One is working on the life vouchsafed...

Ezra Pound

Ego – self – is the sum total of all my habitual tensions, all those things I want to hold onto. If I didn't want to hold onto them then I would let them go and they would disappear.

Tension will inhibit your ability to perceive.

John Upledger

A relaxed mind is one empty of everything that isn't physically present. When the mind is so, it fills with everything that is present, which gradually becomes everything there is, because such a mind attracts and reveals – uncovers.

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.

Leo Tolstoy

Sensitivity

We make a distinction between an intellectual sensitivity and a palpating sensitivity. The former uses the thinking mind to vicariously project, or extrapolate, a limited sensitivity beyond its own boundaries. It results in one “feeling” what one feels should be there instead of what actually is there, and amounts to a cunning – though often unconscious – deception. It necessitates separation between subject and object. As soon as we start to comment on what we feel then the sensitivity enters the realms of the intellect. A palpating sensitivity on the other hand develops when we forget our boundaries and meld into the other's body and energy, becoming so immersed in their reality that we forget our own and in a sense become them. It is then difficult to make a distinction between self and other. The act of so feeling (sensing) bonds, affects and heals without the need for either intention or for thought.

All phenomena arise through interdependence;
They are, by their own nature, empty,
Utterly free of being single or multiple,
Utterly free of being falsehood or truth.

Rangjung Dorje

Sinking

As we sink through our body and into the Earth so we sink through our thoughts and feelings (consciousness) and into the unplumbed depths of our mind – the unconscious. And in the same way that the Earth is shared by all, so the unconscious – that great lake of improbable echoes – is common to all things.

and what improbable echo
shaped this painful thinness
a figurine hiding his face in his hands

the people of the past found them
abandoned hidden in rock crevices
and bear witness to their advanced state

in this harsh and awe-inspiring landscape
they conceal at their heart the detritus of sacrificial rites
whose disturbing beauty supplicates for rain

gnarled figures with arms raised to heaven
each hewn with rough adze blows
a corresponding variety of uses – and perhaps of meanings

Photo: Corinna

the unconscious is the
universe flowing-in, inside.

Charles Olson