The Science of Meditation

"In modern science, achieving wide repeatability is taken as proof. Curiously, following prescribed meditations will also produce repeatable results. Just wait until "traditional" scientists awaken to that!"
~David Satterlee

Essay: Walking with the flow of Tao in a modern world

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Walking with the flow of Tao in a modern world

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

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Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

Walking with the flow of Tao in a modern world

The Chinese character for Tao combines two signs: head and foot. It reflects the concept of walking consciously. It is simply “the way” and implies that the walker is in conscious harmony with the existing order of things. His/her actions are intentionally harmonious rather than in conflict or opposition to what is. The way of Tao tends to rely more on sensitized intuition rather than reasoning and logic.

The practical application of Tao-living leads to competences that Westerners would consider “giftedness.” For instance, an archer living with Tao would not attempt to mentally calculate trajectories and influences of a cross breeze, but would experience a sense of fullness with his environment, visualizing the arrow’s destination. He would release his arrow toward the target when the moment and position seemed right. Skilled basketball players (or golfers, etc.) can have the same reflexes for making good shots or right moves. Many of us feel the same sense of effortlessness while driving in traffic.

The research psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes a similar state of mind that he calls “flow.” Flow may occur while

Essay: Accurate thinking

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Accurate thinking

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

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Heinrich #Scholz Walter R. #Fuchs, #Cybernetics for the Modern Mind

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

Accurate thinking

I’ve been carrying this hand-written note around with me since high school. Note to parents: What is YOUR impressionable young boy or girl reading when they think you’re not looking?

“There are people who think in a way which I would simply call “accurate” thinking. They are people with persistent, highly controlled intellectual habits. These people can be recognized by four characteristics:

“They remain inexorably silent if they have nothing to say which is at least formulated in such a way that it could be tested.

“They only make assertions about something when whatever this may be will stand up to a possible subsequent test; with the reservation, however, that sometime in the distant future something could be discovered that might lead to a revaluation of their statement.

“They distinguish precisely in what they say between that which they can prove and that which they cannot prove.

“They object relentlessly to something being said in such a way that it cannot be tested, or if it can be tested it will not stand up to a rigorous repeat-test.”

Heinrich Scholz; mathematician, theologian

Quoted in:
Walter R. Fuchs, Cybernetics for the Modern Mind, p. 47, Rupert Hart-Davis Educational Publications and The Macmillan Company , 1971 (Translation)

 

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Poem: Climbing the psychosocial spiral

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

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Climbing the #psychosocial spiral #DonBeck #SpiralDynamics

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Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

Poem: Climbing the psychosocial spiral

The way I am is better than how I have ever been.
I really am more satisfied with now than some past when.
I’m smarter than I used to be; as smart as I know how.
I don’t think one should need to be beyond where I am now.

But if once I have moved beyond the history of my past,
My progress to my here and now just might not be my last.
As I have struggled to transcend the problems I have met,
I must admit I should expect to meet more problems yet.

Although my errors led me to the way that I should go,
I don’t suppose “the hard way” is the only way to know.
Perhaps a search outside myself will shed a better light.
Have others come before me? Could they lead me out of night?

I should have the guessed; the path I tread has been traversed before,
By some who mastered lessons I’d be foolish to ignore.
If I care to examine all the best that they can tell,
I needn’t struggle near as hard in order to do well.

David Satterlee