ego-centeredness is not individuality at all. Deep down the consciousness of mankind is one. The notion that all these fragments are separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and confusion. A thoroughgoing suspension of tacit individual and cultural infrastructures... frees the mind to move in quite new ways. The tendency toward false play that is characteristic of the rigid infrastructures begins to die away. The mind is then able to respond to creative new perceptions going beyond the particular points of view that have been suspended. Dialogue can be considered as a free flow of meaning between people in communication, in the sense of a stream that flows between banks. A new kind of mind thus begins to come into being which is based on the development of a common meaning that is constantly transforming in the process of the dialogue. Dialogue in the Spirit of David Bohm
Dialogue in the Spirit of David Bohm
The Musical Universe
The Musical Universe “the highest goal of music is to connect one’s soul to their Divine Nature, not entertainment.” Pythagoras.
Pythagoras conceived of the universe as a vast lyre in which planets harmonized with other heavenly bodies – an endless, intergalactic mellifluous interaction reverberating through space and time. “Music was number, and the cosmos was music.”
Chopin - The Nocturne No. 20 in C-sharp minor, Op. posth
What musical key are you?
"But it can also happen, if will and grace are joined, that as I contemplate the tree I am drawn into a relation, and the tree ceases to be an It." Martin Buber
Animism (derived from the Latin word anima meaning breath or soul) is a belief that within every object dwells an individual spirit or force that governs its existence. It is the view that natural physical entities—including animals, plants, and often even inanimate objects or phenomena—possess a spiritual essence. Animism encompasses the beliefs that there is no separation between the spiritual and physical (or material) world, and souls or spirits exist, not only in humans, but also in all other animals, plants, rocks, geographic features such as mountains or rivers, or other entities of the natural environment, including thunder, wind, and shadows as well as abstract concepts such as words, symbols, or metaphors in mythology. The health and strength of any individual being is a direct reflection of the vitality of this animating force.
I feel it with my body, with my blood. Feeling all these trees...When this wind blow you can feel it..because tree just about your brother or father...and tree is watching you. Earth...like your father or brother or mother, because you born from earth. Bill Neidjie
Surely it is time for us all to make every effort to evolve as a species and become more fully human. To be fully human is to be humane. To be sub-human is to be inhumane. In order to evolve in this way and become more fully human we must define and refine our ethical and spiritual responsibilities and sensibilities. The origin of the word human is rooted in such terms as humus, humility and humane. Then we may evolve socially and biologically, as our behavior, appetites, needs, values and relationships change. Michael W. Fox
When your heart is cleansed of everything you think you are, you’ll see yourself as an old beloved soul. Jelaluddin Rumi
Mendelssohn Violin Concerto E Minor OP.64 The music cries out for an unforced sound of radiant purity..
Sublime is often connected with the pathetic, though I confess the greater passions assimilate more readily with sublime ideas than the tender and sympathetic. The force of pathetic composition arises from that fine sense which the Author of our nature has implanted in us for the wisest and best of purposes, which engages us as social beings to partake in the feelings of others; to " rejoice with those who do rejoice, and to weep with those who weep ;" Letters on Literature, Taste and Composition: Addressed to His Son by George Gregory
Pathetic Composition
“I was taken from my bed and brought to the foot of a great tree. On that tree blossomed countless worlds, shining in the branches like jewels. I knew our world was one of them. At the top of the tree, I saw Valor itself, spilling fountains of light in a wide halo.” Aurora Silverlight
The world tree, a motif present in several religions and mythologies, is represented as a colossal tree which supports the heavens, thereby connecting the heavens, the terrestrial world, and, through its roots, the underworld. As the tree grows, its worlds change. It moves us all from one age to the next, and we experience the storms as they come. Gods and mythological creatures exist because people believe in them and New gods have arisen, reflecting our obsessions with media, celebrity, technology, among others. In "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman, Shadow is a man with a past.
Shadow is a man with a past.
Spent the evening with the 5th symphony. The disposition of the themes: with all its mystery and fascination, this is the important thing. It is as if God the Father had thrown down mosaic pieces from heaven’s floor and asked me to put them back as they were. Perhaps that is a good definition of composition. Perhaps not. How should I know?" Jean Sibelius
Sibelius was grappling with the paradigm of composition. What is composition? The mosaic pieces (cells? Themes?) are there before him, but their final form eludes him until he has “composed” them together. But if he isn’t aware what is the final form, how would he know when he achieves it?
Last Three Symphonies of Sibelius
Sibelius - Tapiola
"I have had a wonderful idea. The Adagio of the symphony – earth, worms and heartache – fortissimos and muted strings, very muted. And the sounds are godlike." Sibelius wanted his music to be more than just earth-song, but to have heart-song, heartache. This is perhaps how he struggled to reconcile the inexpressibility of nature’s universe, both her beauty and her logic, with the consciousness of a human being. Dust of Hue
Long haul of love & porous nature of memory and how it fades and gets suppressed and distorted, and our inability to fully face the past. When is it better to remember and when is it better just to forget things and keep them forgotten? There's some kind of a mist all over the land, which makes people forget. People are very amnesiac. In most relationships there are things that we think would be better to just leave behind. There are always dark, uncomfortable passages. It might seem the best thing to just bury them. There are people who want this mist to go away, and people who want this mist to stay. With something like a marriage you have to ask, if you just deny that something’s happened, and you literally forget it, what does that do to the love? Is it somehow inauthentic? Is it “real” love still? On the other hand, if you do actually go back and look at it squarely, would that destroy the love as well? “The giant well buried is now beginning to stir, And when it wakes up, there’s going to be mayhem.” Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant
Scriabin Etude in c-sharp minor, Op.2
Beethoven - Piano Concerto No. 4
"I must regretfully own that in my younger years I shared that dangerous German habit of thought which regards life and intellect, art and politics as totally separate worlds." Thomas Mann.
In hist novel, Doctor Faustus, Mann attempts to reconcile this separation. The story centers on the life and work of the (fictitious) composer Adrian Leverkühn. This modem Faustus has signed a pact with the Devil, who, for a limited period, has bestowed on him his creative powers, his fame, his greatness. His deadly sin is pride – self-isolation, lack of charity and forbearance – his guilt no more and no less than the ambition to be a great artist..
This the crucial question: whether or no a creative artist can play the role of Faustus. In contrast to the artist Faustus, his will is free to choose, his realm is that of potentialities and possibilities, not of necessities.
Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann
Jeffrey Mishlove talks with Michael Talbot
"Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise," Faust - Alexander Sokurov, "loosely based on works by Goethe and Thomas Mann"
Edvard Grieg - Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16
Pau Casals - El Cant Dels Ocells (The Song of the Birds, a song that symbolizes peace and freedom)
Friendship Those that have loved longest love best. A single blaze of kindness may by a single blast of coldness be extinguished, but that fondness which length of time has connected with many circumstances and occasions, though it may for a while be suppressed by irritation or resentment, with or without a cause, is hourly revived by accidental recollection. To those that have lived long together, every thing heard and every thing seen recals some pleasure communicated, or some benefit conferred, some petty quarrel, or some slight endearment. Esteem of great powers, or amiable qualities newly discovered, may embroider a day or a week, but a friendship of twenty years is interwoven with the texture of life. A friend may be often found and lost, but an old friend never can be found, and Nature has provided that he cannot easily be lost. From a letter written by Samuel Johnson
Manoel de Oliveira - Lisbon Story
Billie Holiday -Lady Sings the Blues, The Very Thought of You, My Man “a certain holding back, a kind of dignity in distress,”
