… one day! I came back recently from a 10-day Vipassana retreat http://dhamma.org which was an amazing experience, but one that has kept me generally speaking less and trying to be more. I received a nice letter from someone with a Nisargadatta site, so figured I’d send the link to anyone interested: http://nisargadatta.co.cc/

Hope all are well. To leave you with my favorite Nisargadatta quote: “When I see I am nothing, that is wisdom. When I see I am everything, that is love. Between these two, my life flows.”

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Just had a great weekend with Lauren in town. Wanted to get a few things out that have been happening.

I’m seeing presence more ubiquitously through my experiences. I notice many times a day now where I notice that I’m noticing, where I become aware. It usually lasts for half a second before a thought takes over and fills that void, but it’s a major shift nonetheless. It has made external factors have much less of an ability to affect me in ways I don’t want them to.

I’m noticing my dreams have become more vivid and more memorable upon waking. For the last three days I have awoken with almost complete memory of the dream. I only remember the one from this morning now though, of course:

- This morning I read a tiny bit of ‘I Am That’ by Nisargadatta Maharaj, after dropping Lauren at the airport, and then went back to bed for two hours. I had a vivid dream of going into a small town in India, living there, searching for Nisargadatta, not finding him but staying in a very small town in India and finding peace there. For some reason I remember fixing the sink in the apartment in which I was staying, and seeing a bunch of fruit stands with tons of bananas.

Lastly, I keep noticing that when I get into a higher state of clarity during meditation, this small white or black spot seems to appear in my vision. It doesn’t resolve itself into anything, and if I actively try to think about it it disappears readily, but if I just allow my field of vision to be present with the breath, it seems to evolve.

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Just got back from seeing Brad Mehldau in Sanders Theatre in Boston.

I am looking outside a cave, waiting for the next predator to come about, feeling the anxiety of a kill 10,000 years ago from our ancestors; only to realize that he’s covering a neil young song.

I am listening to variations on a theme by Brahms, only to wake up to the fact that the themes are on Nirvana.

This man knows how to enter the moment.

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We just finished a timelapse dance/music video
called Here the Nothing.

What does that mean, you ask?
http://vimeo.com/8074779

It is the first in a series of studies
in sound and movement.

Eric & Jeff
AKA gloobic

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Seen from 4 billion miles away; this tiny speck of light seen in the middle of the right band, this pale blue dot, is our planet Earth

in case you haven’t ever read this, or seen it. From Carl Sagan:

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

We miss you Carl.

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About five years ago, I made a sculture called ‘light bulb’ – a wirelessly powered, levitating lightbulb. Check the video for details.

When Gill Pratt came onto Time Warp for us to study electromagnetic induction, an assistant friend of his came by, Adam who works at DEKA. He told me in an offhand comment, ‘you made the lightbulb, right? Oh cool, we made one of those at DEKA for Dean Kamen as a birthday gift.’ Whaa?

So, after communicating back and forth for quite some time about being able to see it, I was able to visit DEKA and check it out; what I saw blew my mind. About 12 of these extremely talented designers and engineers had spent several months building one of these things. The scale is pretty magnificent, as shown below. It’s basically the same concept as mine, but with the added resources they built a custom [no straight edges!] wood frame, better wireless power transmission efficiency [a brighter bulb], and even a cleaner and more stable levitating bulb. Some pictures linked – ridiculous right?

Ridiculous, right?

I am currently in talks with them about continuing development on this project – the goal is still [as it has been for quite some time] to release an open-source kit-able version of this project. People will be able to buy a built version, or an unbuilt version, to learn more about how it works – there are some real engineering challenges however [many parts, high complexity, some high voltages that you need to know what you're doing with, etc] – so it’s slow going. So for now, here’s this!

I want to thank all the folks at DEKA for the honor of having a piece made like this [not that it's for me!] – and here’s to hoping that in the spirit of learning and giving to others we can figure out a way to get these things into the public.

The amazing engineers and designers at DEKA who worked on this.

