by @Archimage
“Fury is just an emotion used to mask fear.”
…you have to help other people if you want to survive.
Good morning.
Jean Baudrillard.
I think it’s very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person.
— Oscar Wilde
I’m haunted by this phrase at the moment.
”…to tend to what is falling apart without pretending it can be saved.”
— Robert Saltzman
Good afternoon.
Good morning.
…the void is not a threat. It is this moment, unadorned.
The self is not an entity with problems. It is the problem. Not the story of a wound, but the wound-as-story.
The 21st Century Self by Robert Saltzman 📚
We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them.
— T.S. Eliot
Social media creates and maintains the illusion of involvement in the world beyond our own lived experience.
A quiet day off today just going with the flow. Coffee, walking, watching the world go by.
The End of Our Circle
Last night, our local meditation circle closed its doors for the final time.
Our format was simple: we would sit in silence twice, with a brief break for tea between sessions. Some evenings brought just two people; others welcomed as many as twenty. But the cost of renting our space eventually outstripped what our irregular attendance could sustain, and that was that.
Over the years, I watched countless people drift in and out of our circle. If I had to offer one observation, it would be this: most wanted something more than silent sitting. Silence, it seemed, wasn’t enough.
I began to see that despite embracing the space and company, many remained reluctant to embrace the practice itself. They sought something dressed up as nothing, whereas we offered simply nothing—plain and unadorned.
We fear the void. The irony is that no void exists to fear. What we actually fear is the idea of nothing, not nothing itself. When you sit in silence, the experience becomes the opposite of nothing—everything is there. Sights, sounds, sensations, thoughts, feelings—the full spectrum of being.
Meditation overflows with the richness of unconditional human experience. There’s no need to disguise this intimate encounter with yourself as something other than what it is—no need to make it more than the simple reality of what you are in any given moment.
We may be approaching a time when the illusion of selfhood is strengthened, not weakened, because we are surrounded by machines enacting it.
— Robert Saltzman
Continuing to read: The 21st Century Self by Robert Saltzman 📚
This is an important book. Not so much about AI itself but about AI as a mirror held up to what we mistakenly believe we are.