Perspective, Perception & Interpretation - Ted Chiang

The physical universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous 
grammar.  Every physical event was an utterance that could be
parsed in two entirely different ways, one causal and the other
teleological, both valid, neither one disqualified no matter how
much context was available.

It's like the famous optical illusion, the drawing of either an
elegant young woman, face turned away from the viewer, or
a wart-nosed crone, chin tucked down on  her chest.  There is
no "correct" interpretation; both are equally valid.

But you can't see them both at the same time.

Ted Chiang
Stories of Your Life and Others

with thanks to Whiskey River

for photo too :)

~

We each have unique stories, perspectives, perceptions,
 and frameworks of interpretation of Reality.
 I celebrate our diversity - our unique waves/expressions on
the Greater Ocean of Being...

MM

 

Honoring Uniqueness - Matt Licata

...honoring the reality that we are not only connected, 
but also separate, with our own interiority, subjectivity, and ways
of making sense of our experience.  In spirituality, we tend to
emphasize connection, unity, and oneness, which are essential

dimensions of the human heart.

Alongside this, however, it's essential that we also recognize
the reality (and holiness) of experiences - [that] we each perceive
reality, the divine, and this world in our own unique ways.
We each fall to the ground in a distinct way, and behold the
beauty of the stars and the planets and the trees uniquely.  No one
can perceive, fall, or behold for us, or on our behalf.

While from a transpersonal perspective, we can speak about unity
and oneness, within the relative we are also differentiated and
wildly unique, each with our own ways of organizing our
experience.  Each with our own fate and relationship with the
divine, and with our own path to travel.  To dissolve these
differences into some homogenized spiritual middle does not
honor the sacredness of form.

Matt Licata
Excerpt from an article entitled: The Yoga of Intimacy and 
Relationship

~

  Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

A Sliver of Reality - Kim Manly Ort

Our experiences and consequently our perceptions, gives us
a limited view of the world, a sliver of reality, if you will.
It's a valid sliver, but only a sliver.  Thought of in this way,
It's a wonder any of us can find similarities of experience
and understanding with others...

I'm all about seeing clearly, but each of us sees clearly differently,
depending on our identity (selected experience) and worldview.
For the past couple of years, I've been noticing what others
choose to believe and asking why.  I'm not exactly sure what to do
with some of the differences I have have difficulty understanding
or even how to talk to someone with a completely different
worldview.  I certainly have my own way of seeing and I find
some worldviews mind-boggling.  However, it's always a good
idea to question your own sliver of reality.

The Role of "Chance"

The musician and composer, John Cage, thought of "chance" as
something that happened to us, but also as something you could
invite into your life.  Why would you do that?  Because, if you
operate according to your own will or our story of how things are
or should be, you eliminate possibilities.

Cage invited "chance" into his life and [art].  The idea was to give
his will, his wants, his desired outcome a break and let "chance"
make a decision.  By using what he called "chance operations", he
could destroy his narrative, his particular point of view.  It's not that
his point of view wasn't worthy, just that it was limited and there
were a multiplicity of points of view he many not have considered.
It's a mindset where he let things be as they are without imposing
his own judgments on them.

Life is a dance with "chance"; always uncertain, often out of our
control, and this is scary.  We can embrace it, as John Cage did.
Whenever we feel our ego or rigid story is in charge, or we're
resisting reality and forming judgments, it's time to get curious
and ask questions like: "How else can I look at this?" or "What
other choice could I make?"  Why not let things be, invite "chance"
in, and explore the many possibilities that arise.

Kim Manly Ort
Writer, Photographer, Workshop Facilitator

~

"Life is like a box of chocolates,
you never know what you're going to get."

Forrest Gump

~

Personal Note:  What John Cage and Kim refer to as "Chance" I call
"The Mystery."  Some call it "Spirit", or even Intuition; tapping
into something greater than my self for Inspiration...  My husband
sees each day as a new life experience that offers a portal to Eternity,
if we let it, even the mundane, like mowing the lawn.  Sometimes he
will randomly choose from a list of possibilities for the day, or do
what he feels drawn to do that day.  Is that "chance" or opening to
the Field of "The Mystery" - or his own Intuition?  He says:
Intuition is the mainline to "The Universe."  It's how "The Universe"
communicates.  It's the flow of awareness that comes from
"The  Universe."

~

John Cage (1912-1992) was an American composer, music theorist,
writer, philosopher, and artist.  Cage studied Indian philosophy and
Zen Buddhism in the late 1940's, and the I Ching was a source of
reference for him, using it as a "random chance generator", as well
as a philosophical reference.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Moon and reflection in skylight 
a portal to eternity? :)

 

Ripples of Reality - Wilson & LaMotte

When we meet somebody whose separate tunnel-reality
is obviously far different from ours, we are a bit frightened
 and disoriented.  We tend to think they are mad..  Yet it is
neurologically obvious that no two brains have the same
 genetically-programmed hard wiring, the same imprints,
the same conditioning, the same learning experiences.  We
are all living separate realities. That is why communication
fails so often, and misunderstandings and resentments are
so common.

Robert Anton Wilson
From - Prometheus Rising

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Your point of view and my point of view are equally "right"
and equally insignificant facets in the dazzling holographic
diamond of opposites.  Whatever is, the opposite also is, 
simultaneously arising.  Yet neither of these little flickers of
local light is Truth.  Truth is what illuminates the entire jewel.

If we spent less energy constricting ourselves to a point, and
instead, let ourselves expand into the Whole, each One of us
would illuminate the world with a silent glance of beauty, a
gentle touch of joy.

This is the effortless breath of grace: inhaling into wholeness,
exhaling into uniqueness, the All embodied in the particular.

