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_______RS

Notes: This haiku arose while reflecting upon and re-reading Gertrude Reif Hughes’ thoughtful and stimulating foreword to Rudolf Steiner’s monumental text “The Philosophy of Freedom” (sometimes translated as “The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” — which gives an insight into the intended meaning of the term ‘freedom’). The book was written in 1893-1894 but the foreword was from a later edition, published in 1995. The book is very far from a typical philosophical work, which would turn many souls off, including myself in many ways. But if you pay it true and engaged attention — this book is still riveting and uniquely fresh. I have looked at it five or six times in life, always at least five or ten years apart, and it is every time a novel revelation. In contemplating the haiku, it is crucial to bear in mind that the act of noticing being referred to is realtime, in the moment! Not something realized a bit later, even a few seconds later, after the deed, relying upon memory.

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Some Colorful Speech Habits

University life, in America, actually used to be about rampant curiosity once. And the opposite sex. Not too much at all really, about jobs or money. Parents didn’t know this. Bless their forever selfless hearts…

Close your eyes, figuratively. If I ask you to picture the word green, do you imagine this or perhaps this, or something closer to this? How does your typical green image differ from mine or that of your daughter or a business colleague who lives in Costa Rica? Assuming we could develop a statistical norm for what speakers of American English generally mean by the word (and some studies have tackled this question), it only opens the door to further more interesting psycholinguistic puzzles. For example: has the concept ‘green’ changed subtly since the days of Thomas Jefferson, Shakespeare, or William the Conqueror? Do children conceive ‘green’ differently than senior citizens (perhaps even the same individual at different ages)? How does this compare with a Brazilian person who is thinking of verde? Or a Mongolian pondering ногоон?

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Seriously? You Believe in Leprechauns?

This piece is a follow-on to a short story posted a few days ago here, and it will make less sense if you have not read the other. It described some inner experiences upon ingesting mescalin half a century ago. That piece was a work of fiction, although obviously possessing a strong autobiographical content. Here, however, I am trying to reason some specific points. What is imagined and what is not, and how do we know?

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Meditation On Chalk

There is a subtle distancing effect which our numerous online devices and other technologies foist upon our minds regarding the world of everyday objects. Left unchecked, we develop a disregard and disinterest in things and their nature, reflected in the disposable stance many ‘movers and shakers’ adopt towards articles of utility. But imagine if the surrounding world of objects could be reunited with their rightful depths of significance, qualities, and history! Suppose you had to think ONLY about a piece of chalk, to take a mundane example, for 10 full minutes. How difficult would it be, and what could be recovered?

finis - chalkdovercliffschalk 79centssmall visible plankton

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Do This Before Waking

There is a country with exceedingly fuzzy borders we all traverse and meander about each night between definitely awake and definitely not awake. Dream state consciousness researchers call this fluctuating interim the hypnogogic condition. But there is also hypogogia: the transition phase between not yet awake and awake every morning. An equally evasive experience, but easier to empirically study on one’s own, I find. Whoever explores this persistently can more easily catch pictures of how altered consciousness looks, because the mental energy is increasing and refreshed in the mornings as opposed to night times. It is a matter of building technique…

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