in silence, alone. Art by Lisbeth Zwerger for a special edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland But our technologies are always prosthetic extensions of our consciousness — time, it turns out, is an innately social phenomenon not only in how it is measured, but in how it is experienced. Burdick cites the research of French neuropsychologist Sylvie Droit-Volet, who studies the warping of our temporal perception. In one experiment, she presented people with images of human faces — some neutral, some happy, some angry, some frightened — each displayed on the screen for anywhere between half a second to a second and a half. The research subject... posted on Feb 9 2018 (6,647 reads)

what they had created — whether that was through connection with their children, community, work or nature. Though I spoke with people from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds, nobody wished they had made more money, worked harder or bought more things.” The works in “Thoughts in Passing,” nine life-size graphite pencil portraits, not only illuminate the faces of people like Daniel, Ena, Osamu and Jenny, but their words too. Scrawled within the hyperrealist images are the narratives told to Bicen, the slight text hidden in the folds of a t-shirt or the rolls of a sleeve. Bicen has collected their recorded conversations on Vimeo, where you can hear the re... posted on Apr 9 2019 (13,070 reads)

happens when we look more closely, whether with the naked eye or equipment? Incredible details come into focus, bringing with them the possibility of beauty and interest we might never have conceived of. That's what some scientists and artists have discovered. As a result, a certain kind of artwork has been emerging because of technological advances and a discerning eye. In a winning combination of science and art, what is observed microscopically can be magnified into large images that defy a viewer's guess as to what they might be. To me, they register as abstract paintings or textile designs. In fact, there are artists using such images to create their own work in these mediu... posted on Jul 10 2019 (7,025 reads)

edgy terrain such as depth psychology, neoshamanism, art of all mediums, modern myth-telling, and soul-guiding.   Through the ecotone where the contours of the known world shapeshift into the mundus imaginalis, astonishing or fateful encounters may await the imagineer. Blue deserts, crenulated caverns, or dark-veined forests may suddenly appear, populated with devas, spirit bears, green angels, embryonic music, beasts that goddesses never invented, geniuses loci, inexplicable images or presences. In the imaginal world, anything and everything is – or could be – vividly alive, suffused in intelligence and agency. Poems might have legs. Wind might ask questions. ... posted on Jul 25 2019 (8,249 reads)

meditation may hold the key to grappling with interpersonal racism, says Rhonda Magee, because it helps people tolerate the discomfort that comes with deeper discussions about race. And it can help cultivate a sense of belonging and community for those who experience and fight racism in our everyday lives. For more than 20 years, Magee has worked to address issues of race, racism, and identity-based conflict while teaching law at the University of San Francisco. Over the years teaching hundreds of students about the many ways that racism affects law and justice, she came to realize that we can’t just think our way out of racism or other biases—we need to go de... posted on Jun 10 2020 (10,109 reads)

whatever experience I could to others, and sharing in different ways. I have a real reverence for the coyote. She’s a bit of a mysterious character, and this was a way of allowing for unknown aspects, because I was in unknown territory myself. RICHARD:   That’s a beautiful description and shows what a good phrase can do in two words. And we can go almost straight to photography from there because what’s really hard for words to do is sometimes possible for images to do. AURA:   That is so true, Richard. I have an appreciation for putting words together that are unexpected and paradoxical. RICHARD:   And that’s an art. I h... posted on Oct 14 2021 (3,413 reads)

the past ten years, Sachi Maniar has nurtured breathing spaces for young people in the midst of profound intensity. When she first stumbled into the company of youth in conflict with the law, with runaway, orphaned and abandoned children, Sachi felt herself inexplicably at home. The work that blossomed from that feeling would eventually turn into a full-fledged organization that has now touched thousands of young lives, across three facilities in Mumbai as well as 18 other facilities in India. At its core Sachi's work reminds us of each person's fundamental belonging, of the beauty inherent in wholeness, and the power and freedom that come... posted on Jan 9 2023 (2,484 reads)

Keith Sawyer looks to comedians and jazz groups for 10 keys to more creative, successful teams in the office, on the field, and beyond. In 1949, the comedian Sid Caesar brought together a legendary group of comedy writers and created one of the biggest television hits of the 1950s, Your Show of Shows. Caesar’s team included Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, and Neil Simon. It may have been the greatest writing staff in the history of television. They developed the show in a small suite of rooms on the sixth floor of 130 West 56th Street in Manhattan. Caesar created a fun and improvisational environment, where the team would riff on each other’s idea... posted on Feb 1 2012 (41,542 reads)

2 AM Wakeup Call   Fame and fortune crowned this gifted artist early on. He rocketed to stardom barely into his twenties. But Nimo remembers the dark despair of a night that found him lying awake at 2 AM with a searing question: “Is this it?"  In the eyes of the world he was living the dream but, "I was not at peace, not content and not in a daily space of joy and gratitude. I began wondering, where does this all go, when does it stop, where does this end?”   Nimesh Patel, better known as "Nimo" to friends and fans, was drawn to music straight from childhood.  His casual classroom raps eventually evolved into full-... posted on May 4 2012 (60,123 reads)

