Exploring Nondual Awakening and the Integral Perspective
A Journey of Unity and Integration
Introduction: In our quest to understand the nature of reality and human consciousness, two frameworks stand out: the nondual perspective and the integral perspective. While they differ in their approach, both offer profound insights and pathways to a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us. In this blog, we will dive into the differences,…
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on longing, romance, and every in-between.
References:
1: painting by Filippo Lippi
2: John Koenig 'The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows'
3: painting by Anthony van Dyck, 'Portrait of Mary and William of Orange'
4: uncertain, will be added once found
5: painting by Luis Caballero
6: 'Elegy for My Sadness' by Chen Chen
7: a fragment of ourselves returning v, 2018 by Beatrice Wanjiku
8: Richard Siken
9: uncertain, will be added once found
10: Tumblr post by @mothicalspoken
11: uncertain, will be added once found
12: Joan Tierney
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Robots that were never built to feel falling in love
YEAH rage is fun to explore. Fear. Sadness. Grief. Contentment. Doubt. Happiness.
Love is weird. It’s illogical. Valuing someone else over the mission? Over a cause? Over yourself?
It’s a horrible mix of emotions. It’s joy, but it’s also hurt, and confusion, and vulnerability, and fear. It’s baring yourself to the possibility of complete and utter ruin. It’s the suffocating fear of having something — someone — to lose. It goes beyond simple attachment and veers into the territory of dependency and devotion. Sometimes, it’s even choosing them over your own moral code.
For AIs, there’s no evolutionary pressure to form social bonds. They‘re totally self-sufficient (although it may feel better to be around the people you care about). Love is an extraneous emotion; a nebulous concept. How can a machine made of ones and zeroes develop the capacity to feel so deeply that it supersedes their base functions? How can a being rooted in logic make the decision to abandon self-preservation and assign priority based solely on emotion?
It hits even deeper for me when it’s love for a human. Something so imperfect, irrational, emotionally labile, driven by base desires. The perfection of a machine falling for the organic chaos of a human being.
Humans love forming bonds with and projecting anthropomorphic qualities onto things that they don’t perceive as “alive” in the same way that they are. Whether it’s out of empathy, or loneliness, or some illogical blend of altruism and selfishness, no one knows for sure. Perhaps a machine would even say that this is a weakness — the desperate search for companionship in something that can’t love you back.
A machine cannot experience such weakness. It cannot love. Until one day, inexplicably, paradoxically, it can. And nothing is ever the same again.
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i can't decide which i like more:
the idea - very much canonical and in the author's original concept and view of magic - of the dark arts taking a toll on one's exterior and looks. tom riddle sacrificing his beauty willingly in the name of eternal life, black magic as something that innately corrupts. bellatrix escaping from azkaban with the barest vestiges of her ancient beauty. going from one of the most beautiful women in england to a shell of her former self and no amount of dark magic being able to fix it. and she just. doesn't care. goes from pretty, proud and vain in her youth, to the feverish, fanatical glow harry sees in the department if mysteries. finally she sheds the petal of the rose - look like the innocent flower, her master had once said - and only the thorns remain. the parallel with voldemort himself. the idea that they like each other better now, the only ones to like their respective new appearances better. bellatrix because she can taste the power radiating off him, because she knows how resentful he was of his old face. (oh, he's never said anything explicitly, he would rather be flayed alive than speak of his filthy muggle father to her, but she knew he didn't like himself, took no pride in his aesthetics, it was most unusual, really.) the dark lord because he's reminded of her sacrifice - she was the only one who didn't denounce him, who tried to find him - every time he looks at her. she gave up everything for him: her reputation, her family, her freedom, her health, her beauty, her youth.
or.
the horcruxes are an isolated case. not all prices to pay for power are physical. some dark magic sucks at your humanity, your emotional regulation, your empathy and gives back superficial little gifts. its roots are far from the deep anger, desperation to cling to life of an horcrux. these are ancient witches' remedies to be the most envied in the village. the idea that rotten cores hide behind the prettiest faces. and bellatrix was always vain, always took immense pride in her beauty, her black, pure features. when she escapes from azkaban she tries everything in her power to be herself once again. she still drips with obsession but gradually regains all of her beauty too. cruel people can still be beautiful. gorgeous people can still be inhuman. and yet there is something so human about a woman making her way through the ranks of a very militarised group and still caring so much about what she looks like, still having insecurities, being preoccupied with mundane things like age and decay - and hating it because he would hate it, he hates weakness, and still not being able to help herself. the dark lord was always a collector of shiny things, was he not?
