The Self

"When i am very still, I can feel my heart" - J Maxine

Winding Streets

 

Artists Street in New Orleans..     Lead this way to play music for a few strangers..  wellness ensued. 

 

 

 

Andrew Tipton

permeability of truth

we are born into this planet's culture..
 born into a culture that has already established laws, and walls, functional codes of living...  a culture that already has definitions of truth, and "invented" methods of living.     As we grow up, our SELF is filtered through these methods of living - methods whose permanence and establishment preceded us.

We accept life as we see it...  because that is how we have always "seen" it.    Since we did not witness the origin of many ideas,  we do not see them as permeable..  instead, we accept them as fixed, eternal, "truths"..

I think there is a struggle to adapt ourselves to the culture that birthed us..   pressing against our minds and our imaginations in an attempt to "function properly".  
Since we have been born into a world that already has answers..    we assume that we do not get to invent answers anymore..  at least not fundamental ones.     That leaves us in a broken state of being.    

It is time to reconsider ourselves as the authors of our culture.   We do not have to mindlessly accept the principals of previous generations!     This is not a call for rebelliousness,  this is a lament for "awareness", for the pursuit of evolution and clarity.   Life is motion.. all of life..    we cannot assume that simply because principals have been in place for many years, that those principals cannot be challenged, changed, or improved.   We do not have to fear attempting to shape our environment..  rather than ourselves.    Our culture is malleable.  

I have seen faults and severe problems with certain methods of my culture..   the impoverishment of relationships, our lacking perception of well being..  etc.  
But, I believe a person must believe in the permeability of truth before they can reclaim their power of creation.    I am just beginning to comprehend that power...  to believe that I can change fundamentals of my culture,  and the culture of the future.  


Andrew Tipton

        

Juicy Black Berry

Andrew Tipton

The experience

Ryan and I were talking last night in Yosemite over beer and pizza...  about the different ways to engage the experience of life.    It seems that so much of our energy is devoted to comprehension, perfection and recitation, we sometimes forget how to 'experience'..   or to be swept away be 'the experience'.     I have met many people over the last month..  I have traveled all over the map..     and I am finding that there is such a difference between those who know and understand life  ... and those who can't help but lose themselves inside it..     like the difference between a person who plays an instrument well, and knows everything about it..  about "how" to play,  the technique and theory..     and the person who plays out of sheer devotion to sound and energy.    Such a contrast..  
   The Tao talks about the beauty of understanding nothing...  and I imagine that is a beautiful paradox,.. it points to how we begin to "see" each other and places and animals and water... and everything else..    with an openness and an un-decided /  un-resolute attitude.     When our minds are not made-up, then they are still open.    I think this leads to a respect and a pleasure for our universe's expanding wonder.  


Andrew Tipton