Category Archives: Philosophy

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Folly

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“Just when you think you’ve got a ‘fool-proof’ solution…..they build a better fool.”

“They say happiness is the folly of fools; pity poor me, one of the fools.” – from Scrooge the musical

Have you got any pictures of foolishness?

And did you notice that foolishness is man-made?  Nothing in my Nature Photo file fits this category.  Think about it….

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Renewed Like an Eagle – Spiritual Lessons from Nature

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Do you remember when your baby teeth fell out? Do you have any memories of being without central incisors, lisping and whistling when you spoke, unable to bite into an apple or an ear of corn? How much do you remember of the physical changes associated with your passage through puberty?

Would you ever choose to re-live those changes? (I imagine in response a loud chorus of ‘Noooo!’ and laughter.)

Why do we find change so awkward and uncomfortable? Why do we imagine a state of perfection achieved and unchanged, and why is that stasis desired? Consider this: change is natural; metamorphoses are observed and documented in every species — birth, maturation, reproduction, aging, death, decay, absorption, and birth. All around us there is a process of movement, going from one thing to another, losing some properties and gaining others. This is Life. It is dynamic; it is not good or bad; it is. Often, however, we decide we like where we are. We want to stay put. It’s familiar. It’s comfortable. But we are, in fact, stuck, and it takes a great deal of energy to stay there, resisting the current of Life all around. We feel drained, exhausted, spent, sapped, worn out. We want to feel the flow of energy again, but in order to do that, we must make a change. Fear holds us back. This is a pivotal point of decision – we must choose Change to choose Life.

The Old Testament talks about having youth renewed like the eagles’, about mounting up with wings as eagles and being borne on the wings of an eagle. Golden eagles populated the Holy Land, and their lifespans were observable to the ancient poets. I have seen bald eagles in the wild on a few occasions now, but not before I was 45 years old. What do I know of an eagle’s life? I did a little research. Southwestern Bald Eagle Management told me “In their five year development to adulthood, bald eagles go through one of the most varied plumage changes of any North American bird. During its first four weeks of life, an eaglet’s fluffy white down changes to a gray wooly down. At about five weeks, brown and black feathers begin to grow. It becomes fully feathered at 10 weeks of age. In its first year, the mostly dark-colored juvenile can often be mistaken as a golden eagle. However, the bald eagle progressively changes until it reaches adult plumage at five years. Notice in the pictures how its dark eye lightens throughout its first four years of life until it becomes yellow. Also, see how its beak changes from gray-black to a vibrant yellow. It is believed that the darker, more mottled plumage of a young eagle serves as camouflage, while the white head and tail announce that it is of breeding age.”

Renewal is for the purpose of maturity. It is not about going back to a juvenile state. It is about soaring with the movement of Life toward the next place of energy. It is not about resuscitation; it is about resurrection. We shall all be changed.

My daughter recommended to me a book titled Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. The author is a medical doctor and a gerontologist. He tackles the real and practical implications of growing old and dying in this culture: nursing homes, DNR orders and advance directives, heroic life-saving surgeries, hospice and what it is to live with meaning and dignity. This book terrified me. I read it in small doses. It made me face denial and delusions head on. It was not a comfortable read, but I would recommend it to anyone. It puts Change in the forefront and invites you to get real. I would not have been able to read it 7 years ago, right after my husband died. I wasn’t ready. The book I read then that helped me to accept change was Pema Chodron’s book When Things Fall Apart (which I recently discovered is a phrase from Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming”).

Where are you in the flow of Life? Where are you stuck? What are you afraid of when you face Change? How have you embraced Maturity? How have you run from it? What images of Peace in harmony with Change are meaningful to you? These may be your symbols of Renewal.  Here are a few of mine:

© 2015, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

This article is featured in the blog magazine The ‘B’ Zine.  Please click on the Zine link to view the rest of the Renewal volume and support my Into the Bardo & Beguine Again colleagues!

