we grow accustomed to life under lockdown, we are discovering the richness that can emerge from the quiet, contemplative nature of solitude. Hoping to tap into the inner wisdom of our collective attempt to find light amidst darkness, writer Emily Rose Barr asked one simple question of individuals across the globe: What are you doing that's bringing a little extra joy, light, or laughter to your days? As the answers poured in, she realized that perhaps the paradoxes of our time -- hope and fear, connection and isolation, anger and compassion -- are not meant to be reconciled, but simply to be lived. Read more to learn how the discomfort of uncertainty invites us to take care ... posted on Apr 29 2020 (7,895 reads)

emotion is a nonentity” and Tolstoy’s insistence that “emotional infectiousness” is what separates good art from the bad, Murdoch considers the central animating force of art: Literature could be called a disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions. (Of course there are other such techniques.) I would include the arousing of emotion in the definition of art, although not every occasion of experiencing art is an emotional occasion. The sensuous nature of art is involved here, the fact that it is concerned with visual and auditory sensations and bodily sensations. If nothing sensuous is present no art is present. This fact alone makes it quit... posted on Jul 16 2020 (5,853 reads)

that remains: what exactly is time? To unpack this question, we have to look at the basic properties of space and time. In the dimension of space, you can move forwards and backwards; commuters experience this everyday. But time is different, it has a direction, you always move forward, never in reverse. So why is the dimension of time irreversible? This is one of the major unsolved problems in physics. To explain why time itself is irreversible, we need to find processes in nature that are also irreversible. One of the few such concepts in physics (and life!) is that things tend to become less “tidy” as time passes. We describe this using a physical prop... posted on Apr 7 2021 (7,046 reads)

about who is in charge here? Ridiculous! The universe is expanding? Ridiculous! We feel it necessary to keep secrets? Ridiculous. Art from Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe by Ella Frances Sanders In fifty-one miniature essays, each accompanied by one of her playful and poignant ink-and-watercolor drawings, Sanders goes on to explore a pleasingly wide array of scientific mysteries and facts — evolution, chaos theory, clouds, the color blue, the nature of light, the wondrousness of octopuses, the measurement of time, Richard Feynman’s famous cataclysm sentence, the clockwork mesmerism of planetary motion, our microbiome, ... posted on Nov 28 2020 (5,286 reads)

plants. In the Abrahamic version (based on earlier Sumerian tales), the Tower of Babel saga, the “something” that “happened” in the opening story is further elaborated. The first common tongue was abolished by a (slightly insecure?) god. He feared that people would use it to cooperate in building a tower that would eventually challenge his heavenly reign. Language has always been connected to the primal question of what it means to be human and our relationship with nature, the invisible and unknown, the “Great Mystery.” The word in its primordial force runs through us like a current: what we say still comes alive, as in Nalungiaq’s story, or... posted on Dec 5 2020 (7,362 reads)

me, and I really value this so much, that we’re spiritual beings having a human experience. We didn’t come here to talk about the problems, identify them and x them. What if we came here to shine a light on the things that are working? To shine a light on the wellbeing? Because if you go back to energy and how energy and matter works, we know that what you focus on expands. All of these Lores that we live by spiritually and culturally, they’re also the Lores that are just in nature. It’s that very beginning of our conversation. The grit is so important in making that pearl in the oyster. It sounds na and corny but it is the darkest before dawn every single day. So t... posted on Dec 19 2020 (4,264 reads)

arising from how our particular atmosphere, with its particular chemistry, absorbs and reflects light. Everything we behold — a ball, a bird, a planet — is the color we perceive it to be because of its insentient stubbornness toward the spectrum, because these are the wavelengths of light it refuses to absorb and instead reflects back. In the living world beneath our red-ravenous atmosphere, blue is the rarest color: There is no naturally occurring true blue pigment in nature. In consequence, only a slender portion of plants bloom in blue and an even more negligible number of animals are bedecked with it, all having to perform various tricks with chemistry and the p... posted on Jan 27 2021 (8,334 reads)

tidal changes, and their calendar follows a ’15 day cycle’ – a 𝘔𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘵𝘢𝘦 system – tide time – stretching between a neap tide (𝘫𝘰𝘨𝘦𝘶𝘮) and spring tide (𝘴𝘢𝘳𝘪). They live and plan in spans and shoreline-rhythms of 6 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours and 50 minutes. Their thought, language and temporality are profoundly littoral. The pre-eminent British nature-writer Robert Macfarlane calls language a ‘geological force’. And in corollary to this, land and its influence can be said to birth language in its image. It continually parturates ... posted on Mar 7 2021 (5,718 reads)

1929 meditation on love and how to live with the fundamental fear of loss. “Such fearlessness exists only in the complete calm that can no longer be shaken by events expected of the future… Hence the only valid tense is the present, the Now.” Half a century before her, Leo Tolstoy — who befriended a Buddhist monk late in life and became deeply influenced by Buddhist philosophy — echoed these ancient truths as he contemplated the paradoxical nature of love: “Future love does not exist. Love is a present activity only.” That in love and in life, freedom from fear — like all species of freedom — is only possible w... posted on Apr 4 2021 (7,462 reads)

is centered inside of you, just like love. In prison, you see all different versions of unforgivingness. And being a firefighter in prison, you understand the unforgiving nature of nature. Forgiveness occurs in the earth—just the way nature balances itself, you learn how to balance yourself. Forgiveness is just a wonderful thing…it feels like a superpower. - Ra Avis Ra Avis didn't call herself a writer till she was accused of the crime that would eventually result in 437 days of incarceration. In the four years between the accusation and the handcuffs, after a friendly push from her husband—a writer himself—she started a blog and named it&n... posted on Jun 23 2021 (4,362 reads)

today (including most psychologists, educators, and religious leaders) are unaware of this breakdown in the natural sequence of human maturation, a failure now plainly evident — as witnessed in the current epidemics of psychological dysfunction as well as social and ecological degradation. Vital threads in growing whole are missing from the cultural fabric. Too many of us are only troubled guests on this Earth. Our developmental dilemma stems primarily from our disconnection from nature, from both our “outer” and “inner” natures: the loss of our experienced belonging to and entanglement within the natural world and the loss of our communion with the ver... posted on Jul 26 2021 (5,480 reads)

