A Guide for the Perplexed: Mapping the Meaning of Life and the Four Levels of Being by Maria Popova How to harness the uniquely human power of “consciousness recoiling upon itself.” “Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to destruction,” Rebecca Solnit wrote in her sublime meditation on how the art of getting lost helps us find ourselves, “and somewhere in the terra incognita in between lies a life of discovery.” But the maps we use to navigate that terra incognita — maps bequeathed to us by the dominant beliefs and standards of our culture — can often lead us further from ourselves rather than closer, leaving us discombobulated rather than oriented toward the true north of our true inner compass. Schumacher begins with an apt anecdotal metaphor for how these misleading maps are handed to us: On a visit to Leningrad some years ago I consulted a map to find out where I was, but I could not make it out. Map of Palmanova, from Umberto Eco's 'Legendary Lands.' 'Isle of Knowledge' by Marian Bantjes. We cannot say: “Hold it! Donating = Loving
Maya Angelou on Identity and the Meaning of Life by Maria Popova “Life loves the liver of it. You must live and life will be good to you.” The light of the world has grown a little dimmer with the loss of the phenomenal Maya Angelou, but her legacy endures as a luminous beacon of strength, courage, and spiritual beauty. Reflecting on her life, Angelou — who rose to cultural prominence through the sheer tenacity of her character and talent, despite being born into a tumultuous working-class family, abandoned by her father at the age of three, and raped at the age of eight — tells Rich: I’ve been very fortunate… I seem to have a kind of blinkers. She later revisits the question of identity, echoing Leo Buscaglia’s beautiful meditation on labels, as she reflects on the visibility her success granted her and the responsibility that comes with it: What I represent in fact, what I’m trying like hell to represent every time I go into that hotel room, is myself. The kindnesses … I never forget them. Donating = Loving Share on Tumblr
There's More to Life Than Being Happy - Emily Esfahani Smith "It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness." In September 1942, Viktor Frankl, a prominent Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist in Vienna, was arrested and transported to a Nazi concentration camp with his wife and parents. Three years later, when his camp was liberated, most of his family, including his pregnant wife, had perished -- but he, prisoner number 119104, had lived. In his bestselling 1946 book, Man's Search for Meaning, which he wrote in nine days about his experiences in the camps, Frankl concluded that the difference between those who had lived and those who had died came down to one thing: Meaning, an insight he came to early in life. When he was a high school student, one of his science teachers declared to the class, "Life is nothing more than a combustion process, a process of oxidation." Frankl jumped out of his chair and responded, "Sir, if this is so, then what can be the meaning of life?" Viktor Frankl [Herwig Prammer/Reuters] Peter Andrews/Reuters
Humans of New York Meaning Is Healthier Than Happiness - Emily Esfahani Smith Health People who are happy but have little-to-no sense of meaning in their lives have the same gene expression patterns as people who are enduring chronic adversity. Please consider disabling it for our site, or supporting our work in one of these ways Subscribe Now > For at least the last decade, the happiness craze has been building. One of the consistent claims of books like these is that happiness is associated with all sorts of good life outcomes, including — most promisingly — good health. But a new study, just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) challenges the rosy picture. Of course, it’s important to first define happiness. It seems strange that there would be a difference at all. "Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided," the authors of the study wrote.
Learned Optimism: Martin Seligman on Happiness, Depression, and the Meaningful Life by Maria Popova What 25 years of research reveal about the cognitive skills of happiness and finding life’s greater purpose. “The illiterate of the 21st century,” Alvin Toffler famously said, “will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” Last week, Oliver Burkeman’s provocatively titled new book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking, prompted me to revisit an old favorite by Dr. Seligman begins by identifying the three types of happiness of which our favorite psychology grab-bag term is composed: ‘Happiness’ is a scientifically unwieldy notion, but there are three different forms of it if you can pursue. He then defines optimism and pessimism, pointing out the challenge to self-identify as either, and offers a heartening, heavily researched reassurance: The optimists and the pessimists: I have been studying them for the past twenty-five years. Optimism is invaluable for the meaningful life. Donating = Loving
What Writing Has in Common With Happiness By Heart is a series in which authors share and discuss their all-time favorite passages in literature. See entries from Jonathan Franzen, Amy Tan, Khaled Hosseini, and more. The final line of an enigmatic Jorge Luis Borges poem became the title for Yasmina Reza's latest book, Happy Are the Happy. Happy Are the Happy features 18 different narrators, each of whom gets to command the reader's attention for at least one chapter. Reza’s books—novels, plays, and an unorthodox book-length profile of Nicolas Sarkozy—have been translated into more than 30 languages. She lives in Paris and spoke to me in New York City. Yasmina Reza: Late in the process of finishing my new book, Happy Are the Happy, I started looking for a title. I was on a plane when the French phrase heureux les heureux, happy are the happy, came to mind. So when I went home, I took all my Borges off the shelf. Happy are those who are beloved, and those who love, and those who are without love. And we can never know.