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A Little Story About Loving Yourself

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If you’re puzzled by relationships…

might he be the one…and feel that perhaps something is missing in your life…

something's missing…and you’ve done the same thing over and over, hoping something different might result…

patternimagine what might happen if you simply followed your bliss and did what you love.

do what you loveA life may emerge that is not what you dreamed or expected or even what you may have been promised.  Still, it is actual and dynamic…and there you are, being yourself and still doing what you love.  That’s not a bad outcome, is it?

whole scene

© 2015, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Symmetry

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Symmetry.  A very interesting concept.  Is it real or imagined?  I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how consciousness operates, how we impose ideas, structures, and order on the world to make it more…manageable?  Less overwhelming?  I think of Alan Watts who proposed that the real world is “wiggly”.  More fluid, with less distinct boundaries than we tend to ascribe to it.  Still, I suppose there is a lot of seeming symmetry in nature. Botany identifies symmetry frequently, for example, in compound leaf structures which are often classified as symmetrical or alternating.  Do I have any photographs of a symmetrical leaf or flower?  No.  I don’t typically take architectural shots, either, and if I do, they’re off center on purpose.  I think that means I am looking for the harmony of imperfect, wiggly things….like the Yin and Yang.  That symbol seems symmetrical, but it’s really opposites in balance.  I like that.  Not that I don’t try to make things symmetrical in my life.  I have a very orderly, Western brain.  I’ve straightened pictures and lined up pillows compulsively for years.  But I’m trying to break out of that habit.   If I must impose symmetry in order to feel at peace, then I’m in for a lot of anxiety.  It makes more sense to accept the wiggly world as it is.  So here’s some man-made symmetry that I’ve photographed…imperfectly:

 


Symmetry

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Scale

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What a great thing to contemplate: scale.  How overwhelming our lives become when our scale references are distorted!  For example, how imposing our thoughts can seem on the landscape of our lives.   My daughter gave me an illustration of this: imagine someone holding a large book in front of your face and asking you what you saw.  You’d see the book and maybe a bit of the room from your peripheral vision.  Now, if you moved the book to one side, you’d still see the book, but you’d also see more of the room.  It’s hard to make thoughts go away, but you can take them out of the forefront.  That’s what meditation is about — being aware of your thoughts, but not letting them dominate your view.   We make so many mountains out of mole hills in this culture.  There is so much OMG; like MSG, it can make us feel lousy.  Media hyper-activity and fear-mongering is like that, I think.  We need to dial down the lens, deflate our egos, maintain a humble perspective.  We are one leaf on a vast and robust tree of life.   We are beautiful; the tree is beautiful.  We are not greater than or less than the rest. 

© 2015, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

Scale

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Ego, Redundancy, Fasting and Abundance – Spiritual Lessons from Nature

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Have you ever had an experience of ego awakening? I have. The first one I remember happened as I was sitting in church on a Sunday morning, listening to a sermon. I was a child of about 7, I think, squirming about in the pew beside my family members. None of them were paying attention to me. They were simply silent. I suddenly became aware that I was there and that it was possible that I could ‘not be there’. I could not be born, for example, or I could be something else. I wondered why I wasn’t a rabbit, but a girl, Priscilla. I wondered why I was aware of being present for this sermon when I had sat through so many others and not been aware at all. I paid attention to the words of the Rector for a time, staring straight at him, but his talk was not as exciting as this simple new awareness. I figured he wasn’t really addressing me. I think it was Spring, the stained glass windows were open a bit, and the sun was shining. I sat facing the windows, away from the pulpit, and in rapt and embryonic ego transcendence.

My ego returned to center stage, though, shortly after that. I was the fourth daughter in this church-going family. I grew up with questions about whether or not I was special, with feelings of redundancy. My sisters were always more intelligent and talented and capable, having the edge of years of experience beyond mine. What did I have to offer that they couldn’t deliver more readily? And what would be my share of the resources available? Could my parents really give their attention and their love to all of us equally? Somehow, these questions kept arising for me, causing anxiety and an eagerness to convince myself that I was unique and uniquely loved. I spent 47 years in the church-going habit, seeking to resolve these questions in community with others looking for a similar comfort.

