03 February, 2012
From Timeline by Michael Crichton.
"Today everybody expects to be entertained and they expect to be entertained all the time. Business meetings must be snappy, with bullet lists and animated graphics, so executives aren't bored. Politicians must have video personalities and tell us only what we want to hear. Schools must be careful not to bore young minds that expect the speed and complexity of digital media. Students must be amused - everyone must be amused, or they will switch: switch parties, switch loyalties. This is the intellectual reality of Western society - in our times. In other centuries, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated. But in our times they want to be entertained. The great fear is not of disease or death, but of boredom."
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27 January, 2012
Scots poet John Burnside writes about levels of consciousness which make most of us uneasy. Children are often 'attuned' - but most adults have learned to ignore the spirits which reside in our historical unconscious. Burnside says here that his 'spirit animal' is a hyena.
"The hyena is my favourite - my totem animal. It comes and goes, it is indeterminate and truly mysterious; mistaken for some bizarre sub-class of the dog family, hyenas are actually a breed apart, a wayward strand of the world's DNA - and even face to face - there is an elusiveness, a near-divine secrecy in its gaze that is both beautiful and unnerving. Bizarrely - there is something erotic about hyenas, about the way they move, about their smell, about the fact that they seem to flit back and forth between our world and the nothingness that haunts all being. If I could be transformed into any other creature, I would choose to be a hyena, for one night at least, if I could taste the otherworld, even for only a few hours, I would be profoundly grateful. Dreaming the hyena, I begin to be attuned to what every cell of my inner creature tells me is, in fact, the one Magnum Mysterium: the constantly shifting and transformative mystery of everyday life." See, full article, http://www.senscot.net/view_art.php?viewid=11902
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20 January, 2012
From Wednesday's edition of Scottish Review.
The writer, broadcaster, educator, social worker and reformer Kay Carmichael died on 26 December 2009. 'I felt a need,' said her husband David Donnison, 'to put down words to help me find a way through a veil of tears. Although I had not published poems before and never intended these to be published I instinctively resorted to poetic forms to convey the pain and passion, and to seek the sharper edge to thought that poetry makes possible'. David wrote 22 poems which are collected in the volume, 'Requiem', published privately. Scottish Review selected these four. http://www.senscot.net/view_art.php?viewid=11876 I knew Kay and David as a couple - very much on the edge of their circle. I think the poems are beautiful.
The book, 'Requiem', is available for purchase. Any profit will go to the Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture - one of Kay's favourite charities. For further details email: lapidus.scotland@yahoo.co.uk
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13 January, 2012
From Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle.
When you walk through wild woodland, you will see not only abundant life all around you, but you will also encounter fallen trees, rotting leaves and decomposing matter. Wherever you look, you will find death as well as life. Upon closer scrutiny, however, you will discover that decomposing tree trunk and rotting leaves not only give birth to new life, but are full of life themselves. Micro-organisms are at work. Molecules are rearranging themselves. So death isn't to be found anywhere. There is only the metamorphosis of life forms. In this sense, life is eternal.
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06 January, 2012
I’m really enjoying Eckhart Tolle's latest thin volume - 'Stillness Speaks' - which I think is his best. He has a real gift fro the language of our 'inscape' - some special insights.
'Much suffering, much unhappiness arises when you take each thought that comes into your head for the truth. Situations don’t make you unhappy. They may cause you physical pain, but they don't make you unhappy. Your thoughts make you unhappy. You interpretations - the stories you tell yourself make you unhappy. "The thoughts I am thinking right now are making me unhappy" - this realisation breaks your unconscious identification with those thoughts.'
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