Enlightenment’s Evil Twin Exploring the Shadow Side of Meditation In 1974 Hans Burgschmidt was sixteen years old, living in the Canadian Prairies, working in a photography studio darkroom, elbow-deep in chemicals all day long. “Is this what life is about?” he asked a high school friend. “You need to meditate,” was the reply. Not long after, Hans attended a lecture at the local library, where a man in a suit spoke about the scientific benefits of relaxation. “An infinite ocean of peace and love and happiness awaits you,” said the radiant Maharishi, with his flowing hair and his garland of flowers. Soon after he began his meditation practice, exactly as advertised, he found himself transported from his parent’s basement into a shimmering inner space of light and colour and bliss. Hans was hooked. But somewhere along the line Hans became disenchanted. Thus began Hans’ long career as an itinerant spiritual seeker. “I found it invigorating,” says Hans. But once in a while, something goes wrong. Hans is not alone.
Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Crucial Difference Between Success and Mastery by Maria Popova The lost art of learning to stand “where we would rather not and expand in ways we never knew we could.” “You gotta be willing to fail… if you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far,” Steve Jobs cautioned. “There is no such thing as failure — failure is just life trying to move us in another direction,” Oprah counseled new Harvard graduates. In his wonderfully heartening letter of fatherly advice, F. Scott Fitzgerald gave his young daughter Scottie a list of things to worry and not worry about in life; among the unworriables, he listed failure, “unless it comes through your own fault.” Female archers, lantern slide, c. 1920. There is little that is vocational about [contemporary] culture anymore, so it is rare to see what doggedness looks like with this level of exactitude… To spend so many hours with a bow and arrow is a kind of marginality combined with a seriousness of purpose rarely seen. Mastery requires endurance. Thomas Edison The word failure is imperfect.
How to Cultivate Practical Wisdom in Our Everyday Lives and Why It Matters in Our Individual and Collective Happiness by Maria Popova The psychology of how we use frames, categories, and storytelling to make sense of the world. “It’s insulting to imply that only a system of rewards and punishments can keep you a decent human being,” Isaac Asimov told Bill Moyers in their magnificent 1988 conversation on science and religion. And yet ours is a culture that frequently turns to rigid external rules — be they of religion or of legislature or of social conduct — as a substitute for the inner moral compass that a truly “decent human being” uses to steer behavior. So what can we do, as a society and as individual humans aspiring to be good, to cultivate that deeper sense of right and wrong, with all its contextual fuzziness and situational fluidity? Schwartz and Sharpe write: External rules, while helpful in other regards, can’t instill in us true telos. People who are practically wise understand the telos of being a friend or a parent or a doctor and are motivated to pursue this aim. The world is gray.
Wisdom from a MacArthur Genius: Psychologist Angela Duckworth on Why Grit, Not IQ, Predicts Success by Maria Popova “Character is at least as important as intellect.” Creative history brims with embodied examples of why the secret of genius is doggedness rather than “god”-given talent, from the case of young Mozart’s upbringing to E. In this short video from the MacArthur Foundation, Duckworth traces her journey and explores the essence of her work: We need more than the intuitions of educators to work on this problem. In the exceedingly excellent How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character (public library) — a necessary addition to these fantastic reads on education — Paul Tough writes of Duckworth’s work: Duckworth had come to Penn in 2002, at the age of thirty-two, later in life than a typical graduate student. The problem, I think, is not only the schools but also the students themselves. Duckworth began her graduate work by studying self-discipline. This is where grit comes in — the X-factor that helps us attain more long-term, abstract goals.
Coffee vs. beer: which drink makes you more creative? — What I Learned Today I didn’t know what I was going to write about today. When this happens, normally I grab a coffee to help get the ideas flowing, but for the last few days in Montreal, no one’s been allowed to drink the water due to a bacteria leakage, which also means, no coffee. So instead, I grabbed the next best thing to help me get going - a beer. This got me wondering about coffee and beer and which one would actually help me be more creative and get work done. What is creativity really? From a scientific perspective, creativity is your ability to think of something original from connections made between pre-existing ideas in your brain. These connections are controlled by neurotransmitters like adenosine, which alerts your brain when you’re running out of energy and reacts by slowing down the connections made between neurons by binding to adenosine receptors. Adenosine is kind of like your brain’s battery status monitor. Your brain on coffee If I’m writing, my fingers never stop typing. The result?
