I have written about dandelion nirvana day before. It is the celebrated calendar time when dandelion seeds lift up and fill the air with their mini helicopter floating seeds. Today I came across this super cute video of a little persons response to dandelion seeds being blown to the four quarter winds. Nirvana day is now synonymous with infectious giggly laughter. I love this. If you are ever having a bad day watch this video on repeat and you may find your mood shift and lift just life the dandelion seeds.
Wednesday 27 May 2015
Sunday 3 May 2015
Many ways of knowing
Scientists are the worlds describers and labellers. They categorise, compartmentalise, dissect and draw maps of the world we inhabit and yet as tempted as they are to cross the line into being explainers, into the ones that hold the answer to questions beginning in why? that is a domain their lens of perception and understanding cannot and should not go.
In a typical Sunday surf through the inter-webs I went from a youtube dialogue with Deepak Chopra on consciousness to savants and from their found the amazing individual Danial Tammet. He introduced himself to the audience of a TED talk as a high functioning autistic savant - nice! He is high functioning in the sense he can use and calculate numbers, learn and remember languages in ways most of us cannot. Daniel has linguistic, numerical and visual synesthesia - meaning that his perception of words, numbers and colors are woven together into a new way of perceiving and understanding the world.
Here is the TED Talk.
What I find fascinating about Daniel is his ability to describe and share with us his experience of perception or knowing or as some might say consciousness. And as he shows us in his talk synesthesia is not limited to numbers, it can be extended to anything including art, language, literature so that the way we see, perceive and experience the world is possibly far greater than we could ever have imagined and also more unique than the confinement of rational positivistic science would let us believe.
There is nothing new here. Nor do I think Daniel is claiming newness. Maybe by example and openness Daniel along with many other high function autistic savants are showing us our field of possibility, our potential and pathways to extended ways of perceiving that have always been there and now need remembering and reactivating in us.
Daniel has a special relationship and appreciation of number. In particular he has a fondness for pi. This extraordinary number that continues into infinity. Daniel has painted the number Pi. On his Blog Daniel shares a poem by the Polish Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012) that sings the praises of one of his favourite numbers.
The admirable number pi:
three point one four one. All the following digits are also initial, five nine two because it never ends. It can't be comprehended six five three five at a glance, eight nine by calculation, seven nine or imagination, not even three two three eight by wit, that is, by comparison four six to anything else two six four three in the world. The longest snake on earth calls it quits at about forty feet. Likewise, snakes of myth and legend, though they may hold out a bit longer.The pageant of digits comprising the number pi doesn't stop at the page's edge. It goes on across the table, through the air, over a wall, a leaf, a bird's nest, clouds, straight into the sky, through all the bottomless, bloated heavens. Oh how brief - a mouse tail, a pigtail - is the tail of a comet! How feeble the star's ray, bent by bumping up against space! While here we have two three fifteen three hundred nineteen my phone number your shirt size the year nineteen hundred and seventy-three the sixth floor the number of inhabitants sixty-five cents hip measurement two fingers a charade, a code, in which we find hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou never wert alongside ladies and gentlemen, no cause for alarm, as well as heaven and earth shall pass away, but not the number pi, oh no, nothing doing, it keeps right on with its rather remarkable five, its uncommonly fine eight, its far from final seven, nudging, always nudging a sluggish eternityto continue.
I am heartened and encouraged that my perception and consciousness is so much more than rational reasoned thought. That pictures, images, colours, textures, smells, sounds, feelings, intuitions, hunches ... whatever you might call the other than reasoned impulses and experiences that flavour and inform my life are real, have value, are valid and meaningful.
What would my life be like if I was more in tune with this part of my consciousness?
And how do I extend my many ways of knowing to embrace further these qualities and abilities?
In a typical Sunday surf through the inter-webs I went from a youtube dialogue with Deepak Chopra on consciousness to savants and from their found the amazing individual Danial Tammet. He introduced himself to the audience of a TED talk as a high functioning autistic savant - nice! He is high functioning in the sense he can use and calculate numbers, learn and remember languages in ways most of us cannot. Daniel has linguistic, numerical and visual synesthesia - meaning that his perception of words, numbers and colors are woven together into a new way of perceiving and understanding the world.
Here is the TED Talk.
What I find fascinating about Daniel is his ability to describe and share with us his experience of perception or knowing or as some might say consciousness. And as he shows us in his talk synesthesia is not limited to numbers, it can be extended to anything including art, language, literature so that the way we see, perceive and experience the world is possibly far greater than we could ever have imagined and also more unique than the confinement of rational positivistic science would let us believe.
There is nothing new here. Nor do I think Daniel is claiming newness. Maybe by example and openness Daniel along with many other high function autistic savants are showing us our field of possibility, our potential and pathways to extended ways of perceiving that have always been there and now need remembering and reactivating in us.
Daniel has a special relationship and appreciation of number. In particular he has a fondness for pi. This extraordinary number that continues into infinity. Daniel has painted the number Pi. On his Blog Daniel shares a poem by the Polish Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012) that sings the praises of one of his favourite numbers.
The admirable number pi:
three point one four one. All the following digits are also initial, five nine two because it never ends. It can't be comprehended six five three five at a glance, eight nine by calculation, seven nine or imagination, not even three two three eight by wit, that is, by comparison four six to anything else two six four three in the world. The longest snake on earth calls it quits at about forty feet. Likewise, snakes of myth and legend, though they may hold out a bit longer.The pageant of digits comprising the number pi doesn't stop at the page's edge. It goes on across the table, through the air, over a wall, a leaf, a bird's nest, clouds, straight into the sky, through all the bottomless, bloated heavens. Oh how brief - a mouse tail, a pigtail - is the tail of a comet! How feeble the star's ray, bent by bumping up against space! While here we have two three fifteen three hundred nineteen my phone number your shirt size the year nineteen hundred and seventy-three the sixth floor the number of inhabitants sixty-five cents hip measurement two fingers a charade, a code, in which we find hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou never wert alongside ladies and gentlemen, no cause for alarm, as well as heaven and earth shall pass away, but not the number pi, oh no, nothing doing, it keeps right on with its rather remarkable five, its uncommonly fine eight, its far from final seven, nudging, always nudging a sluggish eternityto continue.
I am heartened and encouraged that my perception and consciousness is so much more than rational reasoned thought. That pictures, images, colours, textures, smells, sounds, feelings, intuitions, hunches ... whatever you might call the other than reasoned impulses and experiences that flavour and inform my life are real, have value, are valid and meaningful.
What would my life be like if I was more in tune with this part of my consciousness?
And how do I extend my many ways of knowing to embrace further these qualities and abilities?
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