aliveness

i cannot overstate how big the difference is between

a - learning a map, then venturing into the territory, and

b - venturing through the territory, then finding out there are maps

“Things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win. When you understand that, you abandon your masterpiece and sink into the real masterpiece.” - Leonard Cohen

Old paradigms die hard. Puking, sweating, convulsing every vestige of What No Longer Works into a heaping pile of shitty compost that will eventually grow something new and beautiful, but not until you’re scraped raw of every notion of what that might be.

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”... See more

"The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves."

- Alan Watts

Not to burn with a desire to behold the beloved is not to be alive.

The more defensive you are about a belief you have, the more likely that that belief is standing in the way of your freedom.