Cartography of the Mind (Part 2 of 17)

The following are excerpts of an illuminated book sent from Liza to the group. As usual, we publish typed excerpts of these along with the original photo. The best way is to read the text, of course, is to to experience it in its illuminated form.

1. On whether disconnecting enhances the spirit and on having things that are just between us and God:

Yes!

We must create sacred and isolated spaces that exist outside the satellite by occasionally disconnecting from it. In order to guide from here—where we are now—to there—where we eventually want to be—we must have something to offer. And by disconnecting from here in a dispersed excursion toward nowhere, we have so much more to offer those who have remained here upon our return. The world is a wildly distracting place. The World Wide Web even more so. It's crucial, I think, to inject our lives with conscious measures to escape the noise in pursuit of silence, of stillness.

To revisit old messages, as always, how else are we to process the constant noise if not through temporary withdrawal from it into a realm of silence and contemplation?

The world is a tumultuous yes, but this is how we react to tumult; this is how we ground ourselves.

Space/Absence = Being is absolutely necessary for the appearance of things beings [Heidegger's Nothing Nothing's]

[Pull Up]

"And I sometimes think, we're living so close to our lives, we can't make sense of them. Each person, I think, now, has to take a conscious measure to separate yourself from experience just to be able to do justice to experience and to process, as you said, and understand what is going on in her life and direct herself. And I think all of us know we are happiest when we forget ourselves, when we forget the time, when we lose ourselves in a beautiful piece of music or a movie or a deep conversation with a friend or an intimate encounter with someone we love. That's our definition of happiness. And very few people feel happy racing from one text to the next to the appointment to the cellphone to the emails. If people are happy like that, that's great. But I think a lot of us have got caught up in this cycle that we don't know how to stop and isn't sustaining us in the deepest way. And I think we all know our outer lives are only as good as our inner lives. So to neglect our inner lives is really to incapacitate our outer lives. We don't have so much to give to other people or the world or our job or our kids." - Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness