2001
Portrait of Andy Goldsworthy, an artist whose specialty is ephemeral sculptures made from elements of nature.
90 min
CLEAR ALL
Can you explain more about the “surface” of the present moment? How can we go deeper? The “surface” of the present moment contains the external forms we perceive with the physical senses—any of which can serve as a tool for stepping out of the thought stream.
1
What happens when a journalist turns her lens on a mystery happening in her own life? Maureen Seaberg did just that and lived for a year exploring her synesthesia.
People who are good at creating ideas are good at seeing connections.
We are often better served by connecting ideas than we are by protecting them.
Learning any new skill involves relatively brief spurts of progress, each of which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher in most cases than that which preceded it . . . the upward spurts vary; the plateaus have their own dips and rises along the way. . . .
Ultimately, nothing in this life is ‘commonplace,’ nothing is ‘in between.’ The threads that join your every act, your every thought, are infinite. All paths of mastery eventually merge. [Each person has a] vantage point that offers a truth of its own.
But one of the hallmarks of emotional maturity is to recognize the validity of multiple realities and to understand that people think, feel, and react differently. Often we behave as if ‘closeness’ means ‘sameness.’
This is how great intellectual breakthroughs usually happen in practice. It is rarely the isolated genius having a eureka moment alone in the lab. Nor is it merely a question of building on precedent, of standing on the shoulders of giants, in Newton’s famous phrase.
To be creative, we have to unlearn millions of years of evolution. Creativity asks us to do that which is hardest: to question our assumptions, to doubt what we believe to be true. That is the only way to see differently.
2
The final volume in A. H. Almaas’ masterwork on the contemporary spiritual path known as the Diamond Approach. From one perspective, we can see ourselves merely as human beings struggling in a crowded and chaotic world of suffering.