and suddenly I could be enveloped by a palpable sense of profound meaning and mystery, a palpable sense of a thinning veil between the ordinary “me” and an enfolding and very lively psychic field populated by wilder or mysterious Others. It is a strange and wonderful revelation to burst into a mystical view while reading the visionary evocations of other people. In another version of unexpected enlivenment that I can’t explain but only honor, I’ve noticed that films, images, or written texts that illustrate the intelligence and beauty of fungi or mycelium will blow open my dusty windows of perception almost without ffail. *** In our time of change and uncert... posted on Mar 14 2021 (5,201 reads)

1924 Postcard Photograph of Giuseppe Benincasa, taken in Canada A genealogy search can yield many things and go down many paths, but at its core, it is a story waiting to be told and a person to tell it. My grandfather, Giuseppe Benincasa’s story began 10 years ago, when my cousin Helen Salfi Gorday gave me a charred book of Italian love poems. She said that it belonged to our grandfather and that I should have it. The book is, “Postuma” by Lorenzo Stecchetti, an author who didn't exist, yet became a leader  of the Veristi Literary movement in Italy after it was published in 1877.  The Veristi were the anti-Romantic, Bohemian new reali... posted on May 16 2021 (4,736 reads)

increases our capability for receiving and trusting the messages that come from soul.  When a person excavates the ego out from everything the ego thought it needed, that person is left with who he is meant to be.      LOWERWORLD      When awareness turns towards the soul, a rich imaginal realm5 of inborn archetypal figures opens up, enabling soul encounter6 - a glimpse of your deep purpose.  Imaginal/archetypal figures can show up as visual images, but also as a felt sense of purpose, where the body lights up with and aligns to our sense of purpose.  Here in the lowerworld, awareness isn’t concerned with unbounded non-dual awa... posted on Jul 2 2021 (7,427 reads)

fulfillment of needs happens by pouring the feeling into the bucket – for instance, love. When it’s only half full, something else takes over, and the feeling of love cannot reach its full development when anger and fear, for example, take over. The body simultaneously builds up a physical strain which is part of the negative emotion, and this strain blocks the experience of love more and more. Problem with stress is that we judge our actual circumstances by comparison. We have images from the past, and we look at our actual situation, and our brain (subconscious) make rough comparisons with the old images and then it starts to detect stress and the physical body will change... posted on Oct 12 2021 (3,320 reads)

[of the test subjects], 100-percent score, they were—within a quarter of an hour, they had complete control. So no eight hours of agony, going up in inflammation, and fever, and this, and that. It just was not there. They took over their natural innate capability to control deeper systems within us. Those systems, they have gotten lost. And now, we brought them back within our awareness. I use the science to show it. The breathing is what you see, also on the website, you see it—images, people, motion pictures on how they did it in the hospital. There is no speculation about it. But whole industries, they want to have us on the pills and medicine, and the food industry is sh*... posted on Nov 2 2021 (3,387 reads)

our mortality helps us let go of busyness and focus on what’s most important to us in order to live a happier, more meaningful life. The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly finite. If you’re lucky and you live to 80, you will have lived about four thousand weeks. This truth, which most of us ignore most of the time, is something to wrestle with if we want to spend our limited time on this earth well. Given that, it follows that time management, broadly defined, should be everyone’s chief concern. Yet the modern discipline of time management (or productivity) is depressingly narrow-minded, focused on devising the perfect morning routine or trying... posted on Dec 12 2021 (14,131 reads)

energy, martial and spiritual arts, I have personally experienced and observed many of the spiritual blind alleys and subtle dangers that are associated with complex systems of Qi training and hierarchical structures of spiritual development. The obvious risks include identification with a set of formal teachings, lineages, systems, or even the identity of belonging to an elite professional organization. The less obvious, more subtle dangers involve identification with a set of goals, or images of spiritual attainment, no matter how refined or ideal they may be. The result of either is that the seeker assumes a new self-image; an elevated or spiritual ego emerges, an identity framed w... posted on Nov 9 2021 (4,808 reads)

