An Evolving Disciple

Sometimes I feel very sharklike, in that I need to keep moving at all times in order to stay (in this case psychologically) alive. When I have little to do, I desire to do little: when I have much to do, that's when I find the desires to do things more meaningful with the time I have less of, or I find myself looking more closely at my life. So yes... two days ago I was up at 5, then I went to school went to the lab and at 7:30 PM started painting the interior of a house until 6:30 AM. I took a 90 minute nap before returning to school, and after I left the lab that night I went painting again. It's 3:30 AM and I'm physically exhausted. But mentally, I'm needing to for a long hard jog. Within these two days with a 90 minute nap between, I talked to a girl who had went through a very similar breakup to my painful one in September (unapologetic ownership of ex-girlfriend porn and all!). Only she broke up with her ex in the last 2 days... so a lot of the negative feeling...

As a kid I saw an episode of Rocky and Bulwinkle where Bulwinkle becomes a famous artist by whitewashing canvases. I thought of that when I came across a dappled white canvas in an art museum last weekend: different shades of white mind you, but white. By the side of that painting was a paragraph on the artist’s inspiration, which read something like “I was walking down the hallway one time when I realized I didn’t understand myself walking down the hallway. It made me realize how little we truly do not understand the world around us”. I’d agree that people do not understand the simpler things they do, and increased awareness of one’s self and surroundings is meaningful… but how is that message communicated through dappled shades of white? Other than perhaps a Rorschach-style interpretation where I present my own interpretation into ambiguous stimuli, this painting has no meaning. It isn’t even beautiful…. Art is a controversial term, and I’m sure even artists argue about its definitio...

Tali sent me a few papers on the scientific basis of religious experiences... This was my reply, which will be similar to any other conversations I have with people who don't believe in spirituality who read my last post, so hence I'm posting my reply: "Thanks I'll read through them =) I have a feeling though that like any good scientific paper, they will attempt to explain spirituality it terms of only naturalistic variables... and well they should, for thats what science is. I don't like it when science tries to do anything but. However, I don't believe science can really explain it... If it were hallucinations or the product of an overactive imagination, I wouldn't expect to at times predict the future, or meet people who know minute details about my life when I never met them... or who can relate to me the intimate details of a dream I have or the characters within it - (like the red haired asian chic in leather armor and a sword... seeing me and starti...

On the Path Again: There’s nothing so freeing as having everything you need to survive on your back, in such a way as it’s comfortable to walk. I need no car, no house… no purse nor anything else in my hands. All I have is the path before me, and a fork in a road. I take the path that looks better, for whatever implicit reason I don’t know. I have never been here before, and aside from finding my way back sometime in the next couple days I don’t think I plan to be again. The farther I am from civilization right now, the better: I need to be alone. Yet all at the same time I feel a sense of belonging that I haven’t felt in quite some time before this point… and in other ways, I know exactly where I’m going, and I know exactly why. I walk for an hour or so, trying a couple different deer paths off of the main track looking for clearing big enough to place my tent. Eventually I find one where I feel I should, and with it comes a fallen tree for a chair and another with a tree nearby pe...