We held our Contemplative Writing in Action workshop today. I'm sitting with it, honestly. It's still soft inside of me and words almost seem to harden it, trying to categorize and classify, pin down and label. Like if I hold off describing it, the primary experience will remain the ineffable experience itself, not what I call it. But I want to breathe out and share the awe. So this is me exhaling.

#writingcommunity #contemplative #WritingWorkshops #amwriting #writingprompts #writing

Last updated 1 year ago

Valerie Roney · @vlrny
1590 followers · 5734 posts · Server disabled.social

I am shifting up my podcast game as I rejig my life for current brain (and soul) goals. Figure this is a good time to see if:

1) anybody has suggestions of good android apps, a place to consolidate podcast feeds that isn't šŸ¤¬ google (who are now way too up in my biz)

2) suggestions for light spiritual podcasts - audio dharma, Alan Watts kinda vibes. Ideally but any other chats also.

#contemplativechristianity #contemplative

Last updated 1 year ago

bodhidave · @bodhidave
1161 followers · 2003 posts · Server mstdn.social

A longtime student of world traditions, it seems clear to me the lived source of human spiritual expressions is something which is too immediate (and too wonderful) for words. Words come laterā€”and they're effectively poetic.

To tangle ourselves up in debating which of the words are right and which wrong is ultimately a sad waste.

And as with a poem, we're better off asking, not do I believe or disbelieve this, but how does it work? What does this put meā€”my heartā€”in touch with?

#contemplative

Last updated 1 year ago

bodhidave · @bodhidave
1161 followers · 2003 posts · Server mstdn.social

@khthoniaa @KnoxvilleRose

A longtime student of world traditions, it seems clear the lived source of human spiritual expressions is something too immediate (and too wonderful) for words. Words come laterā€”and they're effectively poetic.

To tangle ourselves up in debating which are right and which wrong is ultimately a sad waste.

And as with a poem, we're better off asking, not do I believe or disbelieve this, but how does it work? What does this put meā€”my heartā€”in touch with?

#contemplative

Last updated 1 year ago

bodhidave · @bodhidave
1159 followers · 1991 posts · Server mstdn.social

1/3

Speaking of politics (from, of course, the Greek word *polis*) ... tells us to "stay woke":

{from some writing I'm doing on cross-cultural parallels in practice and )

#meditation #contemplative #plato

Last updated 1 year ago

"Mist Schetsen" (Fog Sketches) is a sketchbook with earliest recordings for "mist schimmen" released September 2022 release.

This project presents a more intimate, perhaps even darker journey, recorded in 2018 and 2019.

I hope that you will enjoy it and the insight it gives how my work evolves over time.

matthewflorianz.bandcamp.com/t

#beatless #ambient #synthesizer #electronica #music #mood #soundtrack #contemplative #engulf #optimistic #darkambient #bandcamp

Last updated 1 year ago

bodhidave · @bodhidave
1126 followers · 1926 posts · Server mstdn.social

[from a thread touching on the linguistic turn in modern Anglo-American phil:]

I'm not expert, but associate the linguistic turn with analytic , and in effect with being in position of "interrogating" that current of thought.

I'm personally interested in those experiences too immediate for words, as explored in and traditions (and touched on in the book, *Derrida and Negative Theology*).

A favorite passage from 4th c. theologian Gregory of Nyssa:

#meditative #contemplative #derrida #philosophy

Last updated 1 year ago

tisaac · @tisaac
42 followers · 239 posts · Server piaille.fr

@MrRaph_

Bienvenue sur Mastodon !

Cela te paraƮtra Ʃtrange ou pas du tout mais j'aurais bien vu de la dans ta prƩsentation, genre petit bateau pour traverser l'Atlantique. Une expƩrience assurƩment

#voile #contemplative

Last updated 1 year ago

bodhidave · @bodhidave
1043 followers · 1670 posts · Server mstdn.social

1 of 4

In the world's so-called "negative way" spiritual traditions, although the language can appear complicated and abstruse, the instructions for meditation come down to something almost impossibly simpleā€”

"just don't make things up."

And because the experience that's uncovered by such a practice is matter-of-factly more immediate than language, you can end up finding folks on different sides of the world using very different words to describe the same thing...

#contemplative

Last updated 1 year ago

bodhidave · @bodhidave
1016 followers · 1578 posts · Server mstdn.social

I've been looking at Plato lately, as a . And I'm seeing that in the Allegory of the Cave, where the person is initially blinded by the sunlight, the verb Plato uses is *aporein*, which means to be in a state of *aporia*.

And *aporia* is used for the kind of that Socrates provoked in the people he talked with, in helping them to realize they didn't really know things they thought they did.

(I have an essay on Socrates along those lines, hereā€”)

thesideview.co/journal/the-con

#unknowing #contemplative

Last updated 1 year ago

bodhidave · @bodhidave
1005 followers · 1542 posts · Server mstdn.social

I'm effectively , but find deep assurance & guidance from traditions across the world which, in different imagery & metaphor, point to the same experiential processes & realizations:

"Of the Divine itself, no person can think. And so Iā€™ll abandon everything that I can think, and choose for my love that thing that I canā€™t think. Because the Divine may be loved well, but not thought. By love That may be had and held; but by thought neither."

