Dialogue & Knowledge

• • Socrates mastered dialogue.

    • • Socrates' dialogues freely moved towards truth.

      • Truth has no agenda - it just is.

      • Socrates was used by Plato to support Plato's own arguments.

  • Each of us knows so little; others may help us gain a greater view.

  • Adjust worldviews - incorporating greater information, knowledge, and wisdom.

  • The perfect dialogue ends in silence.

  • Disciplinary knowledge is well-structured information supporting presentation and memorization.

  • Transdisciplinary knowledge takes a step toward wisdom; it's meaningful knowledge without borders.

  • David Bohm, as an older man and retired physicist, championed the use of dialogue to renew our social life.

Life - from birth to death

• • Life is not fair, it's up to us to make it just.

    • • Where we are born is a lottary. Could be born anywhere to anyone.

      • Because birth is a lotto, social justice is a good idea.

Time, Money and Love

• • Time flies by like a river torrent of water.

    • • When we are young, the summers seem long; when we are old, the summers are short.

  • By foreseeing our own death, we may live more fully today.

  • When we awaken to who we really are, the paradox of time, money and life is transcended into unity.

  • Shifting from time to eternity is "stopping the world" here and now.

  • Money is totally abstract, but is real because humans live by abstractions.

  • Love is all that is real - not time, not money.

• • • Time is not real; it's what we make of time in our lives that is real.

    • There is only love. Everything else is illusion.

• • Laughter happens at the moment of surrender into the eye of a paradox.

Peace on Earth, Golden Rules, and World Religions

• Justice is a basic condition of peace.

  • • I cannot be truly happy, forfilled or enlightened until everyone else is. Justice allows it to be "on earth as in heaven".

• If God is real, then we belong to all true religions.

  • • Human words do not matter. It's the connection to God reality that matters.

• Stopping every hour on the hour. Allow deep intuition to inform life.

• Know when you have worked enough. Be free from the desire to always work the earth past its limits.

Physics & Mysticism

• Both mystics and physicists speak of fundamental reality.

  • A mystic’s eyes “see” light or pure energy as well as things. Taking de-light, “of the light”, while seeing, hearing, and feeling.

  • The differences are in the use of reason and direct intuition.

  • Physics seems to favor reason, but needs intuition to find reasons.

  • Mystics favor intuition, but use reason to focus intuition.

  • What can be spoken is what language allows us to say. There's a lot more beyond language.

• There is a deep inner transcendental pleasure in both physics and mystics.

• I imagined myself a photon of light is traveling through spacetime. It's quiet, still, and magical.

• Cosmos

  • • You are at the center of the cosmos, and so is everyone else.

• Matter is coded with intelligence; otherwise, physics would not exist.

  • • DNA molecules are codes for living patterns.

    • Atomic numbers, electrons and protons, are codes that determine DNA patterns.

    • All the way down to quarks and "whatevers" there are codes for patterns of substance leading to us!

    • Because of intelligence in us, we reflect back on Universe and find order and pattern.

• The quantum level informs (gives form to) the cosmos. Biggest and smallest meet. This is mystical.

Computing and Consciousness

• • Networked world

    • • Computing and telecommunications are now fussed together. It's a networked world. This means that "far" and "near" are not distinct any more. Nor, is past, present, and future distinct.

  • Computers & robots progressively manifest aspects of human intelligence and purpose.

  • Are we a link to a trans-human species? Builders of our own superiors?

  • Computers took away from us the burdern of endless calculations.

  • The day is coming when these calculations will be so fast and so many, that we will feel that computers are thinking, conscious beings.

Nonviolence

• • Nonviolence is one of the "great ideas" - generative ideas that transform our world over time. Acting, as if an unstoppable force of creation.

  • Nonviolence, ahimsa in Sanskrit, is the first principle in the Jain religion.

  • Nonviolence is learned by way of meditation.

Meditation

• • Coming to a moment of silence at least twice a day improves life in unexpected ways.

  • There are many, many ways to meditate. Allows methods to change as you change.

    • • Follow your breath; let go of thoughts as they arise.

  • Everyday, take awareness breaks to reflect back on our own states of consciousness.

    • • It's been said that Bill Gate's watch chimes every hour - so that he can remember to take inventory of what he is going.

  • The practice of meditation leads to a life of constant meditation, constant being-here-and-now. That is fully living; fully being here for life. "Life abundant", as Jesus suggested.

  • Home is being dynamically at rest within ourselves; in contrast to the world, where there is no rest from a sense of darting around.

Enlightenment

• • Enlightenment does not need meditation to happen - for it is already with us from the beginning but is usually covered up. Meditation is merely a way of cleaning the mind so that the true light that is already us can shine through.

  • Being enlightened is being ultimately lazy. Many of us feel so guilty that we cannot allow life to be really easy, lazy.

  • With wisdom comes a vast vision and deep feeling - of wholeness.

  • With wisdom "ignorance is bliss", but without wisdom "ignorance is hell".

  • Understanding information gives knowledge / understanding knowledge gives insight / understanding ignorance gives wisdom.

  • Let go of all readings and oral teachings. In the end, the vehicle of liberation must also be dropped.

  • Enlightenment is nothing at all, yet it is everything. We live between "yes" and "no" - beyond all distinctions. Free.

Copyright 2007-2016 by Americ Azevedo. Updated almost frequently.