MC Escher, Three Worlds, 1955. Thank you, cavetocanvas & benjaminhilts)
Time is constantly passing. If you really consider this fact, you will be simultaneously amazed and terrified. Time is passing, even for tiles, walls, and pebbles. This means that every moment dies to itself. As soon as it arises, it is gone. You cannot find any duration. Arising and passing away are simultaneous. That is why there is no seeing nor hearing. That is why we are both sentient beings and insentient beings.
Norman Fischer (via whiskey river, thank you, proustitute)
by Ernst Haas with thanks to the extraordinary collection that is Online Browsing.
by Ernst Haas with thanks to Online Browsing.
by Ernst Haas with thanks to Online Browsing.
Isaac Levitan: The Forest in Winter (1880). With thanks to Memory Green.
>
An excerpt from "Happy Medium"
What does it mean to find the Middle Way? Not in the sense of picking up a book on Buddhism or contacting a teacher, but in ourselves and in our lives. There is always a draw to act, a restless wish to move, to create, to do something. And there is also a wish to submit–and I’m not talking about depression or being a mouse or some unwholesome slavish quality here but to a wholesome impulse to be still and know a greater wholeness–to bear witness to greater life.
There are always two different currents operating in most of us–a push outward and a pull inward and upward, up out of this worldly mess. Yet sometimes, when we sit down to meditate or walk in nature or otherwise try to be very aware of what is happening in the present moment, we can find an attitude and an attention that can embrace all the disparate parts of ourselves, including that irreconcilable push-pull. Sometimes, we can be actively quiet inside–passively active, embracing and observing and delving into what we are like and what life is like. This is the Middle Path: it is that vibrant attention that can be medium–that can stay between those opposite pulls, that can unite our thoughts and feelings and sensations–parts that have so little in common they haven’t spoken to each other in years.
—an excerpt from “Happy Medium” by Tracy Cochran at the Parabola Editors blog.
(Source: parabola-magazine)
Holly Friesen, “Telluric Rhythm” | RedBubble. Beautiful. Thank you, hollyfriesen.
The “Four Marks” of the Mystical State.
“1. True mysticism is active and practical, not passive and theoretical. It is an organic life-process, a something which the whole self does; not something as to which its intellect holds an opinion.
2. Its aims are wholly transcendental and spiritual. It is in no way concerned with adding to, exploring, re-arranging, or improving anything in the visible universe. The mystic brushes aside that universe, even in its supernormal manifestations. Though he does not, as his enemies declare, neglect his duty to the many, his heart is always set upon the changeless One.
3. This One is for the mystic, not merely the Reality of all that is, but also a living and personal Object of Love; never an object of exploration. It draws his whole being homeward, but always under the guidance of the heart.
4. Living union with this One—which is the term of his adventure—is a definite state or form of enhanced life. It is obtained neither from an intellectual realization of its delights, nor from the most acute emotional longings. Though these must be present they are not enough. It is arrived at by an arduous psychological and spiritual process—the so-called Mystic Way—entailing the complete remaking of character and the liberation of a new, or rather latent, form of consciousness; which imposes on the self the condition which is sometimes inaccurately called “ecstasy,” but is better named the Unitive State.”
![“The artist’s life cannot be otherwise than full of conflicts, for two forces are at war within him [or her]—on the one hand, the common human longing for happiness, satisfaction and security in life, and on the other a ruthless passion for creation which may go so far as to override every personal desire … There are hardly any exceptions to the rule that a person must pay dearly for the divine gift of creative fire.”
—Carl Jung
Thank you, apoetreflects.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvlvhzsTo71qe0r71o1_500.jpg)
“The artist’s life cannot be otherwise than full of conflicts, for two forces are at war within him [or her]—on the one hand, the common human longing for happiness, satisfaction and security in life, and on the other a ruthless passion for creation which may go so far as to override every personal desire … There are hardly any exceptions to the rule that a person must pay dearly for the divine gift of creative fire.”
—Carl Jung
Thank you, apoetreflects.