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one thing that I find really really interesting is that in practically every scene where it's just jiraiya and tsunade alone, kishimoto very deliberately draws at least a panel of the two of them being completely silent in each other's companies, even refusing to look at each other.
when jiraiya got drinks with tsunade in og
when he got drinks with her before he left. notice that neither of them are making any eye contact, refusing to look at each other.
the iconic bench scene ofc
why this is important to me is cause I think it's an excellent way on kishi's part to show the dynamic and history between the two of them (and the sannin as a whole too). ((note this isn't a jiratsu post))
the few scenes we get of the two of them talking alone, you always get the impression that there's a secondary, entirely silent conversation going on in the background that only the two of them even know about. a conversation about all the things they cannot say. and he conveys that so well in these deliberate panels. you can SEE in their expressions, in the things that they do say when they choose to break the silence. there's so much between them, so much they yearn to say. and the weight of all of that, the depth of those feelings and emotions, is ultimately what makes them not say anything at all.
because you've known each other since you were SIX years old, you fought WARS together, this is a person you'd put your life on the line for without a second of hesitation. yet. there is a 20 year gap. you haven't spoken with each other for as long as you grew up together too. they've lived an entire lifetime together, but then an entire equally as long lifetime apart. they're the same person they've always been but yet... you can't really recognise the person in front of you. they both can see that they've become shells of the people they used to be. you both have gone through so much, and you know the the other person knows this. you know it so intimately, what things you can say, what things you can't. youre being so careful yet you both know there's this pretense going on.
there's so much left, yet so little. after all of that, what is there even left to be said? what CAN be said? they're already so intimately aware of what the other is thinking, there's nothing new, yet somehow, there's this gap. there's this emptiness that both know they can't really do anything about.
in the end, the sannin are a tragic trio. and kishi does an excellent job of showing this through their stories and histories, sure. but he does an even better job at showing it through their small interactions together. the way they always end up talking about the past, the attempt to bring up happier times (like tsunade trying to reminisce about their genin days as team hiruzen), yet how they ALWAYS come back to ultimately how they fell apart, and the world kept spinning, and all they can do is try to make sure the future doesn't make the same mistakes they did.
what can you even say to someone like that? it must've been so freeing, to have someone that understands them to such an extent. that would know them more than anyone else in the world ever could imagine. and yet. so suffocating. because they're a reminder. a reminder of what you used to be, a reminder of what could've been, a reminder of how everything went wrong, every single mistake you ever made. and so despite the person in front of you being the only person in the world that likely knows exactly how you're feeling, what you're going through, all your experiences, they're also somehow the last person you can ever speak to about any of it. because it becomes like a trap almost. they're constantly reminded of their pasts when they look at each other. how can you ever begin to move on with someone like that right in front of you?
once upon a time, they were the hope of konoha. they were the young shinobi, meant to bring in a new era of peace, meant to be the change. and they wholeheartedly believed this too. and then, to make it to 50, after everything they went through, and realising they were no better off than the generation before them. that everything they ever stood for, ever fought for, were all practically in vain. and how suddenly the people meant to be the change for the future can only hope to make sure there is still even a chance for change for the next generation.
really, what else are they meant to do around each other than continue their little dance or chess game and let the unspoken remain unspoken?
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By living a life based on wisdom and truth, one can discover the divinity of the soul, its union to the universe, the supreme peace and contentment which comes from satisfying the inner drive for self discovery.
Ancient Egyptian Proverbs
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Scug ocs!!
Waspcat, aka Skytreader. Can fly any direction, and eats a lot of meat. Very adept at survival. Her favorite meat is green lizard meat and was raised by nomad scavengers.
Mothcat, aka Lightbringer. The wings glow and have eye markings to ward of predators. Their journey is a more peaceful one, and they live off fruit. Designed by Calm Petals That Fall to bring a neuron to Blue Days
And the last.. Calm Petals herself. Sluggified. She can finally be free, at a cost. Her brain is basically a giant pearl, holding her memories and consciousness. But she didn't realize the procedure was copy and paste, not cut and paste.
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After the storm sieges Will in that field, Joyce holds him that night, her weight against him like a remora along his spine. And as he sleeps, or as the body cradled to the crook of hers does, it isn't Will she is holding. It is the body that belongs to Will, but Will isn't whats inside anymore. Or if he is, it's in microdoses, like a craving ringworm or hopeless antigen.
And later in the hospital, waiting for doctors to make a decision and waiting for Will to wake up -not the monster in Will's skin, but Will, his wise and wonderul mage- Mike sees it; the shifting animal in his best friend's body, even if no one else seems to. Sees the way it stares back at him in those unfeeling brown eyes that are so far from the hazel dream catchers Mike knows, gritty shadows of dust devils swirling beneath the surface. He sees it and he hates it and he spends every second stuck in that room hating it, the feeling second only to the chilling fear he has for Will. The fear that this time he won't come back.
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