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From one of his talks, found on this video:

“I pledge allegiance to the general well being of all sentient beings

beyond all national boundaries, ethnic groups and ideologies;

may we all flourish and live together in harmony

and support each other in our mutual pursuit of genuine happiness.”

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35 minutes with interval clock

Thinking “Look how clear I am!” is not being clear.

Rereading a great book, ‘Untethered Soul’ by Michael Singer. He takes the ancient teachings of Jnana Yoga, the ‘impossible’ “path of knowledge” to the self, and modernizes them in a way very easy to digest for the 21st century reader. I’m finding wisdom on most every page I read.

I am realizing more on a daily basis that everything about us is a pattern. Sure, we are no blank slate, and we have our species’ predispositions. But every habit you have is formed from previous experience; and as we look deeper into levels of the Self, we can see how deeply arbitrary many of these patterns are. Meditating on these thoughts, as they arise, allows us a level of distance from them. Awareness -is- distance, which enables control and change.

Meditating more, I slowly see how our ability to truly let go of everything that comes into our mind, as difficult as it may be to rid ourselves of those deeply ingrained patterns, allows us to gain full control of the previously unleashed elephant. What would happen if we had total control of our thoughts at all times?

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3o minutes, many times

I’ve been reading a lot lately in my new copious free time. In some sense I’ve been so busy reading and processing these thoughts that I’ve not written – that and questioning my motives for writing in the first place. Is writing about development an ego-based desire? If it connects with some people and helps others get through similar situations, is the desire to help selfless or selfish, to desire to be the helper? Anyway, that led to a short hiatus. I think being aware that that can be an issue is enough. Watch it, and see what happens.

One book I can’t recommend enough is ‘Mindfulness in Plain English,’ recommended to me by my friend Carla. Written by Ven. Henepola Gunaratana, I found this the most lucid account, a handbook of sorts, into the practice of Vipassana meditation. In a matter of 120 pages it covers the why, the how, the ‘what will get you stuck and how to get past it’, and even the long term effects, beyond the practical. It spoke deeply to me and helped me understand the process better, and I hope it reaches anyone reading this.

I have many more books to talk about, but one at a time…

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3o minutes

lauren is leaving in a few days… which could easily bring me out of focus, and does throughout the day. as many say though, these sources of potential pain also becomes the sources of the most potential growth, as we can see the sources of our pain coming together. i am better than i have been at seeing these sources early, and trying to catch them before they spiral, unconsciously, out of their normal control loops.

very clearly exercise prepares the body for meditation – i went on a 10 mile bike ride with lauren before meditating, and my body has not been this comfortable for 30 minutes in recent memory.

i caught myself thinking about someone else during my breath. then trying to trace it back. it seemed selfless enough, to be thinking about the welfare of someone else.. but as soon as i could trace it back 20 seconds into the past, i realized the thought started with ‘what am i doing later today?’ -> ‘i need to do something that requires something i don’t have’ -> ‘this other person has it’… and then i was onto the other person. these thoughts, in their hidden way, seem to always start spiraling from some unsettledness, some anxiety, however slight.

tried another technique today. within a half hour, it is very easy for me to get completely lost in though for several minutes, without realizing what has happened and catching it late. something i had done long ago but not recently, thinking it might be bad, was count inhalation and exhalation seconds- 10 in, 20 out, resulting in about two slow deep breaths per minute.

counting every second results in a tradeoff – it’s harder to allow the ‘moment’ to last for more than 1 second. but it’s also much easier, by providing a sub-pattern to the breath, to stay focused. i was able to keep focus on counting the entire 30 minutes, which never happens without me losing breath focus, if i’m only focusing ‘in general’ instead of subdividing.

eventually i traded off – i would count seconds during one or two breaths, and then take one or two uncounted breaths, knowing it wasn’t some indefinite amount of time to hold focus. it seemed a useful construct, oscillating between total local focus, and looser global focus. by the end of the half hour i was in a clear, beautiful state of mind, and opening my eyes revealed a crispness in the white room surrounding me.

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