Thisness…

Just want to make a quick shout out/ thank you/ mention to @manton for the ease with which I was able to add my own custom domain to my micro.blog site.

I know for many of you on here such an undertaking is relatively trivial but for a ‘non technical’ bod like myself registering my domain through micro.blog and watching everything simply happen automagically in a matter of minutes was a wonder to behold.

Instinctively I believe in and support the ideals of the indie/ open/ small web yet have none of the chops with which to put my beliefs into practice. And yet, and yet @manton and micro.blog have facilitated that very thing for me.

Again, thank you @manton for making all that technical trickery simply disappear.

Consciousness is not a problem to be solved.

That’s like a ruler trying to measure itself.

Everything we can know about it is contained within it.

Our greatest teacher is always with us, for it is no more and no less than the present moment.

Fresh dew soaked morning after the rain. The dog sleeping soundly after breakfast. Silent house.

Enjoying this. Alas, UK only I fear 😕

It doesn’t take much reflection to reveal how much of our experience is made up of our opinions about experience. It is enormously liberating to simply be what is happening rather than getting trapped in an opinion about it.

Good morning.

This morning, gentle rain. The brook babbles a little louder. Cars hiss by while the dog snores.

If we don’t assimilate and integrate traditional ancient wisdom into the ordinary reality of our own lived experience then we’re completely missing the point.

Paying close attention to our mind and the myriad thoughts that arise, it’s possible to see the difference between thoughts ‘of’ experience and thoughts ‘about’ experience. The former arise, observe then pass away. The latter indulge in story making and identification with self and perpetuate themselves until the stories occlude experience.

So much unnecessary fear, anxiety and suffering (as well as groundless hope and optimism) is caused by confusing a story about what is going on with the reality of what is actually happening. Can we tell the difference between feeling life and feeling something about life?

This is how I see all brands, slogans and advertising.

“Finding meaning is merely a matter of finding a better story. Stories put your pains and pleasures into a context you can accept. But when your attention is truly free in the present, the question of meaning doesn’t arise.”

— Sam Harris

Good morning.

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

— Albert Camus

“Here is not an ‘Either-Or’ crossover but, rather, a ‘Both-And’ revelation.”

— Dennis Gallagher

“Non-Duality. That place where we see that the One manifests as the many and the many are inseparable from the One. It is always around us and within us—just as we are always inseparably within it.

At some point in a contemplative’s life, both sides of a profound either-or paradox begin to become experiential and our words become slippery. We begin to see words as small lies; in and of themselves.

But more happens. The world you inhabit begins to flow with new visions. Knowings, born of inseparable wholeness, arise wordlessly. And another world, that has always been here, concurrent with the world of words, begin to present.

— Dennis Gallagher

Good afternoon.

Happiness has nothing to do with pleasure.

There was a time (even before the printed word) it was thought that the written word signalled the death knell of human wisdom and culture via oral traditions.

The world has always taken great leaps forward while simultaneously going to hell in a hand-cart.