Notes

Notes

“Loving-kindness meditation—known in the Pali language as metta—is the practice of wishing well to others. Its name ‘sounds phony, sentimental, and gooey’ to many people, as Sharon Salzberg, one of its leading American teachers, told me. This is one reason that it’s not as fashionable in the West as mindfulness. But metta is an ancient Buddhist practice that has many benefits—from increased feelings of awe, joy, and gratitude, to decreased migraines, chronic pain, and PTSD. It’s also a time-honored way of moving actively toward love. If you’re a person who has lost an important love and who realizes that love matters to you deeply, then metta is—to use the language of acceptance and commitment therapy—a form of ‘taking committed action’ and ‘connecting with what matters.’”

— Cain, Susan. Bittersweet (pp. 101-102). Crown. Kindle Edition.

“But all mental formations need to circulate. If we don’t let them come up, it creates bad circulation in our psyche and symptoms of mental illness and depression can begin to manifest in our mind and body. Sometimes when we have a headache, we take aspirin. But our headache doesn’t go away. Sometimes this kind of headache can be a symptom of mental illness. Perhaps we have allergies. We think it is a physical problem. But allergies can also be a symptom of mental illness. We are advised by doctors to take drugs, but sometimes these will continue to suppress our internal formations, making our sickness worse.”

“Vividly imagining a possible future creates memories of things we haven’t actually lived through yet. So the pandemic felt familiar to him. And research suggests that future memories have a real psychological benefit, if and when a traumatic future we imagined actually happens. It’s not just that we are less surprised by what happens. We also get a significant boost of self-confidence from having been right about the future. And this confidence makes us more likely to take action and help others. Here’s why. The fact that we saw the future coming before it happened creates a specific response in the brain. The very first emotion we feel isn’t shock but recognition. We recognize this strange new world because we have spent time there in our imagination before. Recognition communicates to us, ‘You know this. You’ve got this!’ It is a powerful antidote to feelings of helplessness and fear. Our foreknowledge of what happened causes us to feel less overwhelmed, more in control, and better able to help.”

A detail from The Moon and the Stars (series) (1902) by Alphonse Mucha. “In this series of decorative panels, Mucha again chose to personify the stars as female figures. This time, however, he sought to surpass the panels' decorative function by exploring the deeper meaning of his subjects. The women are no longer confined to ornate crescents and alcoves, but instead float in space and are illuminated by a light radiating from within the composition. Their poses are meditative and dramatic rather than sensual. In all four panels, Mucha demonstrates great skill in rendering the texture and sheen of rich textiles.” (See the article from the Mucha Foundation: http://www.muchafoundation.org/en/gallery/browse-works/object_type/decorative-designs/object/245)

symphonies of sounds, seas of quanta vibrating unconditional love

an indigenous, technologically empowered humanity

Walk worthy, walk worthy, walk worthy of you, which is now to say, Walk as yourself, a way to say to myself:

Take your own advice,

you’re allowed to be alive.