A Mindful Life

Let me call you Sweet. Heart, please tell me your secrets one, by one, by one.

Light pierces through the scales of unconsciousness to manifest Being. “Awaken” by Amanda Angus ©2003 / ephotograph

Why is evolution in living systems related to progress and complexification, not to deterioration and disintegration? In a dissipative structure, things in the environment that disturb the system’s equilibrium play a crucial role in creating new forms of order. As the environment becomes more complex, generating new and different information, it provokes the system into [...]

Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary. There are burning bushes all around you. Every tree is full of angels. Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb. Life wants to lead you from crumbs to angels, but this can happen only if you are willing to unwrap the ordinary by staying with it long enough to [...]

Whenever I drive past a church I’m often amused by the signage. Sometimes they are clearly clever on purpose; other times they are clever by accident. Often they are funny. My fiancé has wondered if anyone has compiled these in a book that ministers use for reference. Tonight I stumbled across a site that answers [...]

That’s what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way. –Doris Lessing, The Four-Gated City (1969)

A human being is a part of the whole that we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical illusion of his consciousness. This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal [...]

Immersed in bubbles, a fin-slippy pretender; wet, joyful, and warm. “Taking A Bath” by Archie Ricks ©2003 / ephotograph

This is brilliant. If you have reached the age of 25, I have a bit of bad news for you, to wit: it is time, if you have not already done so, for you to emerge from your cocoon of post-adolescent dithering and self-absorption and join the rest of us in the world. Past the [...]

The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running. Where it is lacking there are no real students, but only poor caricatures of apprentices who, at the end of their apprenticeship, will not even have a trade. –Simone Weil, “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies,” The Simone Weil [...]