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“If you feel unable to hit a note or faithfully paint an image, it’s helpful to remember that the challenge is not that you can’t do it, but that you haven’t done it yet. Avoid thinking in impossibilities.” -Rick Rubin, The Creative Act “Allow an old man some parting words–just one observation–Do something with your lives,Continue reading “Bring It On”

“You are the sky. Everything else is weather.” -Pema Chodron “Empty your mind of all thoughts. Let your heart be at peace.” –Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu (Stephen Mitchell translation) “Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, itContinue reading “Empty Mind”

“Looking at beauty in the world is the first step of purifying the mind.” -Amit Ray “We should remember that even Nature’s inadvertence has its own charm, its own attractiveness. The way loaves of bread split open on top in the oven; the ridges are just by-products of the baking, and yet pleasing, somehow: theyContinue reading “Put Yourself On Notice”

A good traveler has no fixed plansand is not intent upon arriving.A good artist lets his intuitionlead him wherever it wants.A good scientist has freed himself of conceptsand keeps his mind open to what is. -Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu (Stephen Mitchell translation) “I saw the angel in the marble, and carved until I setContinue reading “Scientists And Artists”

“I could tell you that I’ve been tryin’ to uncover the abyss beneath my illusory connection with the world. I could tell you that it’s all written in the stars. I could tell you that I’m a reverse paranoiac. I am quite certain that the world is conspirin’ to make me happy. All three ofContinue reading “Fun”

“In my end is my beginning” - T.S. Eliot, poem East Coker “Sometimes the greatest challenge is to actually begin; there is something deep in us that conspires with what wants to remain within safe boundaries and stay the same… Sometimes a period of preparation is necessary, where the idea of the beginning can gestate andContinue reading “Beginning”

“How can we offer the art it needs without blind trust? We are required to believe in something that doesn’t exist in order to allow it to come into being.” -Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way Of Being “In the process of experimentation, we allow ourselves to make mistakes, to go too far, to goContinue reading “Experimental And Blind Faith”

“The heart of open-mindedness is curiosity.” -Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way Of Being “Curiosity can empower you or impede you. Being curious and focused is a powerful combination. I define this combination as unleashing your curiosity within the domain of a particular task: asking questions about how things work, exploring different lines ofContinue reading “Curious But Focused”

nostalgia (n.) 1726, “morbid longing to return to one’s home or native country, severe homesickness considered as a disease,” Modern Latin, coined 1688 in a dissertation on the topic at the University of Basel by scholar Johannes Hofer (1669-1752) as a rendering of German heimweh “homesickness” (for which see home + woe).From Greek algos “pain,Continue reading “Nostalgia”

The tao that can be toldis not the eternal TaoThe name that can be namedis not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real.Naming is the originof all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery.Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestationsarise from the same source.This source isContinue reading “Myths, Miracles and Mystery”