It is a happening, not an intention.  It does not need to be
planned or affirmed.  Plans and affirmations get in the way.

Just give up trying to be any-thing else.  Let Be who you
actually Are, the entire quantum crystal of eternity in this
moment.

Your point of view, my point of view: infinitesimal ripples in
one ocean of cosmic Light.  We are not just waves, you are the
sea.  As knowings, we are very very small.  As Beings, we are
vast beyond imagining.  We include each other.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - Funky Art - Mystic Meandering

 

What's Your Bias? - Brian McLaren

People can't see what they can't see.
Their biases get in the way, surrounding them like a high wall,
trapping them in ignorance, deception, and illusion.
No amount of reasoning and argument will get through to them,
unless we first learn how to break down the walls of bias...

Confirmation Bias:  We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standard we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities.  As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm excludes whatever doesn't fit.

Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer s simple falsehood to a complex truth.

Community Bias: It's almost impossible to see what our community doesn't, can't or won't see.

Complementary Bias: If you are hostile to my ideas, I'll be hostile to yours.  If you are curious and respectful toward my ideas, I'll respond in kind.

Competency Bias: We don't know how much (or little) we know because we don't know how much (or little) others know.  In other words, incompetent people assume that most other people are about as incompetent as they are.  As a result, they underestimate their [own] incompetence, and consider themselves at least of average competence.

Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can't be seen from where I am right now.  But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.

Comfort or Complacency Bias:  I prefer not to have my comfort disturbed.

Conservative/Liberal Bias: I lean toward nurturing fairness and kindness, or towards strictly enforcing purity, loyalty, liberty, and authority, as an expression of my political identity.

Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false.  I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth.

Catastrophe or Normalcy Bias: I remember dramatic catastrophes but don't notice gradual decline (or improvement).

Contact Bias: When I don't have intense and sustained personal contact with "the other", my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.

Cash Bias: It's hard to see something when my way of making a living require me not to see it.

Conspiracy Bias: Under stress or shame, our brains are attracted to stories that relieve us, exonerate us, or portray us as innocent victims of malicious conspirators.

Brian McLaren
from - Why Don't They Get It?  Overcoming Bias in Others.

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo from the Internet

 

The World in Different Light - Lisel Mueller

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.

I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.

Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.

What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent.  The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases.  Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

Lisel Mueller
1924-2020

Original title - "Monet Refuses Operation"

"Her poems are 'a testament to the miraculous power
of language to interpret and transform our world'
and 'a testament that invites readers to share her vision
of experiences we all have in common: sorrow,
tenderness, desire, the revelations of art, and
mortality - 'the hard dry smack of death against the glass'"
(Washington Post)

Lisel Mueller was a German born American Poet.
Her family fled the Nazi regime in 1939 when she was 15.
She worked as a translator and academic teacher.  She
began writing poetry in the 1950's, publishing her first
collection in 1965.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
street light through ice on window...

Life Postmortem...

It's been six weeks since my mother passed...  My grieving has ended.
I did most of my grieving over the 3 months she was home on
"Hospice Care", waiting to die; which was really her children taking
care of her 24/7, watching her deteriorate; although, because of her
dementia, she forgot that's what was happening to her - until about
a week before she passed, making it all the more sad...
She struggled so hard to hang on to life...

But my mother's passing was not the worst part actually.
I am at peace with that and my "spiritual" beliefs have seen
me through.  It's the "postmortem..."

Now my days are dominated with going through her 90 years of
life's belongings at her house with my sister.  Mom was a bit of a
pack rat/hoarder, so we are trying to clear things out so we can
put the house up for sale, which also means trying to find a place
for my sister to live, as she has lived with my mother for 8 1/2 years.

But she doesn't want to move.  That is not an option - she can't pay
the mortgage or the bills...  My brother returned to his home early
in April after staying with Mom for 3 months until the week after
she died, and tried to set things in motion for my sister and I to
follow through in processing the "postmortem" experience.

The process itself is difficult, even demanding, but with my siblings
has been especially challenging.  We are all so very different;
different values, different priorities, different perceptions, and we've
 all taken different paths, and made different life choices for ourselves
 and how we choose to live...  And they don't mix well.  But we manage
most of the time to treat each other kindly...  Unfortunately there has
 also been a lot of drama, which I really can't expand upon here... 
But will be glad when everything is finally settled, and I can "move on",
 as they say, and have some space to breathe again, and hopefully
 rekindle  the Spark within, as I am feeling rather uninspired lately
 - lackluster;  out of sync with the rhythms of Life.
 Like an automaton going through  the motions to get things done,
 yet surprisingly "present" as well.

But nothing speaks to me anymore - well almost nothing.
Feeling trapped in the particulars of my moment-to-moment
experience. It is what it is, and I am where I am...  No pretense here...
The stress of the family dysfunction and the grind of being
 immersed in the mundane has made me weary of life - and placed a
 heavy burden on my heart...

I have had little time for Solitude and deep Meditation - feeling rather
distracted by the externals of living, creating a feeling of "separation"
from the Alive Presence within...
My meditation space has now become storage space for some of my
 mother's things, which will have to be gone through at a later time -
another "postmortem" activity...

I don't foresee this "experience" ending any time soon.  It will probably
last through the Summer, although I know this too shall pass, and
there will be another, hopefully brighter, postmortem...

I realize I am on the edge of a new journey, a new chapter in this
story that is playing itself out in my life at the moment - waiting
for the page to turn.  I know it's all just a story in the context of a
larger Story - but still...  It is being lived in "real" time... condensed
from somewhere out of time...

And so it goes...

Namaste

~

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out.
It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another
human being.  We should all be thankful for those people
who rekindle the inner spirit.

Albert Schweitzer