We train our focus on beauty here or there—this poem, that architecture—because it is easier than bearing witness to our own story. We begin to gravitate not toward beauty but toward illusion. In this state, you are not approaching what you seek. You are running from your own face. But this is not the way of wonder. Wonder requires a person not to
... See moreCole Arthur Riley • This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
Here’s an image I share because I’m trying to look for images that I think can be so helpful. Metaphors can’t be explained, but they are like Jesus’ parables or koans; you can sense in a story or an image a realization that you can’t explain.
One of the images that I like from Meister Eckhart is when he says, “Imagine that you’re looking at a full-l
... See moreRather, for him, looking and being looked at are what weave us into the world and give us our full humanity.
Sarah Bakewell • At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others
“Sure. We spend our lives and our life-force cultivating and grooming our appearance in the eyes of others. That’s how we know that we exist. That’s how we know who we are. That’s where we find reassurance that we are real and not just hollow dream characters. That’s how the illusion of selfhood is constantly maintained.”