Lucid Dreaming Techniques: A Guide To Lucid Dream Induction Here are my top lucid dreaming techniques for beginners. They range from simple memory exercises (like Reality Checks and Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams) to specialized meditation (like Wake Induced Lucid Dreams). Lucid Dreaming Tutorials For step-by-step tutorials and audio tools for lucid dream induction and exploration, check out my Lucid Dreaming Fast Track study program for beginners and beyond. 52 Ways to Have Lucid Dreams A complete list of 52 ways to have lucid dreams - based on visualization, memory, supplements, sleep cycles and more methods than you can shake a stick at. How to Have Lucid Dreams A summary of my favorite lucid dreaming techniques, from improving dream recall, to programming your dreams, to meditation and self-hypnosis. How to Remember Your Dreams To lucid dream, you must first remember your dreams. Keeping a Dream Journal How to Perform Reality Checks How to Improve Your Self Awareness Lucid Dreams and Prospective Memory Dream Induced Lucid Dreams (DILDs)
Effort Is Not the Enemy of Compassion - Leslie Jamison My job title is medical actor, which means I play sick. I get paid by the hour. Medical students guess my maladies. Medical acting works like this: You get a script and a paper gown. My specialty case is Stephanie Phillips, a 23-year-old who suffers from something called conversion disorder. STEPHANIE PHILLIPS Psychiatry SP Training Materials CASE SUMMARY: You are a 23-year-old female patient experiencing seizures with no identifiable neurological origin. We test second- and third-year medical students in topical rotations: pediatrics, surgery, psychiatry. A student might have to sit across from a delusional young lawyer and tell him that when he feels a writhing mass of worms in his small intestine, the feeling is probably coming from somewhere else. Once the 15-minute encounter has ended, the medical student leaves the room, and I fill out an evaluation of his/her performance. Some med students get nervous during our encounters. Empathy means realizing no trauma has discrete edges.
How to Lucid Dream: 15 Steps Featured Article Categories: Featured Articles | Dreams In other languages: Español: tener sueños lúcidos, Deutsch: Einen Klartraum träumen, Français: faire des rêves lucides, Português: Ter Sonhos Lúcidos, Русский: видеть осознанные сны, 中文: 做清醒梦, Nederlands: Zo kun je lucide dromen, Čeština: Jak na lucidní snění, Bahasa Indonesia: Bermimpi Sadar, 日本語: 明晰夢を見る, العربية: رؤية حلم جلي, ไทย: ฝันรู้ตัว, 한국어: 루시드 드림 꾸는 법, Tiếng Việt: Mơ có Ý thức
Why 'Things Fitting Perfectly Into Other Things' Is So Satisfying Oh! Why, hello. I didn't see you there. Come, come—sit down by the warm glow of the computer and let me spin you a yarn. See, once upon a time, I had a raincoat. I was careless with my comfort; what comes unexpectedly can all too easily slip away. But why would it even be interesting—let alone soothing—that two random, unrelated items could be physically combined? “I think it has to do with a new way of putting things together in a surprising, novel, and exciting way. The unusualness of the combination might grab the attention, but it’s also how extreme the coincidence of a perfect fit is. It’s the sort of little joy that can’t be forced, only discovered. In its bringing of order to randomness, “Things Fitting Perfectly Into Other Things” is a spiritual sibling to another popular Tumblr, “Things Organized Neatly,” which specializes in photos of objects arranged in patterns by size, color, type, or shape, laid out in tidy rows and columns.
How to Study Less by Learning Things Once You read over your notes. Then you read them over again. Then you read them over a third time. Then you take the test and are surprised at just how much you missed. Despite reading everything three times! A lot of study time is wasted because of one problem: you fail to learn things the first time around. Repeatedly going over the same information like putting a band-aid over a sieve. The key to reducing the amount of time you study is simple: learn things the first time you see them, instead of after dozens of repetitions. This is all easier said than done. Step One: Find the Holes If you want to repair a leaky brain, you need to figure out where the holes are. What from this section am I most likely to forget? When you identify weak points, you can invest more time in fixing those instead of wasting time with a blanket studying technique of all information. Step Two: Repair Weak Points Once you’ve identified potential weak-points, you should immediately seek to fix them. Memorizing?