The void, creation etc

If you place all your attention into "the void", the source of creation, no thoughts come. When your attention wanders thoughts pour forth. Look away and the atoms dance behind your back. A watched pot never boils. Life operates best when not under intense scrutiny - people as well, I think. Shearing the sheep instead of killing it - the dance of existence, applicable to all endeavours. Don't push the river. "To meditate, focus on your breath" - makes sense, your breath is your ultimate, most fundamental lifeline. I attribute part of my (at times) over-active mind to my birth, when I could not breath for some minutes. Conditioning is powerful, we calcify as we age if we are not intentional about keep our minds open. Probably it's an inevitably-lost battle, but probably also the one worth fighting the most. Why is fresh air good for you? How about fresh, natural food? How about living in nature without destroying it? Either we're separate from the rest of existence, or we're not. We're not, so follow the connections as far as they go.

Grit

TED talk on Grit - how do you cultivate grit in students (people)?

Angela Lee Duckworth: The key to success? Grit

Seems like anyone who has grit has great love for what motivates them. A person they don't want to disappoint, a game they love to play, a subject or idea they love to explore.

Grit also involves a willingness to do things you DON'T want to do, in search of an ultimate goal or future reward. So you have to practice doing things you don't want to do to develop grit. Here I think is where the relationship between teacher and student is the key determinant. A student will do what is asked of them, even if they don't want to do it, because they respect or like the person asking.

In the end the motivation stems from thinking about the future you want. If you cannot visualize or at least have an idea of what you want in the future, you will not be gritty about attaining it.

I'm never offended if I understand why.

Appreciation

Humans have evolved to develop the highest known level of consciousness. Part of this consciousness is the ability to appreciate the fact of existence. However, ability does not guarantee action, and the act of appreciating aspects of existence (people, events, experiences, things, food, etc) it seems is a skill or habit that must be cultivated.

People who have experienced a lack in an area of life, such as food, housing or relationships with others, are much more likely to appreciate these things when they have them.

Humans need contrast. We don't innately have the ability to appreciate good fortune when we are born into it, and never experience its lack. In these people the ability or skill must be cultivated, and this endeavour likely falls into the category of character education if we are talking about children.

My belief is that (like any skill or ability) by practising appreciation we strengthen it, and by strengthening it and appreciating more things more often we cultivate joy.

This becomes a self reinforcing feedback loop and I think it has many positive benefits beyond joy:
- requiring less material goods (money saved, environmental damage lessened)
- losses and setbacks have a less significant mental toll
- performance in high pressure situations, because when we appreciate we relax and are hindered less by stress
- less stress
- probably greater empathy because we have more understanding of value and loss

No rips in existence

Just as there are no rips or tears in existence (since the non-existence of existence, within existence, would be impossible)... ...There are no rips or tears in your experience. Nothing is wasted - though the relevance of events and occurrences may not be readily apparent or ever apparent. This is the "not-knowing" aspect of the human condition that we must accept. So stay open minded - don't write things/people/etc. off. But at the same time, don't hold onto things because of fear - then you might become a hoarder or neurotic. And don't "try" to notice or glean significance from anything. Not that these are easy things to do but they are likely worth getting better at.

On suffering

If we didn't go through "hell", we would never realize when we'd arrived in "heaven"

It's an interesting imagination exercise to think of all those people who seem to oppose one's will, sleeping in their beds.

Are they "evil"? Or just trying to shape the world according to their interests.

But what if their interests are purely selfish?

Are my interests purely selfish? Well, I'd like to leave the planet a place to be enjoyed by subsequent people, as I enjoyed it.

But then again, people are shaped by their surroundings. And the people who are born into a different world will not know the "regret" I fear they might feel for "missing out on what I had".... Because they can't. They will only know their own life. Who knows, they might laugh and say oh what awful lives you led...

For if we are headed for collapse, if our earth cannot sustain us in such numbers and usage of resources, then surely life will get simpler. More connected to the natural systems and rhythms of the earth. Right now we float in a sea of oil and gas, and maybe life is better for it. I don't really know.

In the end the only conclusion I come to is that life, regardless of its true origins, if there was such a thing, is bigger than all the thoughts and concepts and illusions we might apply to it. And being small, and within such a vast existence, let us merely try to do our best to create the world we want to see.