Mackenzie Gilstrap
@mackenzieg
Mackenzie Gilstrap
“Mindfulness is a form of mental activity that trains the mind to become aware of awareness itself and to pay attention to one’s own intention.”
― Daniel J. Siegel, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation
“The world is the doer and we are the witness.”
-Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
Each word is a portable cathedral in which we clarify and sanctify our experience, a reliquary and a laboratory, holding the history of our search for meaning and the pliancy of the possible future, of there being richer and deeper dimensions of experience than those we name in our surface impressions. In the roots of words we find a portal to the ... See more
Maria Popova • The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name
So what’s replaced hangouts in the city? In many cases, I’d consider them ersatz third places: establishments that are either too expensive for the average American or apparently designed to disincentivize lingering. Think carefully curated faux dive bars that serve $15 beer-and-shot specials, or parks like New York’s High Line that are built to be... See more
Allie Conti • We Really Should Hang Out More Often
Nothing comes from nothing. Every decision, action you make is result of chain of genes, biology, experience that preceded it.
According to neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky in his book Determined.
“How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of our experience and, therefore, the quality of our lives. Mystics and contemplatives have made this claim for ages—but a growing body of scientific research now bears it out.”
― Sam Harris, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
“The self is an emergent property, an illusion.”
— Bruce Hood
The ersatz third place is a consequence of a culture obsessed with productivity and status, whose subjects might have decent incomes but little recreational time.
Allie Conti • We Really Should Hang Out More Often
"Another literature compares cultures of rain forest versus desert dwellers, where the former tend toward inventing polytheistic religions, the latter, monotheistic ones. This probably reflects ecological influences as well—life in the desert is a furnace-blasted, desiccated singular struggle for survival; rain forests teem with a multitude of spec
... See more