hooks poses for a portrait on Dec. 16, 1996, in New York City. PHOTO BY KARJEAN LEVINE/GETTY IMAGES I have known radicals and revolutionaries who love “the people” but whose everyday lives are replete with contradictions. The late bell hooks was by no means perfect, but she was impressively consistent. She took seriously the notion that a revolution had to center love and was as much about transforming ourselves as it was about transforming the world.  I met hooks when I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan in the late 1980s and early ’90s. I have many memories of her, but a Chicago activist now in her 60s shared with me a story that... posted on Jan 25 2022 (4,346 reads)

five kids. When we have a family reunion, we all tell stories about our own childhood. And everybody always listens to everybody else’s stories; says, “Did you grow up in the same family as I did?” Tippett:[laughs] Right, there are five versions of every story. van der Kolk:Right, right, there’s all these very, very different versions, and they barely ever overlap. So people create their own realities, in a way. What is so extraordinary about trauma is that these images or sounds or physical sensations don’t change over time. So people who have been molested as kids continue to see the wallpaper of the room in which they were molested. Or when they exami... posted on Feb 10 2022 (7,626 reads)

research studies and in real life, placebos have a powerful healing effect on the body and mind The concept of placebos – which are sometimes called “sugar pills” – has been around since the 1800s. Wladimir Bulgar/Science Photo Library via Getty Images Did you ever feel your own shoulders relax when you saw a friend receive a shoulder massage? For those of you who said “yes,” congratulations, your brain is using its power to create a “placebo effect.” For those who said “no,” you’re not alone, but thankfully, the brain is trainable. Since the 1800s, the word placebo has been used to refer to a fake treatme... posted on Feb 12 2022 (5,410 reads)

is my favorite poem. After I listened to a recording of Chelan Harkin’s poem, called “I no longer pray” the words "I no longer sing with only my voice…” flashed into my head like a stroke of lightning. The qualities in the poem are like the seven synonyms for God, (Love, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Truth, Life, Principle) I learned about in Sunday School, except I only used six of them. I no longer sing with only my voice. I sing with my heart, my love. I no longer sing with only my voice. I sing with my mind, my thought. I no longer sing with only my voice. I sing with my soul, my conscience.... posted on Apr 20 2022 (6,344 reads)

and Blyden Jackson “Even if life stops, love goes on.” This quote of Bishop Steven Charleston’s has never been more real to me than this year, which has seen the posthumous publication by ANTIBOOKCLUB of my husband Blyden B. Jackson Jr’s final novel, For One Day of Freedom, completed before his death in April of 2012. The publication of this novel, which was passed over by mainstream publishers when we tried unsuccessfully to have it published while Blyden was still alive, is a testament to his commitment to the act and power of storytelling. And to paraphrase the publisher, Gabriel Levinson, it also speaks to mine and Blyden’s love “and to t... posted on May 31 2022 (2,841 reads)

20, 2019 I wanted to watch the sunrise on the summer solstice from Stonehenge, ancient druid temple, aligned to the solstice, keeper of mysterious magic yet unknown to us. A picture of Stonehenge had been my desktop screensaver more than 15 years ago, and walking amongst these stones had been a long cherished dream of mine. So when I realized that I could be there on this special day when they allow people to enter the circle and hold and touch the stones, I was overjoyed. But it doesn’t help when ten thousand other people have the same idea. I walked into a loud party, and people were celebrating the stones quite literally by being stoned. Or drunk. I felt so disap... posted on Jun 21 2022 (3,299 reads)

