Category: Expanding

  • How to draw the Sri Yantra

    How to draw the Sri Yantra

    Introduction I’ve played with the Sti Yantra over the years numerous times. In the beginning there were few and hard to find instructions. Today there are many more, especially video tutorials. I’ve been through quite a few and it is very difficult to find a clear and good one: Please note that the instructions focus…

  • Mushrooms, second encounter

    Though I am gradually moving towards a better energy equation with work (it could be that I am simply “getting back in shape”) it still consumes most of focus. This means that I tend to end days and weeks tired. This last week I also allowed, for the first time, urgency within the organization infiltrate…

  • Humility

    Following yesterdays larger bit of translation, here is another, smaller bit from “Nisayon” by Yair Caspi this time about humility: A study of humility requires overcoming a popular objection to it: at the beginning of the 20th century the socialists claimed that humility is a conspiracy through which the rich wish to train their workers…

  • A Modern & Critical View of Judaism

    The following is a rough and unedited (my) translation of a chapter from a book called “Nisayon” by Yair Caspi. I hope to provide more context about Yair Caspi in future writing. As I read it and recognized my place in an inherited identity I have actively rejected most of my life, it I felt…

  • Ancient Greek Metaphysical Damage

    Introduction I recently completed yet another reading of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. There is a section near the end of the book where Pirsig, in his attempt to point the root of our current metaphysical crises, reaches the philosopher of ancient Greece. I’ve always experienced both a draw to…

  • בדל של אור

    אני מופתע כיצד האלבום הזה נגע ונוגע ביהוא מעורר בי תחושה של תרבות עתיקה שאולי עוד תקוםהוא מעורר בי תחושה של שייכות עתיקה ושל שייכות עתידית שכבר עבורי כנראה לא תוגשםהוא מעורר בי מחשבות אודות קהילה רחבה, עמוקה ומהותית

  • The Erotic as Power

    This poignant essay contains a beautiful answer to a critical question: how do you know what Good feels like? a gift from Jennifer

  • A gift from the mushrooms?

    I came out of practice and went to the kitchen to take the next step in bread preparation. I was mixing the dough when Iulia stepped out of her room. This was our first encounter of the day. I stepped back from tending to the bowl on the counter and turn to face Iulia. I…

  • 5.5 grams

    On June 22nd I finally experienced psychedelic mushrooms. I’d been thinking about it for a couple of years. The previous day I was having yet another “dead-end” day with Iulia and I wanted to look into that. But I awoke to the potential late in the day. My stomach was full with dinner. I was…

  • Farewell Milford Graves

  • ההיסטוריה המלאה שלנו

    שלום משפחה, כנראה שכבר שיתפתי את חלקכם ב- “המלצה” הזו. אך אני מרגיש צורך לחזור עליה ואולי לנסות להדגיש את ערכה. הקישור יוביל אתכם לסדרה של 6 פרקים (שביחד מכסים כמעט 24 שעות!) של podcast המספר את סיפורה של ארץ ישראל: http://www.martyrmade.com/fear-loathing-in-the-new-jerusalem/ הסיפור דומה מאוד לסיפור שקיבלתי כשהייתי תלמיד בתיכון. אך הסיפור גם שונה. קודם…

  • Bryan Ungard – Deliberately Developmental Organisations

    This came to me via Richard Bartlett and: Listening to it while reading Christopher Alexander’s A Timeless Way of Building feels almost eerie … as if Bryan is looking over my shoulder and re-whispering the book in my ear recontextualized from the architecture of buildings to the architecture of organizations. I felt a deep sense…

  • EXTRA Ordinary (Deepest Insights)

    EXTRA Ordinary (Deepest Insights)

    We have a habit of thinking that the deepest insights, the most mystical, and spiritual insights, are somehow less ordinary than most things – that they are extraordinary. This is only the shallow refuge of the person who does not yet know what he is doing. In fact, the opposite is true: the most mystical,…

  • Palpable Organic Tension

    When I witnessed patterns that I felt “could be improved” I used to go right at the pattern and try “to make it better”. That approach didn’t seem to work very well for me. I now try to look beyond the surface pattern that caught my attention. I have come to prefer a different approach.…

  • Wholehearted

    Wholehearted

    A man is alive when he is wholehearted, true to himself, true to his own inner forces, and able to act freely according to the nature of the situations he is in … … it is a state of being in which all forces which arise in a man can find expression; he lives in…

  • Learning a Mantra

    A few weeks ago I decided to change the mantra I chant at the opening of my practice from its short-form version to its full version. Each verse in the full version is collapsed to a single line in the short version. Because I was already established in the short version I had a familiarity…

  • Daniel Schmachtenberger on Sensemaking

    How do you make sense in a messy, noisy and misleading information ecology? Watching this made me feel both: A sense of belonging that comes from experiencing a deep and thoughtful shared interest. A sense of lostness … this feels like (yet another) deep insight that doesn’t really matter … because … who is going…

  • Patricia’s Embrace

    Yesterday was a city day. Our last stop was a hardware store, we got to it 15 minutes before it closed. We went directly to get the two products we needed and got in line at a cashier. Ahead us were a father and daughter. As we hovered together in line, she was moving around,…

  • Create “Nothing”

    “The story involves two swordsmiths, Muramasa and Masamune. Both were reputed to produce excellent swords, prized among the samurai. The character of Muramasa, however, was said to be jealous and cynical: his ambition and keen sense of competitiveness motivated him to concentrate on forging blades that cut keenly … any samurai who possessed a Muramasa…

  • The Morphic Field of Hallelujah

    What touches me? The eternally spacious words of Leonard Cohen? Jeff Buckley’s poignant and guitar colored delivery? Or is it Lindsey’s voice as she pulls away to conjure up a sharp, powerful energy launched like a penetrating arrow into my heart? Can the elements be separated? Where does the song Hallelujah begin and where does…