The Sounds of Planetary Culture
[singlepic id=76 w=600 h= float=none] Imagine over 40 young musicians from 13 countries getting together in the foothills of the Himalayas to teach each other songs from their respective cultures…
Die before you die
Change happens. And it happens all the time. Everything in this universe is in constant motion, is constantly evolving, exchanges particles with its environment in a constant swirling and shifting…
Fun in the mud…
“Why would anyone want to do that?” “That sounds insane!” “Really, philip, really?”
These were some of the comments I received when I first told people I was training for Tough Mudder. Tough Mudder is a ten to twelve mile obstacle course with 20-25 military style obstacles designed by the British Special Forces. They claim to be the toughest course of its kind available to civilians. The obstacles include everything from crawling under barbed wire or through covered trenches, to jumping into a container of ice water and diving, to running through a setup full of electrical wires with 10,000V charges. And, of course, there is a ton of mud. Several of the obstacles involved crawling, wading or jumping through deep, thick, shoe- and soul-sucking mud.
The Art of being an Artist
Here a brief talk with the slides of a presentation I gave the other day at a workshop on the "Art of being an Artist". httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAwekkgCeik Please forgive me for…
Crafting a cosmopolitan culture…
Had the great pleasure of talking about consciously crafting a cosmopolitan culture and the function of the artist in the 21st century with KMO, who I met many moons ago in…
In search of meaning…
Since becoming aware of his existence, man has sought to give meaning to it. In his comparatively short life on earth, a whole array of philosophies, cosmologies, ontologies have arisen and have been amply documented. In terms of their stance on the underlying meaning, nearly all of these models of reality fall into one of two categories: materialistic or spiritualistic.
Materialism
Materialistic models focus on matter, on this life, the tangible, sensually experiential, this life span, while spiritualistic concepts focus on spirit, the other life, the non-visible, intangible, the domains of other worlds, the afterlife.
Materialistic philosophy can be traced back at least to the Greek philosophers, who tried to find the “stuff” the world is made of. Some assumed earth, some fire, some water, some air, each providing elaborate systems which could explain why this or that particular element was superior to the others. As man began to grasp the world around him, he tried to find underlying meaning within it. Being in this life, he tried to find explanations within this life for his very existence. As matter was a core element of everyday experience, he sought to thus explain this existence with the building blocks he had available.
What is meaningful?
Most of the time, we do things habitually: We get up, brush our teeth, put on clothes, commute to work, do what we know how to do all day, get ourselves some entertainment, undress, go to bed, sleep. Rinse. Repeat.
Habits are the foundation of existence. Habits of thought, emotion, deed. If we had to rethink how to brush our teeth, how to walk, what we do everyday all the time, we would go insane – and we probably would not be able to function all too well in this reality. Most of the habits we have serve us. Otherwise, we would not have let them become habits in the first place.
Finding “Nemo”
Contrary to the ideas this title might conjure up, this entry is not about fishies. It is about our projections on “Other” and our yearning for connectedness. Once you realize “I” and “Other”, and you begin to take ownership of your distinctions, one of the most important dynamics to become aware of is our tendency to look for “nemo”.
“Nemo” is not a fish
The word “nemo” comes from Latin. It means no human, or nobody. It is curious that in the children story of “Finding Nemo” (I know, this is not about fish, I promise), a timid father is finding his lively son. Note these two personalities for now. Nemo was also the name of the anarchist captain in Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea“. A pirate that could not be contained by the system of the time due to his ingenuity.
Finding “Other”
As a newborn, you have no distinctions of this world. All around you is a colorful, noisy mess of a constantly changing kaleidoscope of perception.
We first begin to know ourselves through experiences of pain and separation: ripped out of the warmth of the womb, cut off from our feeding line, spanked into taking our first breath.
A little later, happily feeding, and while we are still hungry, mom removes her breast before we are done. MMMmmmmaa, the first sound babies are capable of making evolves as an attempted command to that thing that feeds us. She might or might not come back, but in either case, we suddenly realize, she is separate from us…
Then we hit our head against a table: “ouch THAT hurt me… I would not hurt myself… THAT must be separate…”
Finding “I”
Apart from the collection of identities who make up YOU, there are also a variety of different circuits that make up your consciousness. Each has its own function and evolutionary history. Each has its strengths, and in each we run programs that might or might not serve us.