1965

Let me insert a different image now. David Attenborough on Christmas Island, surrounded by a moving mass of red crabs. It’s nighttime and quite dark. Thousands of females, heavy-laden with eggs, are approaching the tide in order to release their burdens into the surf. The water turns reddish brown as a surge of life heads out to sea. Millions, billions of little babies set adrift. Redundancy and abundance. Life in a beautifully mysterious burst of activity, at a specific time and place, choreographed by some ancient awareness and acceptance. It is awesome – possibly divine. Are those babies unique and uniquely loved? The question seems moot. They ARE. No less. No more. (http://www.arkive.org/christmas-island-red-crab/gecarcoidea-natalis/video-00c.html – this is not David Attenborough, but at least it doesn’t have advertisements.)

We were driving out to the University last week to attend an enrichment class entitled “Understanding the Mysteries of Hibernation” when Steve popped in an audio book CD, The Power of Now. Eckhart Tolle began to describe his pivotal ego experience: For years my life alternated between depression and acute anxiety. One night I woke up in a state of dread and intense fear, more intense than I had ever experienced before. Life seemed meaningless, barren, hostile. It became so unbearable that suddenly the thought came into my mind, “I cannot live with myself any longer.” The thought kept repeating itself several times. Suddenly, I stepped back from the thought, and looked at it, as it were, and I became aware of the strangeness of that thought: “If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me – the I and the self that I cannot live with.” And the question arose, “Who is the ‘I’ and who is the self that I cannot live with?”

He went on to talk about the False Self that is edified, criticized, and mortified in our Western culture. I nodded in complete recognition. Don’t we call that the Ego? And then…I began to think of that ‘I’, that divinely authentic, fully alive, completely unique and inter-dependent being that each of us is. It was like a flash. My face lit up in excitement as I turned to Steve, “YES! I get it!” The things I had been hearing about enlightenment and no-self in Buddhism finally made sense. It’s not about the abasement of your being, it’s about the shift from False Self to ‘I’.

An hour later, I was listening to a lecture about mammals who suppress their metabolic systems, who turn down the fire of life in order to more effectively harmonize their energy with their changing environment. They go through cycles of torpor and arousal, staying alive (and in some cases, giving birth) without adding any food energy into their system – for 5 to 6 months! This is fascinating! Heart rate, respiratory rate, body temperature, digestion – all of these vital systems depressed by as much as 75%, and still, there is Life. The speaker discussed implications for biomedical research, but I am not as impressed by what humans might do with this knowledge as I am by the beings who live it. They are the authentic ‘I’; they are themselves, in a web of inter-dependence and autonomy, using and conserving their energy in response to what IS, what is available in the environment and what is intrinsic to their survival. Descriptions, terms, charts and statistics become gibberish. Even Science is a False Self. These are “stepping-stones”, as are all words, in Tolle’s estimation, serving to propel us to the next place in the movement of existence.

photo from sciencenews.org

photo from sciencenews.org

The flow of Life, the flow of energy – what is that about? It’s not about clinging to stepping-stones: food, love, identity, thoughts, dogmas or practices. It’s about finding “the joy in change and movement” (as Steve would say), the dynamic of relating to an abundant, redundant, mysterious and unexpected Universe. It’s about waking up and being conscious of where we are right NOW…..and how beautiful and wonder-filled that place is. That consciousness is the beginning of Peace, an intuitive harmony with life that is unfortunately made dissonant by the noise of Falseness in this culture. What would it be like to give up that False Self more and more? Instead of giving up chocolate or the Internet for 40 days, I’m going to challenge myself to move more into ‘I’ existence. I don’t want to live with my self any longer. And that’s a good thing. 🙂 Namaste, Priscilla

© 2015, essay by Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

This essay is featured in this month’s B Zine, published by The Bardo Group/Beguine Again.  To see the rest of the contents of this collaboration, visit The B Zine here.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Depth

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My mother revealed to me a nickname that she had secretly assigned me when I was a young teen.  She thought of me as “The Waterstrider”.  Ever seen those long-legged bugs in a still puddle who are able to stroll the surface without ever breaking the tension that keeps them above water?  Here are a few:

water striders

My “Waterstrider” tendencies changed, my mother noted, after my sister and I were in a car accident and she was killed.  I turned 17 only three days later, and began to ask the Really Big, Serious Questions about life.  I began to search for Depth and Meaning, but mostly from only one perspective – Christianity.   When I was 45, my husband died in bed beside me early one Saturday morning.  My journey toward Depth was not over.   I decided to look from a different angle.  I needed a bigger perspective.

