Twists and turns…

…the story of a man who inadvertently got into the role of himself. He saw it as a mistake. That is what people say who fall into a hole. “Hell and damnation, I have fallen into a trap and the trap is myself.” They always treat themselves as the greatest mistakes ever made. Carl Jung,

Out of the Depth of Our Numbness

Once we begin to recognize what it feels like to be alive it can still be a shock to acknowledge how much of our lives is spent in circumstances that are dead and threaten to engulf us once again in the numbness we’ve just begun to leave behind. But, if we fail to let this

Chasing Coherence

What if we remain incoherent when we seek to establish a coherent state? State, a powerful term, one with many resonances. None of them too good…. A coherent condition?

Compassion is Attention

Attention is Compassion One of the first things we encounter on beginning some form of meditation, any way for us to empty out the rush of unbidden thought and pause to see what might lie behind it all, is the question of compassion. Does this come directly from our confrontation with attention in and of

Economic Viability, a contradiction

We spread poison and paralysis around us …in that we want to educate all the world around us into reason. C. G. Jung Economic viability, I came across this expression in one of JMG’s comments. A commonplace of Peak Oil debate. I think it deserves a closer look. It is a grounding assumption for just about

A Space for Community

Art, even more so than craft, cannot be contained by technique. If you think, “I know what I’m doing!” You’re either mistaken or you are killing whatever art you might have been capable of creating. Hampered your capacity to enter an involvement in an act of creation. An artist’s materials can be a useful medium

Consuming the Internet

We consume the internet. A movable feast. Lights kept on by a belief that someday it will “pay.” Or. that it is just too good an attention trap to let it go. It’s supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to provide visions of “freedom.” Where free means there is no up-front cost to us. Somebody

Sufficiency without number

Sufficiency is an attitude not a quantity. Chasing after desires we have lost any sense that happiness can be anything other than a list checked off. Pursuit. Nothing could be more destabilizing. Either for an individual or a culture. And, before we get caught up in some form of zealotry…. Yes, the desire to control

Between Wanting and Finding

There is a point at the start of a painting when there is a precariousness between what the painting “is to be about” and the first touches of what is actually there. Something I’m only arriving at now is that the former, while of great interest and concern at the start, is of no account.

Complicity, not conspiracy

The subject of the last post, questions around exploring our vulnerability and finding the sources of violence, leads to, implies, an examination of the questions of complicity in relation to conspiracy. As the objectivization of thought sends us following projections placing what we strive against outside us, we find it easy to see conspiracies everywhere.

Compassion, the distance between Dialogue and Negotiation

Dialogue, negotiation, both sound reasonable enough! We can glaze over any differences and use them as synonyms, right? That’s how power insinuates its way into every relationship. In the wink and nod, in a silent conspiracy to agree not to say what we mean, to hide away our agendas and bask in the glow of

On Intention, Stumbling towards a Loose Rigor

Here’s a series of statements, let’s see where they lead. My intention is to be effective. To be effective is to avoid futility. Intentional striving is futile. To be effective requires letting go of intention. * Is this squaring the circle? Or describing a paradox?