Korean shop owner and her wares. Photo: David Stanley. What do coffee growers in Ethiopia, hardware store owners in America, and Basque entrepreneurs have in common? For one thing, many of them belong to cooperatives. By pooling their money and resources, and voting democratically on how those resources will be used, they can compete in business and reinvest the benefits in their communities. The United Nations has named 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives, and indeed, co-ops seem poised to become a dominant business ... posted on May 30 2012 (9,620 reads)

artwork from a diverse lineup of independent and emerging artists, designers and illustrators, including Brain Pickings favorites Marian Bantjes, Marc Johns and Mike Perry. The project is an invitation to look at existential truisms with new eyes in a context of honesty and simplicity, delivered through such outstanding graphic design that the medium itself becomes part of the charm of the message. Reviewed in full, with more images, here. THE OPTIMISM BIAS The reason pessimism is easily escapable, as Martin Seligman posits, might just be that its opposite is our natural pre-wired inclination. At least that&rs... posted on Jun 5 2012 (40,282 reads)

year, Joan Wright-Albertini, a first-grade teacher at Park Day School in Oakland, California, transforms her classroom into a virtual rainforest, a desert, or an ocean — whatever ecosystem interests her students most. But in recent years, she has also added to the months-long study of habitats an unusual, daring twist that has deepened both her students' understanding of their connection to the natural world and belief in their ability to help protect it. The story, which appears in the Center's book Ecoliterate: How Educators Are Cultivating Emotional, Social, and Ecological Intelligence, is illustrated through the photos below. In ... posted on Aug 14 2013 (46,758 reads)

terrible at gratitude. How bad am I? I’m so bad at gratitude that most days, I don’t notice the sunlight on the leaves of the Berkeley oaks as I ride my bike down the street. I forget to be thankful for the guy who hand-brews that delicious cup of coffee I drink mid-way through every weekday morning. I don’t even know the dude’s name! I usually take for granted that I have legs to walk on, eyes to see with, arms I can use to hug my son. I forget my son! Well, I don’t actually forget about him, at least as a physical presence; I generally remember to pick him up from school and feed him dinner. But as I face the quotidian slings and arrows of pare... posted on Mar 19 2014 (181,807 reads)

greatest dignity to be found in death is the dignity of the life that preceded it.” “To lament that we shall not be alive a hundred years hence, is the same folly as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred years ago,” Montaigne wrote in his timeless meditation on death and the art of living. And yet in the half millennium since his day, we’ve made paltry progress on coming to such nonchalant terms with the reality of death. We are stillprofoundly unprepared when it strikes our loved ones and paralyzed by the prospect of our own demise. Our discomfort with “the idea of a permanent unconsciousness in which there is neither void nor vacuum... posted on Nov 3 2014 (24,900 reads)

want to just listen for the evening, and after the sharing ends we have dinner together. The first time I was planning on attending Stone Soup, I had no idea what to expect and no clue what to share. I'm a visual artist, but it seemed pretty strange and egotistical to pass around a painting or drawing I'd done. Therefore, I decided I'd share one of my favorite poems by Rilke. I'm such a visual thinker however, that as I read through the poem I started having all these images in my head about what the poem might look like if it were illustrated. I started sketching and realized that it could make a fun coloring page for kids and adults. So, I went in with a tiny sta... posted on Dec 16 2014 (103,705 reads)

is how we mature… There is almost no path a human being can follow that does not lead to heartbreak.” “Words belong to each other,” Virginia Woolf asserted in the only surviving recording of her voice. But words also belong to us, as much as we belong to them - and out of that mutual belonging arises our most fundamental understanding of the world, as well as the inescapable misunderstandings that bedevil the grand sensemaking experiment we call life. This constant dialogue between reality and illusion, moderated by our use of language, is what poet and philosopher David Whyte explores in Consolations: The Solace, Nourish... posted on May 12 2015 (30,454 reads)

must always take sides,” Elie Wiesel urged in his spectacular Nobel Prize acceptance speech. “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” And yet part of the human tragedy is that despite our best intentions and our most ardent ideals, we often lull ourselves into neutrality in the face of injustice — be it out of fear for our own stability, or lack of confidence in our ability to make a difference, or that most poisonous foible of the soul, the two-headed snake of cynicism and apathy. How, then, do we unmoor ourselves from a passivity we so masterfully rationalize, remember that “injustice ... posted on May 7 2016 (9,698 reads)

questions I have which relate to the topic. I’ve been working as an artist all my adult life, but for the last 15 years, I’ve been working with a narrative which has yielded a lot for me, and I can think about it in two ways: from the standpoint of art and from the standpoint of psychology. Since I’ve become a therapist, I’ve become interested in it in both ways. In general, the idea is that the unconscious is the part of us which remains hidden. It emerges sometimes in images and dreams, and these can become an important part of artmaking. RW:  Do you think the uncovering of these hidden parts of ourselves could be a transforming process? RH:  Yes, a... posted on Jun 15 2016 (7,888 reads)

I was five years old, I wanted to go to an Ivy League school because I’d heard somewhere that they were the best. I remember this because my family moved to a new house in Denver, the lock on the front door said “Yale” which I knew was a sign. For the next 13 years I worked like crazy. I got all the As. I joined all the clubs. I ran for all the positions. My best friend and I were president and vice president of a French club with only one other member, which was all that was needed to put it on our resumes. I took the SATs three times, until I got a perfect score in math. My mom often encouraged me to slow down I was doing everything ... posted on Nov 21 2016 (34,955 reads)

those of us who live in urban areas, what does returning to a life in the village really mean? What is the impulse that moves folks to reverse the direction of migration of their recent ancestors to the city? What can living on the land, growing your own food, and using your hands to make clothing and shelter offer souls hungering for a real connection to the Earth? Here, Hang Mai, a Vietnamese natural farmer and social entrepreneur, who together with her partner Chau Duong mid-wifes those wanting to make this transition to the village, reflects on this question. I belong to the baby-boomer generation in Vietnam after the end of the war in 1975. My generation experienced the difficult... posted on Jul 8 2021 (3,551 reads)