creating a framework for spontaneity
It's the great paradox. "The harder I work, the luckier I seem to get." No one seems to know who was the first person to say that, but it rings true. Likewise: "The muse is more likely to show up if you sit at your desk ready for her."
Likewise, when you're not depleted and deprived, you're better able to respond to emergencies.
When in tune with the cycles going on around you, and when you create your own cycles, you're laying the groundwork for liftoff. If you know what your goals are, you'll see your way clearer toward achieving them. If you don't know what they are, you'll see clearer toward identifying them.
That's what the 100-day Gong is for. Here are some resources that will help. (Edited once, and likely to be edited more as people suggest to me resources that have worked for them.)
Written by Ela Harrison
on Wednesday, 17 December 2014.
Posted in Ela Recommends, Mindfulness
objects, focus, regeneration
There's a couple posts still to come on the changing face of the book, but it's time to talk about objects.
A big difference in today's bookscape from what went before lies in the material objectiveness of the book itself. Instead of a huge, ornate, unique work of art, a book now can exist solely in electronic form, immaterial in the sense that it's not composed of "matter."
I would suggest that when something is immaterial, non-physical object, it's less likely to be objectified. How appropriate, then, to go visit a touring exhibit of Buddhist relics, where the whole of devotion and spiritual consciousness is focused into pieces of body.
Written by Ela Harrison
on Monday, 15 December 2014.
Posted in Literary Citizenship, Mindfulness, Tucson
It _had_ to be word of the week, didn't it?
Gratitude. Thanksgiving. Gratitude (Latin gratitudo) is a state of mind. Thanksgiving is a direct translation of the Latin gratias actio -- action, specifically a performance, enactment, of thanks.
Latin gratias means "thanks," but also it means "grace," in all the multi-splendored nuances of that word. Old-English thanc instead is cognate with "think" -- thanksgiving is an enaction of your state of thoughts.
Giving thanks and feeling gratitude--are they the same for you? This is a tail that can wag the dog--the action can lead to the feeling.
Written by Ela Harrison
on Wednesday, 26 November 2014.
Posted in All About Words, Mindfulness
It Really IS How You Look At It
There were so many things I wanted to write about today.
I wanted to talk about words, and specific words: hormesis, discrimination, that I expect to talk about over and over.
And about colors, and about sleep, and literary citizenship, and doing things for other people.
I spilled some water on my computer this morning. Everything seemed fine until two hours later, when the screen went dark.
But guess what? It was a good thing!
Written by Ela Harrison
on Thursday, 13 November 2014.
Posted in Literary Citizenship, Mindfulness