Bird’s Eye: Three meditative sites. Calm offers you natural views/sounds of the world (with or without music and guided meditation. Recommendation: without.) Infinite Painting gives you a canvas and an always changing paintbrush and palette, which turns out to be surprisingly involving. (Two hints: clicking makes the brush larger, and screen capture is the only way I found to save the results.) Enjoy.
* Calm (takes a few seconds to load)
* No Link
Bird’s Eye: Pico Iyer is a favourite travel writer, and this piece is a moving ode to regaining what our busyness costs us in deep connection. A fine accompaniment is the latest in a series of studies showing that mindfulness meditation can change you, for the better.
* The Joy of Quiet Pico Iyer New York Times (Thanks, Denis)
We have more and more ways to communicate, as Thoreau noted, but less and less to say. Partly because we’re so busy communicating. And — as he might also have said — we’re rushing to meet so many deadlines that we hardly register that what we need most are lifelines.
So what to do? The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual. All the data in the world cannot teach us how to sift through data; images don’t show us how to process images. The only way to do justice to our onscreen lives is by summoning exactly the emotional and moral clarity that can’t be found on any screen.
Maybe that’s why more and more people I know, even if they have no religious commitment, seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation, or tai chi; these aren’t New Age fads so much as ways to connect with what could be called the wisdom of old age. Two journalist friends of mine observe an “Internet sabbath” every week, turning off their online connections from Friday night to Monday morning, so as to try to revive those ancient customs known as family meals and conversation. Finding myself at breakfast with a group of lawyers in Oxford four months ago, I noticed that all their talk was of sailing — or riding or bridge: anything that would allow them to get out of radio contact for a few hours.
Other friends try to go on long walks every Sunday, or to “forget” their cellphones at home. A series of tests in recent years has shown, Mr. Carr points out, that after spending time in quiet rural settings, subjects “exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper.” More than that, empathy, as well as deep thought, depends (as neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio have found) on neural processes that are “inherently slow.” The very ones our high-speed lives have little time for.
* Eight Weeks To A Better Brain Harvard Gazette
Participating in an eight-week mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy, and stress. In a study that will appear in the Jan. 30 issue ofPsychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, a team led by Harvard-affiliated researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) reported the results of their study, the first to document meditation-produced changes over time in the brain’s gray matter.
“Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day,” says study senior authorSara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program and a Harvard Medical School instructor in psychology. “This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing.”
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” Carl Jung (Thanks, Pilar)
Bird’s-Eye: Too much of what we hear about secular humanists is attacks on them, often by those for whom no answer is too simple. So this week we lead with some fascinating sites that focus on people who don’t believe in God, and have profound moral values. And since claiming that belief in God is necessary to be good is a myth, we start with Adam Savage, the man from Mythbusters, then look at a new politico-spiritual movement’s neo-humanist manifest, and finally review a book by Michael Parenti.
* Adam Savage’s Speech to the Harvard Humanist Society (boingboing)
I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to read my speech from my new iPad. Yep. I’m not only a humanist, I’m also an early adopter.
By what route does anyone come to believe what they believe? We all like to imagine that it’s based on a set of logical facts, but it’s often a much more circuitous route. For me it was pretty simple. I’m actually the fourth generation in my family to have no practical use for the church, or God, or religion. My children continue this trend. Here are a few things I’ve learned.
* Neo-Humanist Statement Of Secular Principles And Values
Our planetary community is facing serious problems that can only be solved by cooperative global action. Fresh thinking is required. Humanity needs to reconstruct human values in the light of scientific knowledge. We introduce the term “Neo-Humanism” to present a daring new approach.
…Sixteen recommendations:
… 11. accept responsibility for the well-being of society, guaranteeing various rights, including those of women, racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities; and supporting education, health care, gainful employment, and other social benefits;
* “God and his Demons” Review counterpunch
Michael Parenti has written a compelling work, whose themes are so relevant for our time: the essentiality of rational thought, the struggle to maintain a secular and tolerant society, and the abuse of religion for reactionary political and obscurant objectives. As Parenti points out, “That ‘old-time religion’ is still very much with us and having a considerable impact on U.S. political life.” And that impact has only grown in recent years. Parenti launches his account with that bedrock of old-time religion, the Bible, examining it for what moral lessons it has to impart. … Parenti writes:
“The god of the Holy Bible – so much adored in the United States and elsewhere – is ferociously vindictive, neurotically jealous, intolerant, vainglorious, punitive, wrathful, sexist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, sadistic and homicidal. As they say, it’s all in the Bible. Beware of those who act in the name of such a god. Were we to encounter these vicious traits in an ordinary man, we would judge him to be in need of lifelong incarceration at a maximum-security facility. At the very least, we would not prattle on about how he works his wonders in mysterious ways.