~The Cloud of Unknowing, ch 6

#contemplative #buddhist

Last updated 1 year ago

bodhidave · @bodhidave
1005 followers · 1542 posts · Server mstdn.social

dogmatic and metaphysical bath water, tho:

"Cicero emphasizes that doubts about the possibility of reaching the truth do not preclude the search for it to be a worthy and fulfilling activity for human nature (Lucullus 127). Although this position might date back only to Philo of Larissa, it suggests that the New Academy did not throw away the baby with the dogmatic and metaphysical bath water."

BeĢnatouiĢˆl. 2012. Theoria, Praxis and the Contemplative Life after Plato and Aristotle

#contemplative

Last updated 1 year ago

bodhidave · @bodhidave
1005 followers · 1542 posts · Server mstdn.social

@waxbanks

I like too, as it tends for me to carry a *practice* connotation.

(Turns out, etymologically, it includes "temple" in it ā€” and in its Latin past a temple could be understood as a place to go to see guiding signs.)

I once had a conversation (dokusan) with a teacher where I told him, "I know it's all a ā€” but sometimes I just don't see it that way."

To which he replied,

"Is that not a miracle?"

šŸ™‚ šŸ™

#miracle #zen #contemplative

Last updated 1 year ago

bodhidave · @bodhidave
1005 followers · 1542 posts · Server mstdn.social

@onalifeglug

I saw Adamson in a zoom talk recently, for a conference critiquing presumptive Western definitions of . He's sharp.

(Though I feel he underplays experience in his treatment of Plotinus.)

I'm fond of this characterization of his of , regarding Plato's reliability as a source for historical information:

"Plato was a genius of world-shattering proportionsā€”and therefore thoroughly unreliable. He used historical figures as ... his artistry demanded."

#plato #contemplative #philosophy

Last updated 1 year ago

Eph (they,them) · @Eph
12 followers · 56 posts · Server fediphilosophy.org

"Zhuangzi teaches us a Way of being detached within whatever kind of civilization and social roles we finds ourselves." (Bryan W. Van Norden, Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy)

When we ponder such we often consider if it is universal in time. Of course we donā€™t want to be robots as IOP includes a passion for . But being passionate all the time reduces our objectivity, not to mention our equilibrium.

Rather we prefer to say
ā€œSituated thus by life at the heart of two worlds with whose theory, idiom and feelings intimate experience has made me familiar, I have not erected any watertight bulkhead inside myself. On the contrary, I have allowed two apparently conflicting influences full freedom to react upon one another deep within me.ā€ (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)*

This is the benefit of having some sort of and practice. Basically we say it is the gift of both space and discernment. We are able to live a life of both objective and disciplined attention and a life of and .

#wisdom #flourishing #life #contemplative #mindfulness #joy #passion #philosophy #psychology #PierreDeChardin #MotT #meditation #MesitationsOnTheTarot

Last updated 1 year ago

In this striking image, we see an old man standing in the middle of a big cyberpunk city, surrounded by a sea of neon lights. The man is weathered and wise, his face lined with the marks of a long and storied life. Yet, despite his age, he seems perfectly at home in this futuristic world.

#amazingexperience #incrediblescene #vibrantcolors #stunning #scifi #energyandexcitement #contemplative #longandstoriedlife #weathered #wisdomandwonder #futuristicworld #oldman #neonlights #cyberpunkcity

Last updated 1 year ago

bodhidave · @bodhidave
1005 followers · 1542 posts · Server mstdn.social

2

As a (meditator) I'm looking to appreciate the elements in Plato that are, in our terms, more directed to what's experiential and ultimately spiritual (and, hence, *not* doubtful) than what's merely conceptual and intellectual (and therefore doubtful):

#contemplative

Last updated 2 years ago

bodhidave · @bodhidave
1005 followers · 1542 posts · Server mstdn.social

I'm a longtime and student of practices. I look to ask of contemplative traditions' teachings, "How does this actually work? What is the experience that it refers to and the matter-of fact realization it reflects?"

And my personal translation of the passage @Ogmin shares here is this:

"There's a miracle going on, there really is, and it's everything."

šŸ™ ā¤ļø

.

#dharma #dzogchen #buddhism #meditation #contemplative

Last updated 2 years ago

bodhidave · @bodhidave
1005 followers · 1542 posts · Server mstdn.social

1|5

I'm a fairly staid, over-educated, and mostly Buddhist , who's largely oriented toward a "naked presence" or "suchness" sort of practice.

But along the way, I have had occasional markedly altered states sorts of experiences (including the Buddhist jhānas), as well as some "transpersonal" sorts of events that were, as it were, also "trans-species" ā€” times, for instance, when it was quite clear that some of the animals around me could feel it when I was meditating.

#meditative #contemplative

Last updated 2 years ago