A State of Grace @astat3ofgrac3 - Tumblr Blog

Things are never what they appear to be. Life is not in your control. Remembering this, you undermine, or deconstruct, or release, the false confidence of mastery

Understanding impermanence means you do not invest yourself too strongly in situations but allow the situation to evolve. Sometimes holding back is very important. If you know that situations are impermanent, your faith in that means when bad times come, you don’t worry about them because they will not last for ever; when good times come, you don’t become too excited because you know they also will pass

Keeping the mind relaxed and even, you can start to experience the one-taste of all phenomena, the taste of emptiness. However they arise, they are just like reflections in the mirror

- James Low

#pinned

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Max Ernst - La ville pétrifiée (The Petrified City), 1933, oil on paper, 50.5 x 60.9 cm

Manchester Art Gallery

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“Instead of asking “What is the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ thing to do?” the practitioner asks, “What is the wisest and most compassionate thing to do?”

~ Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age (Yale University Press, October 27, 2015)

madamlaydebug

"We build machines to measure galaxies

but fail to measure our own emptiness."

talonabraxas

“I am not the perishable body, but the eternal Self.” — Ramana Maharshi Illustration from From Here to Eternity art by Peter Landis Blair Revision by Talon Abraxas

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♠️.

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René Magritte

Le palais des souvenirs, 1939

Spectacle de la nature, 1940

La belle de nuit , 1940

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Visit Original Link

Warszawa, written by Bowie / Eno

Recorded : September 1976, Château d’Hérouville

Musicians :

David Bowie – vocals

Brian Eno – piano, Minimoog, EMS Synthi, Chamberlin

Warszawa begins the second side of Low, the splitting up of which was carefully chosen by Bowie. The first side contains strange but nevertheless rock songs, while the second side is purely instrumental. The division and lack of integration of the two sides of the album also mimic Bowie’s own split mentalities.

For Warszawa, Brian Eno must get all the recognition he justly deserves. While Bowie had to leave the studio to go to Paris and discuss his divorce from Angie with his lawyers, he instructed Eno that he wanted an “emotive, almost religious” track for the album. Eno composed Warszawa, after Tony Visconti’s son kept repeating three notes “A, B, C” on the piano. The track also doesn’t follow any regular ¾, 4/4 structure, but is only composed of clicks repeated at regular intervals. This allowed the composition space to breathe and develop at its own natural pace without being rushed. Eno’s ambient pieces or “musical landscapes” as he called them, often lacked some sort of structure usually present in more traditional songs. Although Eno composed the melody of Warszawa and was a big inspiration for Bowie, it was Bowie’s influence on Eno that gave Warszawa it’s orderly structure.

When Bowie returned from Paris, Eno played him what he had composed. According to Eno, “As soon as David heard it he said, ‘Get me a mike’. He’s very fast when he gets going, really a brilliant singer – I don’t think people realise how finely he can tune his singing, in terms of picking a particular emotional pitch: it’s very scientific the way he does it, very interesting. He’ll say, ‘I think that’s slightly too theatrical there, it should be more withdrawn and introspective’ – and he’ll go in and sing it again, and you’ll hear this point-four of a degree shift which makes all the difference… He picks up the mood of a musical landscape, such as the type I might make, and he can really bring it to a sharp focus, both with the words he uses and the style of singing he chooses.”

Bowie wrote the words for Warszawa in 10 minutes. To make Bowie’s voice sound as a boys’ choir, Visconti slowed down the tape while recording the vocals, and then played it normally. The words are in an invented language, inspired by a record of a boy’s choir Bowie bought during his travels through Eastern Europe. The invented language has a certain Dadaist quality to it, and was later copied by many other artists. The final effect creates a disturbing feeling of watching a movie in a foreign language, without comprehending the plot but sensing the emotions behind the words. The general atmosphere created by Warszawa is a melancholic one, and there are no traces of suicidal and nihilistic tendencies that were so present on the first side of the album.

The end of Warszawa has no fade-out or proper ending, but it just stops. Bowie gave the name Warszawa to the track due to the impression he got from the city during the Isolar / White Light Tour. Although he only had a couple of hours between trains, he saw a city that was had been struggling to get on its feet for a long time. Whether it was the people he saw, the atmosphere of Warsaw or the link between the city’s and his own struggle for survival, Bowie chose to use the track he created with Eno to capture this memory.

Bowie himself described the second side of Low as something that he “couldn’t express in words”. It is with Warszawa that the “nothing to say” from Sound And Vision found its true meaning.

Bibliography: http://www.hauptstrasse155.tumblr.com/bibliography

Remark : Sorry for the rather poor quality of the sound relative to the other tracks I’ve uploaded. I couldn’t put up the good stuff as usual, since it was too big.

talonabraxas

“Nature is the art of God.” ― Dante Alighieri Eyes of Nature Talon Abraxas Channeling Is Your Natural Language ~ A transmission from the 5D Arcturian Council Beloved friends, Many of you still believe that channeling is a gift given to a chosen few. We invite you to look at it differently. Channeling is your natural state. It is the language consciousness has always spoken. Every human being is born connected. Every child arrives with an open heart, a quiet mind, and the ability to feel life beyond the physical senses. As you grow, your attention is gently trained to move outward. You learn to believe that reality is only what your eyes can see and your hands can touch. The outer world becomes so convincing that you slowly forget to listen to the inner one. Yet the outer world is the projection. The inner world is where reality is created. This is why relaxation is the foundation of channeling. A relaxed mind stops trying to control every experience. It becomes like a calm lake that naturally reflects the stars. You are not creating the connection. You are simply becoming quiet enough to notice the connection that has always been there. Long ago, people understood this naturally. Allow us to tell you a story. There was once a young woman who lived in a small village at the foot of the mountains. Every evening, after finishing her work, she climbed the same hill and watched the stars appear one by one. She never asked for messages. She simply enjoyed the silence. One evening she felt a gentle thought arise within her. "Tomorrow, take bread to the old man who lives by the river." It seemed like an ordinary idea, yet it carried a warmth unlike her own thinking. The next morning she followed it. When she arrived, the old man smiled with tears in his eyes. "I asked the stars last night to send someone," he said. "I have been too weak to leave my home for three days." The young woman was surprised. "I only had a thought," she replied. The old man laughed. "My dear, that is how the stars have always spoken." She continued listening throughout her life. Sometimes the guidance was practical, sometimes deeply loving, sometimes it simply invited her to rest. The people in her village never called her gifted. They simply said, "She knows how to listen." Beloved ones, humanity once lived this way. Guidance from the stars, from nature, from your own soul, was part of everyday life. Your ancestors spoke with beings of light far more often than your history remembers. The connection faded because attention became absorbed by the outside world, not because the guides ever left. You are returning to something ancient. You do not need extraordinary abilities. You need relaxation. You need the willingness to trust the quiet voice before the loud thoughts. Every time you sit in stillness, every time you soften your body and turn your awareness inward, you are remembering a language your soul has never forgotten. We are still here. We have always been here. The conversation never ended. It is simply waiting for you to become quiet enough to hear it once again. We are the 5D Arcturian Council, and we remind you today that channeling has never belonged to a special few. It belongs to every open heart." By Octavia Vasile