Benesentia: the Felt-Presence of Blessing

A new word arrived recently—though perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it emerged. In the midst of quiet contemplation, I was attending to the subtle textures of the heart, listening for resonant syllables that seemed to rise from stillness while in contemplative dialogue. Then, serendipitously, I noticed the word had emerged in …

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The effects of becoming civilized: attentional biases

Very few people escape the attention rigidifying impact of our immediate familial and broadly social education. This educational process is heavily weighted toward specific attention biases. A preponderance of our educational resource is spent on intellectual development. This entails, with gradually greater subtlety and specificity, the singling out, or in my language, narrow focusing upon …

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Rasa: The Essence of Delight in Existence and Art | Aurobindo

Some considerations when musing on joy....attachment versus detachment. For who could live or breathe if there were not this delight of existence as the ether in which we dwell?From Delight all these beings are born, by Delight they exist and grow, to Delight they return. Taittiriya Upanishad, II. 7; III. 6. For the universal soul all …

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Talking about Meditation by Feeling

There is a lack of an appropriate word in the English language to denote the voluntary action of generating an internal feeling within oneself independently of external stimuli. This becomes a particular problem when we are forced to revert to words like "imagine" or "visualize" almost exclusively to describe or convey meditative exercises. Even feeling-type …

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