Links for Monday
February 19th, 2024
This podcast episode with Bruce Tift was one of the best things I’ve listened to in a long time. There is so much wisdom in here; it’s hard to summarize. Some highlights for me was how Bruce gently kept pointing out the Artem’s own desire to change other people and invited him to reflect on why. Often as the fruits of the practice blossom comes a strong desire to want others to change to be like us, but to truly help people skillfully requires something else - a kindness and attunement to what they actually need. Other brilliant parts of this podcast were about the need to take responsibility for our own emotions in relationship, and the dance between separation and unity in a relationship, and how different attachment styles navigate that ebb and flow. It made me pick up and reread Already Free. Bruce is truly a master.
Only just begun to read this (free, pdf) tome, The Elephant and the Blind, by scientist and consciousness explorer Thomas Metzinger (h/t Avery). It’s about the phenomenology of awakening and features accounts from many different spiritual practitioners. The introduction deftly handled issues I haven’t seen elsewhere amongst scientists who’ve written on these topics - specifically the idea that everything can be suffused with a View, and therefore in a very real sense awakening isn’t an experience with definite phenomenological content (it’s better thought of as a perspective, not an experience!)
Been thinking about this tweet about places and Views by Jake Orthwein. It definitely makes sense that a sense of Place is defined by how we orient somewhere based on our View. And in that sense realms can be real by orienting to, e.g. the hell-like dimensions of a particular place.