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.

#Writing #WritingPrompts #AmWriting #WritingWorkshops #contemplative #WritingCommunity

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 🤬 google (who are now way too up in my biz)

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

A longtime student of world #contemplative 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 later—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 me—my heart—in touch with?

@khthoniaa @KnoxvilleRose

A longtime student of world #contemplative traditions, it seems clear the lived source of human spiritual expressions is something too immediate (and too wonderful) for words. Words come later—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 me—my heart—in touch with?

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

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

"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.

https://matthewflorianz.bandcamp.com/track/for-a-moment

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

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

I'm not expert, but associate the linguistic turn with analytic #philosophy, and #Derrida 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 #contemplative and #meditative traditions (and touched on in the book, *Derrida and Negative Theology*).

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

A Big Tree (2012) [2 min] by Tomoki Kurogi | #Japan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04tt9KhZOfA

#2D #2DAnimation #AnimatedShort #AnimatedShortOfTheDay #Animation #Tree #Nature #City #Contemplative

@MrRaph_

Bienvenue sur Mastodon !

Cela te paraîtra étrange ou pas du tout mais j'aurais bien vu de la #Voile dans ta présentation, genre petit bateau pour traverser l'Atlantique. Une expérience assurément #Contemplative

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

"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...

I've been looking at Plato lately, as a #contemplative. 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 #unknowing 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, here—)

https://thesideview.co/journal/the-contemplatives-socrates/

I'm effectively #Buddhist, but find deep assurance & guidance from #contemplative 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 I’ll abandon everything that I can think, and choose for my love that thing that I can’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

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 #contemplative baby with the dogmatic and metaphysical bath water."

Bénatouïl. 2012. Theoria, Praxis and the Contemplative Life after Plato and Aristotle

@waxbanks

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

(Turns out, etymologically, it includes "temple" in it — 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 #Zen teacher where I told him, "I know it's all a #miracle — but sometimes I just don't see it that way."

To which he replied,

"Is that not a miracle?"

🙂 🙏

@onalifeglug

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

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

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

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

"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 #wisdom we often consider if it is universal in time. Of course we don’t want to be robots as #flourishing IOP includes a passion for #life. But being passionate all the time reduces our objectivity, not to mention our equilibrium.

Rather we prefer to say
“Situated 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.” (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)*

This is the benefit of having some sort of #contemplative and #mindfulness 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 #joy and #passion.

#philosophy #psychology #PierreDeChardin #MotT #Meditation #MesitationsOnTheTarot

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.

#CyberpunkCity #NeonLights #OldMan #FuturisticWorld #WisdomAndWonder #Weathered #LongAndStoriedLife #Contemplative #EnergyAndExcitement #SciFi #Stunning #VibrantColors #IncredibleScene #AmazingExperience

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As a #contemplative (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):

I'm a longtime #contemplative and student of #meditation 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."

🙏 ❤️

.
#Buddhism #Dzogchen #Dharma

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I'm a fairly staid, over-educated, and mostly Buddhist #contemplative, who's largely oriented toward a "naked presence" or "suchness" sort of #meditative 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" — times, for instance, when it was quite clear that some of the animals around me could feel it when I was meditating.