2018.04.24 - Day 41

Found some videos of Charles Tart (author of a book Alma mentioned) being interviewed. He is very easy to listen to. He says there are three types of intelligence, Intellectual, Emotional and Bodily and they need to be in balance. The idea of trying to solve emotional problems using the intellect alone doesn't work - a point that resonated with me - have tried to do this often.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDbwaukpZJ4

He talks about dreams in another video as an altered state of consciousness :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQb1iEvIMsI

HOMO LUDENS ("man the player"). I began my journey with this book. I'm not intending to make an analysis or critical review. I'll just share probably random thoughts as I go on.

Huizinga says all play means something. This is very interesting indeed. It ties in with what historian Yuval Harari says, interviewed in the VPRO documentary "Humans, Gods and Technology" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQd_5as_cMY - thank you Zen!). "Nobody knows for sure what the job market will look like in 2040, but it's likely, it's possible, given all the technological development, it might be feasible, even easy, to support people even if they don't work - to give them a Universal Basic Income, to give them enough food, enough medicine and so forth. The big question is meaning. What will they do all day? And one of the answers is that they will just play computer games all day, virtual reality games."

In philosophy, "the Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any. As an Absurdist, I can construct personal meaning, live with integrity, and defiantly face the Absurd, but there's no way to know whether my constructed meaning conforms to any inherent meaning.

In the foreword to Homo Ludens, Huizinga says, "It is ancient wisdom, but it is also a little cheap, to call all human activity 'play'. Those who are willing to content themselves with a metaphysical conclusion of this kind should not read this book."

So here's a cyclical conundrum! There may or may not be inherent meaning in the universe, but as an Absurdist I can never know it and thus there's little practical difference from an existentialist who would deny any possibility of inherent meaning. But I can create a personal meaning, and that may be all the meaning there is. And indeed creating such meaning may be encouraged in future decades through the medium of play. But if all human activity becomes play, then I shouldn't read Homo Ludens! :)

Appreciating this line of thinking very much, Storm!

Savoring.

A deceptively easy little practice to carry in one's pocket. Mostly, savoring takes the form of slowing down, or slowing *into*, which allows for a kind of flipped perception going into the 'next thing'. Resonances with the practice of lucidity. Something I haven't considered as much ... how thin the line is between spontaneity and intention, and the slight nudge of intention toward letting that line become thinner and thinner.

I think there is an element of savoring in the practice I am exploring now, too. At least, there is a slowing down and a greater sense of being present in the one thing I am doing right now. A sense that I am actually doing it, rather than just having it run in the background on autopilot, so to speak.

They blend nicely, agree. Maybe it is simply the awareness brought to bear upon wherever one seems to be, whatever one seems to be doing. It can be questioning or just looking closer. I find one thing at a time very difficult, but if I try, I like seeing how it is difficult, which may help slow things down a little.

Hard to think of what to say.
Rich choral blend is the best I can do.