Tag / inner work

by stolzyblog

Meditation Upon Chalk

(This is a slight re-edit of one of the very first WP posts ever made on this blog about ten years ago, when I was transitioning from software-oriented technical writing to more creative things. The exercise exemplified is still of value, it seems to me)… 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 ten full minutes. How difficult would it be, and what could be recovered?

finis - chalkdovercliffschalk 79centssmall visible plankton

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by stolzyblog

Theology’s Knot

At the first stage of dessication, there is the rigid form, and the disciple, minister, and naysayer alike all cleave to it for its comforting corpse-like clutchability. Then a small fraction, one day, succeeds to observe the mystery from many perspectives, and the corpse begins to dance and asks a question. Then, an era passes, and for a very tiny fraction, their persistent, unfrozen awe and devotion observes what truly is, as a conceptual blossom, and heart-seen, but not seen by mind…

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by stolzyblog

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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by stolzyblog

Three Approaches to Ethics

I originally worked on this essay seven years ago. I decided to re-blog it because, still timely, it represents my roots in some ways at the very beginning of SWR (along with a second essay which I will re-blog next month), and has been seen by few if any current readers… There is a legend regarding Da Vinci’s Last Supper which I quite like:

Each one of the twelve apostles embodies the perfecting and expressing of a single different one of the twelve virtues. Achieving divine initiation is said to consist of perfecting the cultivation of all twelve within one’s being or soul, harmoniously, over the course of many lifetimes. Which is exemplified by Christ.

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