“If wisdom does not precede the “knowing”, then knowledge is secondhand, another’s understanding, and lacks depth.” Steven Levine
"Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows: for details are swallowed up in principles. The details of knowledge which are important will be picked up ad hoc in each avocation of life, but the habit of the active utilization of well-understood principles is the final possession of wisdom." Alfred North Whitehead
Excerpt: A Gradual Awakening, Steven Levine
"One aspect of the power of wisdom is its ability to cut through what we have previously thought to be real. Each time we learn something new, we discard and old opinion, we change opinions. But wisdom is a stillness, a light within, in which we see what opinions themselves are; not just this opinion as opposed to that opinion, but what “opinion-ism” is. Opinionism is just mind clinging to an idea. When we open to the wisdom mind we see how things are and say, “Well, look how things change.”
Indeed, if we were to try to find a single truth all could agree on, it would perhaps be that everything changes. Opinions are constantly changing, the body is constantly changing, the world is constantly changing, and our relationships are constantly changing. As simple as that statement is, it is great wisdom. "
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Friday, January 2, 2009
The Lesson: Awareness
“To be fully is to be all that is.” Aurodindo
Excerpt: A Gradual Awakening, Steven Levine
Experiences come and go. If we identify with them, claim them as “me” or “mine” by judging or clinging, if we stick to any part of the ongoing flow, we don’t see that what we call “me” is constantly being born and dying, is a process of awareness and object coming into being and passing away hundreds of times each minute.
As awareness more deeply penetrates the flow, we experience that our natural condition, our natural state of being, sometimes called the wisdom-mind, is like the sun, which is always shinning, always present, though often obscured. We are blocked from our natural light by the clouds of thought and longing and fear: the overcast of the conditioned mind; the hurricane of “I am.”
Excerpt: A Gift From the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh
…Perfect poise on the beat is what gives good dancing its sense of ease, of timelessness, of the eternal. It is what Blake was speaking of when he wrote:
Excerpt: A Gradual Awakening, Steven Levine
Experiences come and go. If we identify with them, claim them as “me” or “mine” by judging or clinging, if we stick to any part of the ongoing flow, we don’t see that what we call “me” is constantly being born and dying, is a process of awareness and object coming into being and passing away hundreds of times each minute.
As awareness more deeply penetrates the flow, we experience that our natural condition, our natural state of being, sometimes called the wisdom-mind, is like the sun, which is always shinning, always present, though often obscured. We are blocked from our natural light by the clouds of thought and longing and fear: the overcast of the conditioned mind; the hurricane of “I am.”
Excerpt: A Gift From the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh
…Perfect poise on the beat is what gives good dancing its sense of ease, of timelessness, of the eternal. It is what Blake was speaking of when he wrote:
He who bends to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy?
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity’s sunrise
Doth the winged life destroy?
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity’s sunrise
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Quotes
“Without some awareness of the whole—
without some sense of how means converge
to accomplish or to frustrate ends—
there can be no strategy.
And without strategy, there is only drift.”
– Paul Kennedy and John Lewis Gaddis, Yale University
without some sense of how means converge
to accomplish or to frustrate ends—
there can be no strategy.
And without strategy, there is only drift.”
– Paul Kennedy and John Lewis Gaddis, Yale University
“We should take care not to make the intellect our god—
it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality—
it cannot lead, it can only serve.”
– Albert Einstein
"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation.
We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those because we have acted rightly.
We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."
- Aristotle
it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality—
it cannot lead, it can only serve.”
– Albert Einstein
"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation.
We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those because we have acted rightly.
We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."
- Aristotle
What is in a Name?
I came up with the name "VerNexus" years ago, think now is the time for the name to realize its full potential as a blog.
VerNexus is derived from the Latin roots Ver and Nexus,
veri-, ver-
nexus
My hope is that this blog will be a forum to explore thoughts, experiences and insights which I hope with be of some use to others.
VerNexus is derived from the Latin roots Ver and Nexus,
veri-, ver-
- true
- truth
- real
- truthfulness
nexus
- a means of connection; tie; link.
- a connected series or group.
- the core or center, as of a matter or situation
My hope is that this blog will be a forum to explore thoughts, experiences and insights which I hope with be of some use to others.
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