Stuart Evans

And beauty is the antithesis of comfort. We crush Her with our false positivity, our fake smiles and affirmations. But beauty annihilates all that in an instant, like Rilke’s angel who is truly terrifying to behold.

Being between worlds also means being between ways of knowing the world, being between world views. Yesterday’s world will soon no longer make sense and tomorrow’s world will be known in a different way. Today, between worlds, there are simply too many ways of knowing (not “post-truth,” but hyper-truth: too much/many truth(s)).

However, the most limiting factor is the desire to appear right or avoid appearing wrong. The former captures those who get egoic highs from signaling their intelligence, while the latter feel shame because they cannot. Both are playing the wrong game, originating from the schoolification of reality, which established an invisible status hierarchy... See more

The vision I am having here is this: people radically and wildly experimenting with their DIY Ecology of Practices, in an open way, that informs other people’s ecologies of practice. I think this is how the “meta ecology of practice” will get discovered

What can we trust? Why is the 'information ecology' so damaged, and what would it take to make it healthy? This is a fundamental question, because without good sensemaking, we cannot even begin to act in the world. It is also a central concern in what many are calling the "meaning crisis", because what is meaningful is connected to what is real.

Being truthful is an individual and communal effort — it means training, not only cognitive abilities, but empathetic relational ones, and our embodied experience in the world. It also means acknowledging that we don’t always have the answer. Admitting our vulnerable ignorance in the face of overwhelming mixed messages may be a good first step.

I know that some annoying-sounding things that mystics or Zen teachers say, about cosmic oneness or the flow of the Dao, are actually just straightforward descriptions of what the world looks like from a certain point in the contemplative path. “The original face you had before your parents were born” is a phrase that will make perfect, undeniable,... See more

Choose joy. Choose it like a child chooses the shoe to put on the right foot, the crayon to paint a sky. Choose it at first consciously, effortfully, pressing against the weight of a world heavy with reasons for sorrow, restless with need for action. Feel the sorrow, take the action, but keep pressing the weight of joy against it all, until it... See more