Stumbling Towards Enlightenment

Bring it inside.

war kills people from the inside out sometimes

“In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.”

i think i’ve posted this before but it’s so powerful

(via ellisonlangford)

431,565 notes | 6 hours ago

388

neuromorphogenesis:

Mindfulness: Potent Medicine for Easing Physical Suffering
We’d like to be forever free from physical discomfort, but we’re in bodies and they get injured, sick, and old. The good news is that the Buddha prescribed some medicine—mindfulness—to help ease that physical discomfort. Mindfulness is not a miracle pill, but it is a miracle practice, meaning that, over time, we can learn to respond skillfully to the inevitable physical suffering that comes with being in bodies.
Bodily discomfort has three components:
The unpleasant physical sensation itself (pain, aching muscles, fatigue).
Our emotional reaction to that discomfort (anger, frustration, fear).
The thoughts that are triggered by the discomfort (the stress-filled stories we spin that have little basis in reality, such as, “This pain will never go away,” “I’ll never be happy again,” “I’ve ruined my partner’s life”).
Note that two of the three components that make up our experience of bodily discomfort are mental in origin! These two mental components are often referred to as “mental suffering.” They can make our physical suffering worse because mental reactions are felt in the body.

What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is the practice of paying careful attention to what is happening in the present moment, whether it be a sight, a sound, a taste, a smell, a sensation in the body, or mental cognition (this latter includes emotions and thoughts). Mindfulness is called a practice because it takes practice: our minds tend to dwell in the past and the future.
You don’t need to be meditating to practice mindfulness. Right now, stop and take three or four conscious breaths, feeling the physical sensation of the breath as it comes in and goes out of your body. There. You’ve just practiced mindfulness!
Notice that while you were engaging in this conscious breathing, your mind wasn’t dwelling in the past or the future. You may have been aware of a sound, a smell, a bodily sensation other than the breath, an emotion, a thought. Meticulous attention to whatever is happening in the present moment is the essence of mindfulness. The sensation of the breath is often used as an anchor because breathing is always present in the moment.
How can mindfulness help ease physical suffering?
With practice, mindfulness calms and steadies the mind. This is beneficial because when we’re experiencing physical discomfort, our minds often churn with stressful emotions and thoughts, but they’re a muddy blur—we can’t sort them out. With mindfulness, the “mud” settles so we can see more clearly which allows us to identify what emotions and thoughts are present in our minds at the moment. “Ah, this is anger.” “This is fear.” “This is a worry-filled thought about the future.” With this clearer view, we can make skillful choices about how to respond to these emotions and thoughts—choices that will lessen our overall suffering.
Stressful emotions. Our habitual reaction to physical discomfort is some form of resistance and aversion, such as frustration or anger. By practicing mindfulness, we can counter that habitual response with one that’s more skillful.
Once we begin to treat ourselves with kindness, we can calmly and gently examine the actual physical sensation. It’s not a solid block of discomfort. We may feel waves of sensations, some of which may even be pleasant. We may notice some heat, some pulsating, some tingling. Using mindfulness to examine physical sensations reveals their ever-changing nature. This helps break up the sense that our whole being is only the discomfort.
Having noticed that the physical sensation keeps changing, we can reflect that our frustration is impermanent too. It arose but it will pass. This recognition alone weakens its grip on us.
Stressful thought patterns. At a meditation retreat in the 1990s, the Buddhist nun, Ayya Khema, told us, “Most thoughts are just rubbish, but we believe them anyway.” Becoming mindfully aware of the stories we spin about our physical discomfort quiets and steadies the mind so that the “mud” settles and we can see the thoughts more clearly. Then we have a choice. We can continue to blindly believe them or we can calmly assess their validity. Are you absolutely sure you’ll never be happy again or that you’ve ruined your partner’s life?
Letting go of stress-filled stories that have little or no basis in fact is a tremendous relief. A smile might even appear on your face as you acknowledge the convoluted stories the mind can spin. As Buddhist teacher, Jack Kornfield, likes to say, “The mind has no shame.”
Mindfulness calms and steadies the mind so we can respond more skillfully to stressful emotions and thoughts. This, in turn, eases our physical suffering because we’re not adding mental suffering to it. As the wonderfully blunt Zen teacher, Joko Beck, said: “What makes life so frightening is that we let ourselves be carried away in the garbage of our whirling minds. We don’t have to do that.”
Mindfulness is the best medicine for not doing that.
For example, if we’re in pain, aversion in the form of frustration may arise. We have two choices. We can let that habitual response brew and get stronger; this not only increases our mental suffering, but it often increases our physical pain because the muscles surrounding the pain tighten in response to our frustration. Or, we can respond to our frustration by mindfully acknowledging it and beginning to incline our minds toward kindness and compassion for ourselves. (After all, who doesn’t get frustrated at times?)