Procrastination: Ten Things To Know There are many ways to avoid success in life, but the most sure-fire just might be procrastination . Procrastinators sabotage themselves. They put obstacles in their own path. They actually choose paths that hurt their performance. Why would people do that? I talked to two of the world's leading experts on procrastination: Joseph Ferrari, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at De Paul University in Chicago, and Timothy Pychyl, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Twenty percent of people identify themselves as chronic procrastinators. Tags: anxiety , associate professor , carleton university , christmas eve , christmas shopping , chronic depression , chronic procrastinators , delay , gift certificates , grandmother , income tax returns , milieu , ottawa canada , pay bills , personality , procrastinator , t pay , time , timothy pychyl , university in ottawa , weekly planner , work
beginning to see by sujata pen-art by julio lynch this book is dedicated to the 9 to 5ers and everybody else a collection of epigrams about the problem of living and the freedom to be gained through meditation much sufferingcomes into thelife of one whotries to be anywherebut herein this presentmoment are you content with where you are right now? because "right nows" are all you have there is nothingin this life that we canhave for very long things and peoplecome ... then leave us ... an immense amount of fear is created if we spend our lives dodging pain an immense amount of fear is created if we spend our lives dodging pain an immense amount of fear is created if we spend our lives dodging pain the world continually demands that we direct our attention outside ourselves meditation teaches us to revolt and turn that awareness toward our insides ... painful feelings * in the mind indicate wrong attitudes about lifemeditation can show us what we're doing wrong we live our lives fearfully yaw cificeps ego
Ways to Improve Human Intelligence This briefing is intended to pull into one convenient, single frame of reference a body of key information which currently is scattered across a great many different contexts. Until recently, even the possibility of any such information existing was, for essentially political reasons and funding reasons, denied by most of our institutions, together with most of our educators and psychologists, so that such findings as were made in various contexts and circumstances never got discussed across a broader context. Now that it is evident that the brain, and one's intelligence, are highly changeable and that a wide variety of conditions, arrangements and techniques may be employed to improve both brain functioning and intelligence to even a profound degree, we need to make a start on getting a lot of this key information organized to where you and other inquirers can more readily get at it, understand it, and use it. Menu of Methods Quick Interjection 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Correcting Creativity: The Struggle for Eminence | Guest Blog By the time he put the finishing touches on the Rite of Spring in November of 1912 in the Châtelard Hotel in Clarens, Switzerland, Stravinsky had spent three years studying Russian pagan rituals, Lithuanian folk songs and crafting the dissonant sacre chord, in which an F-flat major combines with an E-flat major with added minor seventh. The rehearsal process wasn’t easy either. Stravinsky fired the German pianist and the orchestra and performers only had a few opportunities to practice at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, where the Rite debuted in May 1913. But the Russian born composer pulled it off, and his composition now stands as a 20th century masterpiece. Stravinsky is one of seven eminent creators of the 20st century profiled by Harvard professor Howard Gardner in his 1993 book Creating Minds. The others are Pablo Picasso, Sigmund Freud, T.S. The psychology of creativity–both empirical research and popular literature for the lay audience–misses this. • Thanks Milena Z.
30 Challenges for 30 Days Did you know that it takes 30 days to form a new habit? The first few days are similar as to how you would imagine the birth of a new river. Full of enthusiasm it gushes forth, only to be met by strong obstacles. The path is not clear yet, and your surroundings don’t agree. So, take a moment to reflect on the question ‘Who do I want to be in 5 years?’ Check out this short TED talk first to get inspired: Now pick one or more challenges and stick with them! However, be cautioned, picking too many challenges at the same time can easily result in a failure of all of them. #1 Write a I-Like-This-About-You note/text/email each day for someone (Easy) This is the perfect way to let someone else know you care. #2 Talk to one stranger each day (Hard) This is a great one to cure approaching anxiety. #3 Take one picture each day (Hard) This one gets harder nearing the end of the challenge because at one point you will run out of the easy shots. #5 Take a 30 minute walk each day (Easy) We recommend: