⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

🤲 Erich Fromm on Having Versus Being: Discover why fulfillment is rooted in who we are rather than what we own. Read it here.

🤺 Science and Metaphysics: A Family Quarrel?: A provocative look at why empirical facts alone cannot explain consciousness or meaning. Read it here.

🤖 Magic and the Machine: A powerful call to remember that technology may be blinding us to a living, sensing world. Read it here.

🎇 Image of The Week

Fly Geyser, sometimes called Fly Ranch Geyser, is a vivid and almost alien geothermal feature in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. It looks like a living sculpture with hot water rising from cone-shaped mounds and brilliant colors spreading across its surface. These greens, reds and golds come from heat-loving algae that thrive in the constantly flowing water. The scene feels otherworldly and many visitors describe it as something that belongs on another planet rather than in the American desert.

It formed by accident after drilling projects in the early and mid twentieth century reached a geothermal source of hot water. One of the wells was not sealed correctly and mineral-rich water began to rise through it. As the water cooled at the surface, it left behind layers of calcium carbonate and silica that built up into strange travertine formations. Over time, more minerals accumulated and more algae colonized the wet rock, shaping a colorful structure that continues to grow. Fly Geyser is both a natural geothermal fountain and a human mistake that turned into a surreal landscape shaped slowly by heat, minerals and biological life.

📏 You Are Immeasurable

The tendency to compare is a common one.

We examine our ability in a particular arena and see how we measure up against the competition.

We then do that across a variety of domains.

How do my looks measure up? How does my athleticism measure up? How does my health measure up? How does my weight measure up? How does my bank account measure up? How does my intelligence measure up?

I could go on and on but you get the point.

We often run these calculations unconsciously.

And it adds up to a negative number because we fixate on the ways we don't measure up.

Rather than the progress we've made and the capacity we've built, we see the ways we're still deficient. The ways others are ahead.

But this isn't even about viewing your measurements more positively.

It's about realizing that, in your totality, you are immeasurable.

That's because you can't measure something that is completely unique.

In your totality, you are a category of one.

A category of one, by definition, cannot be compared.

So don't be fooled into measuring a bundle of thin slices of your being, assigning value to those dimensions, and adding them up into your worth.

Your worth is incalculable.

You are immeasurable.

You are unique.

👁️ Transparent Eyeball

Ponder these words from Ralph Waldo Emerosn

🤓 Learn This Word

Ecognosis: A term that refers to a type of ecological awareness or understanding, emphasizing a relationship with the environment that acknowledges its strangeness and complexity without trying to simplify or reduce it. It involves a deeper knowledge of our interconnectedness with nature and the recognition of the ongoing interactions between humans and their surroundings.

🕸️ From Around The Web

In Praise of Idleness

“Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying “Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.” Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was told and acquired a conscience which has kept me working hard down to the present moment. But although my conscience has controlled my actions, my opinions have undergone a revolution. I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached. Every one knows the story of the traveler in Naples who saw twelve beggars lying in the sun (it was before the days of Mussolini), and offered a lira to the laziest of them. Eleven of them jumped up to claim it, so he gave it to the twelfth. This traveler was on the right lines. But in countries which do not enjoy Mediterranean sunshine idleness is more difficult, and a great public propaganda will be required to inaugurate it. I hope that after reading the following pages the leaders of the Y. M. C. A. will start a campaign to induce good young men to do nothing. If so, I shall not have lived in vain.”

[Continue Reading]