Philosophy

The Library of the Pleiades

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Fri, 2009-01-16 14:12.

The Library of the Pleiades is a very interesting place. I haven't tried spidering it, but it appears to be huge. Start with the Mission Statement and have fun.

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( categories: Philosophy )

Happy 2007!

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 2007-01-01 08:30.

I've been practicing since 1983 a form of Raja Yoga, meditation on divine light in the heart supported by Pranahuti, yogic transmission that comes through "preceptors". I meditated for an hour and a half a day for eight years. Then I got married, helped raise a baby boy, then a baby girl, and my individual practice dropped off to almost nothing. I still go to weekly satsang, meditation with a group and a preceptor, most weeks.

Last night in bed I received transmission followed by a message. It's a message that I still don't entirely believe, consciously, but it was powerful enough that I wrote it down, and put the short essay on a web site, all by its lonesome. If you're curious, click the link below. This is the last you'll hear from me about it here. I dislike religious nuts.

http://brighter-world.org/

It may take a while for the new domain to get to your local name server. If the address above doesn't work, try brighterworld.nfshost.com .

Happy New Year! May light and love illuminate you and those you care about.

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( categories: Philosophy )

That neurotic beast, the writer (aka starting a new book project)

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 2006-09-03 19:38.

Claire Wolfe - a glimpse into the soul of a writer as the muse appears for a new work. [claire]

Quote:
Every time I start a new project I understand all over again why Hemingway and Fitzgerald drank and why all those famous intellectual women authors ended up with their heads in gas ovens or their whole selves plodding dramatically into rivers with rocks in their pockets.

I'm not putting myself in their league, mind you. Not creatively. But I can match them for writerly angst, dithering, frustration, self-loathing, and absolutely cosmic levels of self-pity. I swear, if it weren't for partnerships and deadlines, I'd never get a useful word down on paper. I can't imagine the courage and fortitude of a writer who comes home from a full-time job and spends three hours in the middle of every night for 10 years working on a novel he doesn't know if any one will ever buy.

Such people must be stronger than Schwarzenegger in his prime.

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( categories: Philosophy )

Maybe self-loving does make you blind

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 2006-08-06 08:40.

Frank Furedi at Spiked - today in London, at a converted photographic studio in Clerkenwell, a Masterbate-a-Thon is being held, to encourage this form of self pleasuring. Unfortunately, says Mr. Furedi, they are simultaneously discouraging intimate relationships. Funny and bizarre as this event is, it's actually a pretty good article. [grabbe]

Quote:
The organisers of this spectacle claim the objective is to encourage people to ‘explore safe sex’ and ‘talk about masturbation and lift the taboos that still surround the subject by coming to a public place and coming in a public place’. I have always suspected that sexologists love to talk ‘dirty’ – that is why they attach such significance to ‘vagina monologues’ and talking about wanking. They claim that openly discussing masturbation is an important part of an overall enlightened sexual etiquette. According to a leaflet produced by the Family Planning Association, Masturbation – Support Notes, talking about it ‘encourages safe and non-judgmental environments in which people can explore their sexuality’.

...

But there are rules. The event sponsors, who clearly buy in to today’s health-obsessed ideology, forbid participants from doing drugs, drinking alcohol or smoking. Though you can bring your own toys, you are asked not to ‘share them or to offer them to anyone else after you’, since ‘this constitutes a clear risk to others’. And no cheating! There will be monitors on hand – sort of – to clock the duration of your contribution and count your orgasms. With a hint of self-parody, participants are warned that ‘monitors shall carry a clipboard to keep notes on time and consistency of self-pleasuring’.

...

There is, of course, nothing new about warning individuals against the unrealistic expectation of romantic attachments. But what distinguishes today’s warnings is that they recast the desire for passionate love, the exhilaration of intimacy and the painful disappointment of losing an intimate partner as symptoms of a disease. But actually, those things are what our lives are all about. Instead of encouraging people to escape from such risks and passions, we should try living them instead.

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( categories: Philosophy )

Anastasia

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 2006-07-03 04:43.

Ringing Cedars Press is the publisher of a series of books by Vladimir Megre. Written in Russian, they have been translated into twenty languages. John Woodsworth's English translations are available for the first four. I saw the first three in my community bookstore yesterday. I purchased the first, Anastasia, and started reading it yesterday afternoon. If nothing else, it's a wonderful fairy tale. If true, it's a miracle. Even for this crusty cynic.

The books are available from the publisher by mail order for $14.95 apiece plus shipping.

From the Translator's Preface (PDF):

Quote:
Some of my friends and collegues have asked: "What kind of book are you translating?" -- no doubt wondering whether they could look forward to reading a novel, a documentary account, an inspirational exegesis on the meaning of life, or even a volume of poetry.

But even after completing the translation of Anastasia, I still do not have a definitive answer to give them. In fact, I am still asking myself the same question.

My initial response was a rather crude summary of a gut impression -- I would tell them: "Think of Star Trek meets the Bible." My feelings about the book, however, go far beyond this primitive attempt at jocularity. Of the four disparate genres mentioned above, I would have to say Anastasia has elements of all four, and then some.

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( categories: Philosophy )

Baby steps in artwork

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sat, 2006-06-03 06:03.

Claire Wolfe - nice pastel of a gnarled tree trunk and a reminder that art is not all talent. My experience tells me that art is mostly learning to "see". Once you can see what's really there, it's a matter of practice to be able to create a rendition on paper. Of course, genuis, like Van Gogh's work, is another thing entirely. [clairefiles]

Quote:
Then a couple weeks ago, I picked up a biography of Vincent van Gogh. Years ago, I was privileged to see an exhibit of van Gogh's work. To say I was blown away is like saying an a-bomb produces a modest blast. I made my way around the exhibition, which was in chronological order from the dark, dreary, early Dutch drawings and paintings to the glorious, half-mad, totally mad outbursts of color van Gogh produced in his final two years.

The paintings became more vivid as viewers progressed through the galleries. I stood before "Crows Over a Wheat Field," (which legend says is the last thing he painted before committing suicide) and I could hardly take it in. If you've seen those late van Gogh paintings in books, trust me, you haven't really seen them. You have to stand in front of them. And even then, eyes simply weren't made to take in so much. I staggered out of that museum, wiped out.

What I didn't know, but what I saw in the biography, was that when van Gogh decided, at age 27, that he was going to be an artist, he couldn't draw or paint at all.

He did come from an artistic family. A couple of his childhood drawings show so much skill that he surely copied them or perhaps is credited with work his talented mother actually did. Because at 27, his drawings were about as good as a modestly skilled 12-year-old's. They sucked. I'd have advised him to follow a career in sanitation engineering. Ten years later ... sheer &^%$#@ing, mind-blowing genius.

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( categories: Philosophy )
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