2011 in pictures.

What a year.
Riots, earthquakes and protests.
Things are definitely quickening.

News that shaped 2011. 

Different Stages of Meditation

In this essay, originally included in The Collected Works of Ken Wilber: Volume IV, Ken offers an in-depth description of each of the major state-stages of meditative practice—ranging from psychic absorption, to subtle illumination, to causal transcendence, to the ultimate nondual embrace of Form and Emptiness.

Q: We would like you to describe the experiences of several stages of meditation. But first, tell us about meditation itself—the different types and how they work.

A: It is common among scholars to divide meditation into two broad categories, called “concentration” and “awareness” (or “insight”) meditation. Or, “opened” and “closed”. For example, let’s say you are looking at a wall that has hundreds of dots painted on it. In concentration meditation, you look at just one dot, and you look at it so fiercely that you don’t even see the other dots. This develops your powers of concentration. In awareness training, or insight meditation, you try to be as aware of all the dots as you can be. This increases your sensitivity, awareness, and wisdom, in that sense.

Full Article

Pulling back the veil

Although I long had an interest in paranormal phenomena, I held these conceptually at an arm’s length, not knowing how to include them in my worldview, influenced as it was by secular 20th century European philosophers who had no (admitted) interest in such things. Then, in 1988, I read Whitley Strieber’s bestseller, Communion, about his frequent and bizarre encounters with alien Others who would take him away against his will. Strieber’s effort to make sense of these “abduction” experiences in terms of mind-brain disorders, such as temporal lobe epilepsy, made the book all the more compelling. He concluded, however, that he was in fact encountering an Otherness that could not be explained away in terms of materialist categories.  The veil had been drawn back for Strieber. 


Michael Zimmerman
full article here

Another article on possible explanations 

Resumé

Need one?
Well here, you would need a re-jus-me
Jus. As in, the posh gravy you get at nice restaurants.

I'm in the middle of refreshing mine at the moment but still get taken aback when I hear the word pronounced here.

The first time I heard it, I thought, maybe just a speech impediment? Perhaps an individual nuance? The second and third time, when it came from different people, I thought, OK there's a trend here. What is the deal with the french sound inserted in the middle of a word said with an ozzie accent?

No one knows.

Street Art

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Slinkachu

Isaac Cordal

This one reminds of an installation I saw in Nagoya once. As I walked in, in the distance, was an old man in a wheelchair moving around in the entrance slowly. Something didn't quite feel right and his head was at a bit of a strange angle. As I got closer and turned the corner, there were about 7 more old people in electric wheelchairs slowly moving around. It took me a few seconds to realise they were in a cordoned off area and some of them were going around in circles.
Got a little bit closer still and saw that they were very realistically done mannequins. Complete with stubble, tweed suits and different expressions. The initial sight of 8 wheelchairs with old people asleep, aimlessly moving around in their automated wheelchairs was a bit freaky. When I saw they weren't real, it was a frozen moment of panic replaced by gentle trepidation as I walked away, very slowly.

dolk

More here

Fear or Laziness?

This is one of my favourite all time clips from a great film. I feel like I need to watch it every now and then, just to get a little focus.