expression of Wabi-Sabi, the Japanese aesthetic concept of admiring that which is worn-in, imperfect, altered by time. If we can praise what is flawed and tattered and half-done, we can praise so many things.” “We live in a culture that is a very hungry culture because so many of the things that our souls crave are not what we are feeding ourselves,” she says. “What am I hungry for? Moving toward beautiful, complex, meaningful imagery. Trying to feed myself images that are meaningful. The erotic – expression of craving, wanting. Are we wanting the body or something else inside of or beyond that?” Laméris was born to a Dutch father a... posted on Nov 29 2022 (3,039 reads)

under a hat of the cobbled surface of a licorice spog. To top it off, a wood louse seemed to be sucking part of the crimson jelly into its mouth. I read the caption: it was a “slime mold,” photographed by Barry Webb, in the south of Buckinghamshire, UK—not far from where I live. Slime mold? I’d heard vaguely of slimes that had been used for experiments in labs to solve mazes, but this bright berry-like structure was new to me. I searched online and found a gallery of images Barry had taken of other species. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Iridescent rainbow orbs bursting into tangerine spun sugar. Pearly spheres of goo. Sorbet corn dogs leaning into one an... posted on Feb 5 2023 (5,072 reads)

engage in creative thinking every day, whether they realize it or not. Ekaterina Chizhevskaya/iStock via Getty Images Lily Zhu, Washington State University Do you think that creativity is an innate gift? Think again. Many people believe that creative thinking is difficult – that the ability to come up with ideas in novel and interesting ways graces only some talented individuals and not most others. The media often portrays creatives as those with quirky personalities and unique talent. Researchers have also identified numerous personality traits that are associated with creativity, such as openness to new experiences, ideas and perspectives. Together, they ... posted on Feb 7 2023 (3,553 reads)

they inhabited the Anchorage landscape. Now they were among his favorite wild neighbors and he eagerly anticipated their reemergence every spring. The more he learned about wood frogs, the more miraculous their northern lives seemed. Given all that, and his still-growing curiosity about other life forms, well yeah, it seemed likely dragonflies would have a greater presence in his life. Besides the basic information it provided about their lives, Dragonflies of Alaska presented some dazzling images of the state’s various species (all of the individuals “posed” in resting positions after being caught and cooled). Perhaps best of all, the guidebook helped the man identify ... posted on Apr 6 2023 (5,862 reads)

I was cleaning out my dresser, I found a small red, blue, and green hand-woven pouch, with a silver zipper on top. Ms. Macias, an English teacher I had in my Senior year of high school had given it to me fifteen years before I ever visited Guatemala, the country in which it was made. I remember sitting near Ms. Macias’ desk every day to the right side of the classroom, near my best friend Tia. We would both bombard her with questions about life and all that is important to a teenager. She would willingly engage in many conversations with us. One day she took out this little woven bag from her desk, walked over to my desk and asked if I liked it. I told her it was beautiful. ... posted on Dec 22 2014 (22,973 reads)

remember driving to the foot of the mountain shortly after dawn and coming to a curve in the road where there was a good view of it, massive, majestic, magnificent. “We’re going to climb THAT?” I thought, “Lord save us.” But there was the parking lot, full, the big sign and the path into the woods. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people climbed it every year. Sort of a Twentieth Century pilgrimage, backpacker-style, a test of strength and nerve in a place where the world can only be admired. There wasn’t much to speak of below timberline. There as the path, well-trod, the tunnel of trees, there were flowers and birds, and people pleasant, greeting us, qu... posted on Jun 19 2023 (3,039 reads)

seem to be building dams intended to light up Las Vegas. I want to propose that everything human beings have intentionally made, every modification to our “natural habitat”, was born first in imagination. For better and worse.  The human imagination may be our greatest unacknowledged and underutilized innate capacity.   But in our era of ever-present media, our innate capacities for imagination may be suppressed by the constant bombardment of ready-made images from advertising, entertainment, news media, and political points of view. We are living amidst the greatest colonization of imagination ever known. In her poem “Rant,” Diane di Pri... posted on Jul 1 2023 (2,607 reads)