I discovered that there is so much more than I had ever noticed before.  Depth goes in different directions: up and down, inward and outward…indefinitely.  Maybe it was less overwhelming to be a Waterstrider, but it was also less genuine.  In the depths of the sea, there is reflected the vastness of the heavens.  In the solitude of a silent moment, there is the ageless Now.  In the recognition of something we “know”, there is the awareness of Mystery that we will never comprehend.  This might be what some people call “Wisdom” or “Maturity”.  I tend to think of it as simple Truth.  If you’re not afraid to go below the surface, you may discover the wonders of Depth.  It feels different.  It surrounds you, puts pressure on places that may not be used to bearing it.  But you may discover a strength and resiliency you didn’t know you had…at least I did.  Then that depth makes you feel buoyant and free…as if you were flying!

cranesTake up the challenge, friends.  Take a journey into Depth. 

(Thanks, Word Press, for a great theme!)

© 2015, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

Depth

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Express Yourself

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What an invitation!  “Express Yourself” – squeeze yourself into a photograph or a gallery, squirting out the essence of your personality, your style, your philosophy, your vision.  This could be one messy catharsis!  Here goes:

What was THAT about?! 

Well, here is something I’ve been pondering lately: Eckhart Tolle’s profound revelation “I can’t live with myself any longer.”  In order to arrive at such a conclusion, he must have thought there was a difference between ‘I’ (the authentic and divine being) and ‘My Self’ (the false delusion we sometimes call ‘ego’).  Seeing the juxtaposition of these two ideas of a person leads me to recognize that there is a lot of falsity, of gibberish and nonsense that we superimpose on the experience of existence.  That veneer surrounds us and can build up, layer upon layer to stifling proportions.  And then, sometimes there’s a break through.  A simple, true observation of the wonder of existence that doesn’t explain everything, but stands in almost blinding clarity against the noise of culture. 

Anyway, my gallery illustrates how I am living astride this double existence.  I interact with people who are a complex combination of I/Self expressions, I deal with objects which are mostly complete gibberish but which many people value anyway, and I marvel at Nature and grieve our exploitation of its pure embodiment of Life.   

Hope you found this entertaining and thought-provoking.  I appreciate the invitation to share my view!

© 2015, essay and photograph, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

Express Yourself

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Serenity

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Serenity.  A marvelous theme.  Placid water, still mind.  Peacefulness, harmony.  Keeping your surroundings still, small and simple.  My partner, Steve, is working on a New Year’s resolution.   So far, what I know he’s aiming at is maintaining more quiet in his life, perhaps returning to a practice of meditation and yoga. 

How do you cultivate quiet in your life?

Serenity

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Shadowed

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I really like this challenge.  Shadowed.  Looking at my photographs and paying attention to what the shadow adds to the picture is like developing greater awareness of the Yin side of the universal whole.  I don’t always remember to do that.  I am attracted to the brighter side of life by default, maybe because of my Sun sign, Leo…maybe not.  Maybe just because there are so many voices encouraging us Westerners to be positive and dualistic.  Shun the shadow, move toward the Light.  Problem is, you’re only half aware if you do that. 

Nature’s shadow is dramatic and ordinary at the same time.  Sunlight is a powerful force in the ecosystem of life, and its waxing and waning effects many behaviors.  We tend to think of the differences as important, but are they?

shadowed 2

Nocturnal creatures make a habitat out of shadow; it is simply home, cover and shelter. 

shadowed

Natural entrance to Carlsbad Caverns, from which approximately 300,000 bats emerge nightly to find water and food.

Shadows can represent mystery in life, reminding us that what we don’t see is nevertheless present and active.

shadowed 3Ultimately, ‘shadowed’ is a concept.  It’s a creation of the big human brain, borne of our propensity to analyze, distinguish and attach a label.  Shadows are a natural phenomenon that we like to imbue with meaning.  That’s who we are and what we do, and it’s interesting to ponder that.

shadowed 4

© 2015, essay and photograph, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

Inspired by the Word Press Weekly Photo Challenge.

Shadowed