Pittman on Vandana Shiva There are forces of nature, and then there is Vandana Shiva. Hers is a name close to the lips of anybody engaged in questions of sustainable agriculture, of social justice, of globalisation, of any of the great sociocultural fights of the past couple of decades. Wherever there is a pulpit, where there is land and tradition to protect, she’ll be there. She is loved or she is loathed, depending on who you talk to, but she is clearly a woman with a mission—to fight the rise of Big Agriculture, and the end of biodiversity. Born in 1952 in India’s Dehradun Valley, in the Uttarakhand state at the foothills of the Himalayas, Vandana didn&r... posted on Aug 23 2021 (4,785 reads)

together, we work with the child, then they might add something to the conversation. The parent might add something to the conversation. There's this dynamic fluid exchange that's constantly unfolding, and then that process -- it's literally a process, because the intelligence is leading us through it -- that will guide us ultimately to an outcome. And often it is a piece of the story within that child that is searching for transformation. Right? Because ultimately the fundamental nature of healing itself is transformation. In order to heal, something must change. Something needs to move and shift and transform. That's the essence of it. So at some point we'll reach ... posted on Dec 31 1969 (169 reads)

that we live under, so that’s the system I’m looking at. And for all its economic achievements and scientific breakthroughs—which are very unevenly distributed, with a lot of inequality, which itself is a source of illness—it’s a system that’s based on fundamental assumptions. One is that the profit of the few is for the benefit of the many. That’s not how it is showing up. Also, that people are individualistic and competitive. That’s not our nature as human beings. In fact, from an evolutionary point of view, had we been individualistic and competitive, we never would have evolved. We evolved as communal creatures in close contact with ea... posted on Oct 2 2022 (6,184 reads)

we love horses or not, whether we have contact with horses or not, they can teach us a lot about wisdom, love, and beauty. How do we get close to an honest openness to the potential magic of horses? And what does it even mean? The horse as a mirror for the soul and a vehicle for the soul could show us our true nature, and carry us into sacred spaces, initiating us into transformational healing and insight. Horses could heal conquest consciousness and help us reindigenize. But, for that to happen, we would have to become initiates. How can we properly seek initiation into the great mystery of life?- Nikos Patedakis Nikos Patedakis himself has practiced m... posted on Oct 19 2022 (3,781 reads)

Mayuka Yamazaki, a high-level business executive, ikebana — the ancient Japanese art of floral creations — is not just about arranging flowers. It is about attuning to the wisdom and beauty of nature and enriching our experience of being human. As a master of the art, she explains that ikebana is a word derived from the verb ikeru (to bring alive) and hana (flowers), or combined, “letting flowers live.” For over 20 years, Mayuka has been letting flowers live, and most recently, she has brought this practice to help restore wholeness to schools, international organizations, communities, and most notably, corporations. As a young child in ... posted on Jan 10 2023 (2,143 reads)

a hot air balloon, big, colorful things, you’re not going anywhere while you’re tethered. They even call those tethers—I like it a lot. The cord, the ropes are tying you down to the ground, and they’re tied in. You’re not going to go up, put more helium in, put more hot air in, I don’t care, you’re not going up because you’re tethered. If you cut those tethers, it just goes up automatically. You don’t have to do anything. It’s the nature of things that it will rise because it has helium or hot air in it. So that’s what’s happening to you. There’s nothing wrong with your energy flow. There’s nothing wrong... posted on Feb 3 2023 (5,924 reads)

making them safe. And it is important that we understand what during sleep actually transacts these memory benefits, because there are real medical and societal implications. And let me just tell you about one area that we've moved this work out into, clinically, which is the context of aging and dementia. Because it's of course no secret that, as we get older, our learning and memory abilities begin to fade and decline. But what we've also discovered is that a physiological signature of aging is that your sleep gets worse, especially that deep quality of sleep that I was just discussing. And only last year, we finally published evidence that these two things, they're no... posted on Feb 15 2023 (11,429 reads)

that nothing arises on its own, that this dies because that dies. For this to exist, that has to exist. John Donne talked about how no man is an island. Walt Whitman says that every atom belongs to me as much as it belongs to you. Indigenous cultures here in North America, when they talk about health, there’s the Medicine Wheel, which has four quadrants that includes our biology, our emotions, our psychology, our intellect, our social relationships, not to mention our spiritual nature. And modern medicine—I used say modern medicine—modern science has shown that it’s all interconnected, that we are inseparable, that our minds and our bodies are not distinct ... posted on Feb 26 2023 (7,208 reads)

In the tea room, in Chinese ink paintings, in the arrangement of rocks in a traditional Japanese garden, and in the development and organization of a beautiful essay, asymmetry provokes the viewer to move about the piece. The movement is prompted by a sense of disjuncture between asymmetrical parts. It invites us to look for places to link. If nothing is forced, the sense of potential, on a subconscious level, is encouraged to fruit. As Okakura writes: The dynamic nature of the Zen and Taoist philosophy laid more stress upon the process through which perfection was sought than upon perfection itself. True beauty could be discovered only by one who mentally comp... posted on Mar 6 2023 (2,549 reads)