Cosmic creativity -- how art evolves consciousness: Alex Grey at TEDxMau...

A living symphony.

 "To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common -- this is my symphony." William Henry Channing (1810-1884)

My responses to the "40 Plus Project"

WHAT 3 WORDS DESCRIBE YOU IN YOUR 20S?
Emerging, exploring, gathering

WHAT 3 WORDS DESCRIBE YOU IN YOUR 30S?
Experimenting, exhausting, expanding

WHAT 3 WORDS DESCRIBE YOU NOW? Learning, listening, integrating

WHAT IMPORTANT LIFE LESSONS DID YOU LEARN IN YOUR 20S + 30S?
In my 20s, I learned the concept of network. In my 30s, I learned about the wealth of networks and how to navigate them.

WHAT IMPORTANT LIFE LESSONS DID YOU LEARN IN YOUR 40S?
I learned about resilience, trusting my heart. That pain is a teacher. To be myself. To be human. To be trusting. To keep breathing. To have a beginner’s mind.

WHAT IMPORTANT LIFE LESSON ARE YOU LEARNING NOW?
I’m learning that integration breeds success.

WHAT HAS BEEN THE MOST DIFFICULT ASPECT OF GROWING OLDER?
It has been a challenging, yet liberating, experience to learn that most adults, including myself, have been or are still living like children when it comes to their emotional development and not taking full responsibility for themselves or their lives. Once realized, however I have discovered that intimate, present, courageous living, from the place of self love, and authentic loving connection with others becomes the basis of a truly fulfilled life.

WHAT HAS BEEN THE BEST ASPECT OF GROWING OLDER?
To realize that intimate, empathic connection with myself and others is the path of living with joy, and it’s a life-long learning journey.

WHAT DO YOU LOOK FORWARD TO IN THE FUTURE?
Living with more joy and manifesting from joy the gifts I have to give to the world. Sharing, receiving, life-long learning and trusting the perfection of my heart. I believe that awareness is the key to loving life more.

Here's a link to the original post: The 40+ Project: Gregory, 49

We Are All One - An Inspiring Short Film To Watch

An amazing adventure

This video of Joanna Macy lays out an inspiring and grounded vision why making peace with the unknown helps us be more present in the time we live in.

This is not a face that lies.

"When Abu Bakr met Muhammad, he said
"This is not a face that lies."

Abu Bakr was one whose bowl
has fallen from the roof.

There's no hiding the fragrance that comes from an ecstatic.
A polished mirror cannot help reflecting.

Muhammad once was talking to a crowd of chieftains, princes with great influence,
when a poor blind man interrupted him.

Muhammad frowned and said to the man, "Let me attend to these visitors,
This is a rare chance,
whereas you are already my friend.
We'll have ample time."

Then someone nearby said, "That blind man may be
worth a hundred kings. Remember the proverb,
Human beings are mines."

World-power means nothing. Only the unsayable,
jeweled inner life matters.

Muhammad replied, "Do not think that I'm concerned with being acknowledged by these authorities.

If a beetle moves toward rosewater, it proves that the solution is diluted.
Beetles love dung, not rose essence.

If a coin is eager to be tested by the touchstone,
that coin itself may be a touchstone.

A thief loves the night.
I am day. I reveal essences.

A calf thinks God is a cow.
A donkey's theology changes
when someone new pets it
and gives it what it wants.

I am not a cow, or thistles for camels
to browse on. People who insult me
are only polishing the mirror."

- Rumi

A fulfilled life.

It has been a challenging, yet liberating, experience to learn that most adults, including myself, have been, or are still living like children when it comes to their emotional development and not taking full responsibility for themselves or their lives. Once realized, however I have discovered that intimate, present, courageous living, from the place of self love, and authentic loving connection with others becomes the basis of a truly fulfilled life.

Pleasure Evolution?

Rob Breszny posted on FB today the following.

"Dear Beauty and Truth Lab: Though I respect what you're trying to do to boost the endorphin levels of the masses, I must insist that you begin taking into account a factor you have apparently thus far ignored: Pronoia must recognize and account for the fact that up to 70 percent of womankind never get their full orgasm experience."

"It's bad enough in the Western world, where many men don't even seem to know about the existence of the clitoris, let alone realize that sexual intercourse cannot induce a clitoral orgasm in a majority of women." "But even worse: the millions of girls who are brutalized with clitoridectomies in the Moslem world, and other hundreds of millions of Third World women who haven't reaped the benefits of Western culture's mild gender revolution."

"Here's what I say: Ecstatic female pleasure is a radical pronoiac solution to the global epidemic of male violence and ecological terrorism. I mean this literally. Sex is as much an elemental force as the winds and tides and thunderstorms. The muzzling of the female libido on a global level is the equivalent of trying to suppress the weather. And the consequences are just as weird. The tender, poignant penis has turned into the doomsday machine. Mother Earth gets wasted by the lurid hot dry 'sexy' violence of the berserk cosmodemonic phallus."

"But when I talk about ecstatic female pleasure, I don't mean simply some quantitative increase in clinically measurable orgasms. I'm talking about the kind of passion that generates compassion. Eros that lights up our political and ecological chakras. Sex beyond sex. The kind of reverent lust that enlightens you to how you're partly responsible for every other life on this planet, and gives you the power to feel the pain of people in distant locations with the same intensity you would feel an intimate companion's pain."

"Please consider filling in this gap in your otherwise enlightened program for world liberation." 

—Future Author of "The Clitoral Monologues" [Rob wrote] Dear Future Author: I agree with you. I have actually written a great deal on related subjects in one of my previous books, "The Televisionary Oracle." It's a basic text informing the Beauty and Truth Lab's ongoing experiments.