Synesthesia & The Arts

Also, here's a link to an article about synesthesia and art -

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/002409499552957

Choice Overload

Hey all, here's the article that I mentioned today in class - a.k.a. the jam example:

http://www.columbia.edu/~ss957/whenchoice.html

Secret spots

Does anybody have any good places they like to go to meditate that around the campus area? In the Michigan League there's a "Reflection Room" on the third floor that I'll go into sometimes. I like it because I go in and close the door and it becomes my own private space. Anybody else have any good spots to share? Maybe if we spot each other meditating we can spontaneously stop and tune in together! Sometimes it really helps to do something that requires focus with other people who are focusing in the same kind of way.

Can't wait until it gets warm out and so many more nice spaces to meditate will reveal themselves!

The Veil

Hey guys. Just thought I'd post this in its original form; hope you enjoy the experience of this idea as much as I am.

The Veil

Silence is pregnant with countless truths, yet unknown. I feel the Great Unmanifest, a humming field of light, churning, swelling, breathing toward me. She is the Tao, the Mother the Everything, and she cloaks herself from our minds' hungry eyes. All we think we see is but this veil that separates us from her skin, which we long to feel soft and naked under our fingers.

There is a veil, yet I know her presence still; I feel her lovely round shape, and her warm breath surrounding me. I hear her deep calm, resonating my heart. I feel her reaching inside me, insisting that I too, am the Unknown. I feel myself disappearing inside her, and at least for a moment, the veil is gone.

mind-body healing

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/03/03/ep.seidler.cancer.mind.body/index.html

Interesting story from CNN! Check it out.

Also, I'm currently writing a paper on dreams for another psychology class. I will definitely post it on here when it's finished because it has much to do with conscious experiences.

See you all tomorrow.

cool website.

http://www.highexistence.com/

check it out yo.

The universe is alive.

I'm still in the process of writing a post on my experiences with spirituality. In the meantime, I thought it very appropriate to share my new epiphany with all of you.

Yesterday I was talking with my house mates about what 'awareness' is--is a chair aware that it's a chair?, does a spoon carrying information?, do you need a brain to observe?, etc.

I said something near the end of this conversation that surprised me: "The universe is alive."

I had never put it into such exact words before, but I realized this is how I've always felt. It's the only way I can describe God. It's the only thing that allows me to carefully reject nihilism, or the apathy and pessimism I often feel. The universe is alive.

I was thinking about it obsessively at 2am--I referred to the Google search engine to read other people's thoughts and came across the photograph above.

It would take 300 million light years to travel from one end of this photograph/simulation to the other. The man who posted this picture in his blog mentioned it looked like tissue--a network of cells.

It looks like the nervous system, doesn't it?

This may be a stretch, but it got me thinking: the universe is constantly expanding, and as it does dark energy and dark matter fills the void.

Meditation is known to increase the grey matter in our brain...how is the universe any different in this sense?

It makes me feel very small, but it also makes everything feel so meaningful too.