terra-mater:

15 amazing things in nature you won’t believe actually exist

Source

(via spiritmolecule)

182,737 notes | 6 hours ago

andrewducote:

sararye:

AND THAT IS HOW YOU USE AN EFFECTS PEDAL

I was gaping the entire song this is insane

If I had a dollar for every time a musician made me feel like I’ve done nothing with my life, I’d be filthy, FILTHY rich.

(Source: mahaldaddy, via spiritmolecule)

306,121 notes | 6 hours ago

8552

airyearthgirl:

fuckmegentlywithawinonaryder:

Omg you need to WATCH THIS TED TALK RIGHT NOW

It’s (almost entierly non-problematic) feminist: yes

It talks about social ques given to children through kid’s movies and the whole Magical Quest trope: yes

It talks about raising boys to respect women in a way that’s not just chilvarly: yes

It’s written by a man: yes

love this

(Source: tedxueuropianitiranes1)

81,480 notes | 2 weeks ago

xgllgx:

burdenofintuition:

-Jean Piaget

He was on the right track.

thats the problem with putting smart phones in children’s hands leaves nothing to the imagination

(via airyearthgirl)

9,156 notes | 2 weeks ago

89

thenewenlightenmentage:

“Laws of Physics for a Holographic Universe” —New Theories of Space-Time
Researchers at the University of Southampton have taken a significant step in a project to unravel the secrets of the structure of our Universe. One of the main recent advances in theoretical physics is the holographic principle. According to this idea, our Universe may be thought of as a hologram and we would like to understand how to formulate the laws of physics for such a holographic Universe. A new paper released by Professor Skenderis and Dr Marco Caldarelli from the University of Southampton, Dr Joan Camps from the University of Cambridge and Dr Blaise Goutéraux from the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, Sweden published in Physical Review D, makes connections between negatively curved space-time and flat space-time. The paper AdS/Ricci-flat correspondence and the Gregory-Laflamme instability specifically explains what is known as the Gregory Laflamme instability, where certain types of black hole break up into smaller black holes when disturbed – rather like a thin stream of water breaking into little droplets when you touch it with your finger. This black hole phenomenon has previously been shown to exist through computer simulations and this work provides a deeper theoretical explanation.
Space-time is usually understood to describe space existing in three dimensions, with time playing the role of a fourth dimension and all four coming together to form a continuum, or a state in which the four elements can’t be distinguished from each other.
Flat space-time and negative space-time describe an environment in which the Universe is non-compact, with space extending infinitely, forever in time, in any direction. The gravitational forces, such as the ones produced by a star, are best described by flat-space time. Negatively curved space-time describes a Universe filled with negative vacuum energy. The mathematics of holography is best understood for negatively curved space-times.
Professor Skenderis has developed a mathematic model which finds striking similarities between flat space-time and negatively curved space-time, with the latter however formulated in a negative number of dimensions, beyond our realm of physical perception.
“According to holography, at a fundamental level the universe has one less dimension than we perceive in everyday life and is governed by laws similar to electromagnetism,” says Skenderis. “The idea is similar to that of ordinary holograms where a three-dimensional image is encoded in a two-dimensional surface, such as in the hologram on a credit card, but now it is the entire Universe that is encoded in such a fashion.
“Our research is ongoing, and we hope to find more connections between flat space-time, negatively curved space-time and holography. Traditional theories about how the Universe operates go some way individually to describing its very nature, but each fall short in different areas. It is our ultimate goal to find a new combined understanding of the Universe, which works across the board.”
In October 2012, Professor Skenderis was named among 20 other prominent scientists around the world to receive an award from the New Frontiers in Astronomy and Cosmology international grant competition. He received $175,000 to explore the question, ‘Was there a beginning of time and space?”
The Daily Galaxy via University of Southampton
Image credit: MIT

