Most days follow on from the day before and are followed by another in such a way that at any given moment, and certainly in retrospect, the salient sensation we’re left with is of partaking in continuity. This is an aspect of the workings of the mind and is related to; and it might be said it is subsumed within; our sense of a stable personality extending via retrospection backwards through memory to include what we call, “Our Lives.” We feel that we are the same person we were in the past. We expect to continue to be the same person until we die.
Continue reading “An Event Horizon”Tag Archives: Coherence
On Coherence, A Manifesto
The broken state of our world has become so obvious that further efforts to list and attempt to convince those who refuse to recognize it are beyond counterproductive. We are easily distracted by nightmare scenarios, psycho-dramas, playing-out alternative doomsdays, whose only purpose is as a mechanism to keep us stuck, helpless, and increasingly incapable of responding. There are two facts, beyond the destruction of the “Natural” World – the home for all our social, cultural, and private worlds – that demand our attention and have received little or no consideration in any broader arena.
Continue reading “On Coherence, A Manifesto”Hypnotized by Desire
If the meditator is seeking an end, a result, he will hypnotize himself by his desire.
Krishnamurti @K__Quotes·Jan 20
This quote pops up on my feed the day after the question of desire arises in a conversation with Jeppe Graugaard. Desire is one of the grand themes, and as such, it is difficult to avoid being overwhelmed by the subject or tangled in the many cliché associations that have clotted around it. What brought focus onto desire this time was two-fold: That money is abstracted desire and that when we seek to find coherent action we need to have ways of recognizing desire with its many disguises and discover how we might be able to let our desires arise in us; see them take shape; and then watch them slip away or dissolve; without being trapped in the compulsion to follow their dictates.
A simple question: Why not continue to be bound by desire? “If it feels good…?”
Continue reading “Hypnotized by Desire”On Faith
The question of bad faith begs us to consider, What is good faith? Both of these questions hover around the big one, What is faith?
Continue reading “On Faith”How do we distinguish integration from delusion?
Delusion is completely convincing. This point can be difficult to acknowledge. When we suffer under a delusion we accept its rationalizations completely. We simply cannot see any incoherence in our outlook. We are certain.
How then can we tell whether attending to coherence is not just another delusion?
Continue reading “How do we distinguish integration from delusion?”Interdependence
How do we settle-down into coherence?
We are perturbed and react out of our displacement. Coming to terms with futility, finding an emotional ground by accepting Grief, discovering our interdependence, we come to trust. Following this path internally we integrate our selves. Following this path in company we develop community.
Continue reading “Interdependence”Shoal Hope
Musings on Shoal Hope.
We begin to write with a sense of urgency that what comes to us in words must be captured before it slips away. Later, after struggling with all that is required – necessary? – To transform, translate, re-form, recast…, make what we have taken down into something…. We turn leery, reluctant – Is this the place for a simple comma? A new clause? A new sentence? A statement in its own right? We become reluctant to launch anything new. So much as yet undone. Why keep adding to the pile?
Surely, or so we might wish, hope, pray for it to be true, another opening can be found? A place where writing is both simpler and truly – ah, what a concept this truth! – truly more complex?
Continue reading “Shoal Hope”Conversations with Jeppe Graugaard, Part I, Practice
I’m just back from two weeks working with Jeppe Graugaard in Denmark. This recording is the first of a three-part series of conversations resulting from our time together.
Continue reading “Conversations with Jeppe Graugaard, Part I, Practice”A Welcome Review
Over on his blog, PatternWhichConnects, Jeppe Graugaard had this to say about my work.
Last year we co-published three of these conversations which delved into some of the processes that underpin the sense of isolation and fragmentation we had both experienced (albeit in different ways) as well as the ways in which we were beginning to find community. As a way into approaching and practicing dialogue and proprioception my interactions with Tony have been, and continue to be, immensely helpful for finding new inspiration/insight and for clarifying my own thought process.
Recently, Tony has been distilling a lot of the insights he has come to in an encouraging series of blog posts which both deepen his conceptual vocabulary and anchors it firmly within a wider community. In A Space for Community, he opens up for ‘anchoring’ community within the wider movement of life. This connects directly with some thoughts I’d been having about community as relationship (see Lines of flight in a time of endings) and suggests to me a way to begin gauging whether thought and action align with a deeper sense of community. This feels like a major step forward.
I’m grateful for his close-reading and for the opportunities we’ve had to collaborate in the past. Looking forward to continuing and broadening our connections in the coming year.
In the meantime, if anyone is interested in a “second opinion” on what it is that I do. I recommend you read his post in full.
