mindfulness

People around the world know about Hilma's paintings now. She forbid the relatives to show them for anyone until 20 years after her death.  Why?  Maybe because of that Rudolf Steiner, the leader of Anthroposophy didn't like them.  But he may have seen Hilma as a competitor.  She had then thoughts of  to burn them.  But she was also a proud woman.  She was the first to paint abstract art in Europe. She was before Kandinsky.  But she thought she was instructed of invisible teachers.  Nowadays many see her as a painter of her time.  A time were electricity and the telegraph were new. And if invisible signals could be send, why could not other beings send messages to us? In the beginning of the 20-century there were many esoteric streems.  And some were lead by women as Blavatsky.  Maybe that was a way for woman to get recognition.  Not many women were known to be great artist though.  Maybe it was an unconscious s

In his book, The Future Eaters, Tim Flannery describes how a British ship  came to a remote and small island in the Pacific. The year was 1788 and the Island that now is called Lord Howe Island had probably been without visitors before. There the animals and the birds were so unafraid of the newcomers. They could knock down big birds, as special kind of doves. Thomas Gilbert who visited the island the same year writes:         Partridges are likewise in a geat plenty... several of those I knocked down, and          their legs being broken. I placed them near me as I sat under a tree.         The pain they suffered caused them to make a doleful cry, which brought five         or six dozen of the same kind of them, and by that I was able to take nearly         the whole of them Now only six of the original 15 endemic birds have survived. Black rats from the ships did their job too... As there are no big top predictors in the small island around, the birds had become so ta

Its not that Fjodor Dostojevskij practised mindfulness. He probably didn't know about meditation outside a christian context. What Dostojevskij had in common with mindfulness is the view of the human mind: it doesn't add up to a whole. In, for instance, "Crime and Punishment", Raskolnikov is influenced by Nietzschean ideas of ubermensch; some people are allowed to do crimes for the sake of good, aren't they. But he also doubts he's ideas. Isn't he just a sick student without money? The different sides of his mind is also illustrated by the people he meet, the drunkard Marmeladov and his  daughter Sofia that fall in love with Raskolnikov and tries to help him. People hallucinate and fool themselves. In the Brothers Karamazov, tha last novel, we can see Dostojevskij in all of the three siblings; one guided by feelings and cravings, one by the intellect and one by God. And a half brother has epilepsy as Dostojevskij himself had.  If the differe

We all like narratives. And we often put ourselves there. Or at least the human race. we want to see us as winners or at least as victims. We read books and watch films with understandable narratives. what about the narrative of violence? Stephen Pinker has a story to tell there. He means that we are going towards a more peaceful world and that the violence has decreased. If we read the news and watch tv we may not believe so. But that's probably because we want to read about crime and violence, so that is what the journalists write about. It may be that it was good for our survival to know about trouble in our surroundings in older times,  so therefore the behaviour is inherited in us. But nowadays we will know about trouble from over the whole world.  But statics show that violence seem to decrease. Maybe the world is going towards a better future. But in the long run we are of course going to be diminished anyway... So it it may be better to appreci

We are not in control our thoughts and of course not of our thoughts. But to click on delete is sometimes necessary; If you just have started, you don't have to sit down for long. It may be enough for five or ten minutes...