64813

“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.” - George Orwell.

"I believe we are a species with amnesia, I think we have forgotten our roots and our origins. I think we are quite lost in many ways. And we live in a society that invests huge amounts of money and vast quantities of energy in ensuring that we all stay lost. A society that invests in creating unconsciousness, which invests in keeping people asleep so that we are just passive consumers of products and not really asking any of the questions."

- Graham Hancock (via midnightlaughs)

(Source: nathanielstuart, via elige)

4,844 notes | 1 month ago

stfuconservatives:

After I mentioned that Exxon was controlling the airspace above the Arkansas spill, I got a fiery Ask accusing me of spreading conspiracy theories because only the FAA controlled airspace. My mistake: the FAA is controlling the airspace above the spill, per Exxon’s request.

(Source: salted-pork-knuckles, via ellisonlangford)

10,383 notes | 2 months ago

(Source: bryko, via o-solemio)

60,775 notes | 2 months ago

"You develop patterns of thought which cause you to offer patterns of vibration, which equal what you are living."

- Abraham Hicks (via true-i-talk-of-dreams)

(via o-solemio)

9 notes | 2 months ago

thepeoplesrecord:

Tar Sands Blockade published new videos today (4/7) showing oil from the Arkansas pipeline rupture diverted from a residential neighborhood into a wetland area to keep it out sight and, most importantly, out of the media & public view.
April 7, 2013

While it’s not clear if the oil was intentionally moved into the wetland, the company says it is cleaning pavement with power washing devices, which could cause some of the oil to be pushed off neighborhood streets and into other areas.

Activists also interviewed a local resident who claimed the oil has continued “flowing” into Lake Conway since the spill happened.

“I don’t have allergies,” the man said. “But now my sinuses are bothering me. My throat’s bothering me. My eyes water constantly. But Exxon acts like nothing’s wrong. They don’t have to live here, we do. And we’re not moving just because of them.”

The activists noted that they were turned away from the area several times before by police and Exxon spill cleanup workers, but they returned on Saturday just before sundown and managed to sneak in to capture footage of the oiled wetlands. In two separate videos, nearby residents say they’ve been made sick by the spill, which has tremendously affected their air quality.

This footage has largely remained out of the media due to the lockdown that’s descended upon Mayflower nearly a week since the spill. Reporters touring the damage with Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel were allegedly turned away by Exxon workers. One journalist, Inside Climate News’s Susan White, was even threatened with arrest when she asked a question of Exxon’s “public affairs” desk inside the spill cleanup command center. The company has also secured a no-fly zone over the spill area.

Video of Lake Conway’s wetlands shows thousands of what Exxon called “absorbent pads” — which appear to be nothing more than paper towels — littering the blackened landscape as thick, soupy crude bubbles across the water’s surface. The company insists that air quality in the affected region is being measured by the Environmental Protection Agency, and that tests show “levels that are either non-detect or that are below any necessary action levels.” Exxon also says that the area’s drinking water remains unaffected.

A phone number given by Exxon to reach the company’s “downstream media relations” team did not appear to be correct, and a spokesperson was not available for comment.

Don’t let Exxon sweep this thing under the rug! Share this now, far & wide, with everybody you know! We cannot allow these corporate-committed environmental tragedies to continue to claim people, land & our future as victims in the wealth-owning, corporate elite’s illogical profit-making endeavors.

Source

(via speakerforthetrees)

3,376 notes | 2 months ago