Zaurora

yoga9vipassana: This is priceless. :-) It’s an important message in how we define ourselves. What we think of as our “self” is not our full, actual self. It’s the fraction of it that we define with thoughts, ideas, expectations, memories, emotions, and what we pay attention to. There’s always more to us than we realize because our mind can never represent all of those aspects at once. We act as if the “me” that we know is the actual me. But in fact, it’s a mental representation. A toy model airplane resembles an actual airplane but it can never fully capture the actual thing. Our mental idea of who we are, who we think we are, can never fully capture the totality of the actual person.  To recognize this gives a great deal of freedom. View Larger

yoga9vipassana:

This is priceless. :-)

It’s an important message in how we define ourselves. What we think of as our “self” is not our full, actual self. It’s the fraction of it that we define with thoughts, ideas, expectations, memories, emotions, and what we pay attention to. There’s always more to us than we realize because our mind can never represent all of those aspects at once.

We act as if the “me” that we know is the actual me. But in fact, it’s a mental representation. A toy model airplane resembles an actual airplane but it can never fully capture the actual thing. Our mental idea of who we are, who we think we are, can never fully capture the totality of the actual person. 

To recognize this gives a great deal of freedom.

(Source: facebook.com)

Reblogged 22 hours ago from yoga9vipassana 17 notes
Many adults are put off when youngsters pose scientific questions. Children ask why the sun is yellow, or what a dream is, or how deep you can dig a hole, or when is the world’s birthday, or why we have toes. Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else. Why adults should pretend to omniscience before a five-year-old, I can’t for the life of me understand. What’s wrong with admitting that you don’t know? Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys many adults. A few more experiences like this, and another child has been lost to science. There are many better responses. If we have an idea of the answer, we could try to explain. If we don’t, we could go to the encyclopedia or the library. Or we might say to the child: “I don’t know the answer. Maybe no one knows. Maybe when you grow up, you’ll be the first to find out.

— Carl Sagan

(Source: skaterboytae)

Reblogged 1 week ago from astarvingheart (Originally from skaterboytae) 14,279 notes
I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.

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(Source: thinkprogress.org)

Reblogged 1 week ago from thepoliticalnotebook (Originally from rachelfershleiser) 1,973 notes