The Divine Tentacles

I'm 27. I'm an Anatomist, Dissector, and Student who is studying Cellular and Molecular Medicine. I love literature and any form of storytelling that tries to make sense of our lives. I come from a Mormon background which certainly informs my worldview. I prefer questions to answers so I look at this as a place to explore some my thoughts. Also glitter "Ce n'est rien de mourir, C'est affreux de ne pas vivre."

[thetrickbrain-blog]

It's a little tricky coming in. Some kids, when they see a clown, they think they're going to be eaten alive. And kids in hospitals and burn units, of course, are pretty shaky... Burnt skin or bald heads on little kids - what do you do? I guess you just face it. When the kids are really hurting so bad, and so afraid, and probably dying, and everybody's heart is breaking. Face it and see what happens after that, see what to do next. I got the idea of traveling with popcorn. When a kid is crying, I dab up the tear with the popcorn and pop it in my mouth or into his or hers. We sit around together and eat the tears.

The Spirituality of Imperfection

I burst into tears with the imagery of that last line. We sit around together and eat the tears.

"Sometimes that is all that we can do. But somehow, when we do that "together," healing and forgiveness - not only by "God" but even of "God" - can happen."

[gustavmalheur-deactivated201509]

victor hugo in 3 easy steps

1. place hand in hair (ruffling is optional) 2. strike a fabulous pose 3. wait for the camera

[thetrickbrain-blog]

To forgive, truly to forgive, involves letting go of the feeling of resentment and of the vision that underlies that feeling - the vision in which we see ourselves as bein offended against, the vision of self-as-victim... The core of resentment is less a "feeling" than the "seeing" of one's self as being a victim. To see "self-as-victim" is to adopt a worldview in which forgiveness becomes impossible.

The Spirituality of Imperfection

[thetrickbrain-blog]

When Rabbi Menachem Mendel was a small child, his grandfather, Rabbi Shneur Zalman, held him on his lap and asked the child, "Where is Zeide (grandfather)?" The child touched the grandfather's nose. "No," the rabbi said, "that is Zeide's nose. But where is Zeide?" The child touched the grandfather's beard. "No, that is Zeide's beard. But where is Zeide?" The child descended, ran to the next room and shouted, "Zeide!" and Rabbi Shneur Zalman went into the room. Gleefully the child pointed, "There is Zeide!" The message is a powerful one. Zeide is the one who responds when called. We know that G-d is our Father. He responds.

Twerski, Living Each Day via The Spirituality of Imperfection

[thetrickbrain-blog]

Here is it essential to remember that for a Christian “the word of the Cross” is nothing theoretical, but a stark and existential experience of union with Christ in His death in order to share in His resurrection. To fully “hear” and “receive” the word of the Cross means much more than simple assent to the dogmatic proposition that Christ died for our sins. It means to be “nailed to the Cross with Christ,” so that the ego-self is no longer the principle of our deepest actions, which now proceed from Christ living in us. “I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal. 2:19-20; see also Romans 8:5-17).

Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite

[thetrickbrain-blog]

I just realized the creepy guard from Orange is the New Black is Nick Sobotka from the docks on the Wire. I don't know why this made my head spin. I guess b/c I liked him in the wire. but i don't really even care much for orange, so I am still confused at my reaction.

[thetrickbrain-blog]

In the first two chapters of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul distinguishes between two kinds of wisdom: one which consists in the knowledge of words and statements, a rational, dialectical wisdom, and another which is at once a matter of paradox and of experience, and goes beyond the reach of reason. To attain to this spiritual wisdom, one must first be liberated from servile dependence on the “wisdom of speech.” (1 Cor. 1:17) This liberation is effected by the “word of the Cross” which makes no sense to those who cling to their own familiar views and habits of thought and is a means by which God “destroys the wisdom of the wise.” (1 Cor. 1:18-23) The word of the Cross is in fact completely baffling and disconcerting both to the Greeks with their philosophy and to the Jews with their well-interpreted Law. But when one has been freed from dependence on verbal formulas and conceptual structures, the Cross becomes a source of “power”. This emanates from the “foolishness of God” and it also makes use of “foolish instruments.” (the Apostles). (1 Cor. 1:27 ff.) On the other hand, he who can accept this paradoxical “foolishness” experiences in himself a secret and mysterious power, which is the power of Christ living in him as the ground of a totally new life and a new being. (1 Cor. 2:1-4, cf. Eph. 1:18-23, Gal. 6:14-16)

Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite

[thetrickbrain-blog]

The eye wherein I see God is the same eye wherein God sees me.

Meister Eckhart

[thetrickbrain-blog]

We must never forget that Christianity is much more than the intellectual acceptance of a religious message by a blind and submissive faith which never understands what the message means except in terms of authoritative interpretations handed down externally by experts in the name of the Church. On the contrary, faith is the door to the full inner life of the Church, a life which includes not only access to an authoritative teaching but above all to a deep personal experience which is at once unique and yet shared by the whole Body of Christ, in the Spirit of Christ.

Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite

[thetrickbrain-blog]

It must be said here that if anyone tries to spell out a philosophical or doctrinal interpretation for the Zen sayings like those we have quoted above, he is mistaken. If he seeks to argue that when Pai Chang points to the falling snow as answer to a question about the Absolute, as though to say that the falling snow were identified with the Absolute, in other words that this intuition was a reflexive pantheistic awareness of the Absolute as object, seen in the falling snow, then he has entirely missed the point of Zen. To imagine that Zen is “teaching pantheism” is to imagine that it is trying to explain something. We repeat: Zen explains nothing. It just sees. Sees what? Not an Absolute Object but Absolute Seeing.

Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite

[turibulum]

Oh, we are, indeed, blessed to be young and in Russia.

[thetrickbrain-blog]

this show

[mehreenkasana]

Since March, 2014, 381 drone attacks have taken place in Pakistan in which 1,745 to 3,232 people have been killed. Of these, 1,278 to 2,524 are identified as civilians. 10 to 45 as Al-Qaeda members. 168 to 200 or, it is feared, more as children. Another 1,122 to 1,606 have been injured.

[x]

[thetrickbrain-blog]

But it is wrong to assume that these great needs demand the hypertrophy of self-consciousness and the elephantiasis of self-will, without which modern man tends to doubt his own reality. On the contrary, I might suggest a fourth need of modern man which is precisely liberation from his inordinate self-consciousness, his monumental self-awareness, his obsession with self-affirmation, so that he may enjoy the freedom from concern that goes with being simply what he is and accepting things as they are in order to work with them as he can.

Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite

[thetrickbrain-blog]

I am sitting at the table with giants

At first I thought they were all saying similar things but drawing from different traditions

But now I am starting to see some really interesting tensions emerge in the dialogue

[thetrickbrain-blog]

Cartesian thought began with an attempt to reach God as object by starting from the thinking self. But when God becomes object, he sooner or later “dies,” because God as object is ultimately unthinkable… Yet the great problem is that for the Cartesian consciousness the “other,” too, is object… The self is not its own center and does not orbit around itself; it is centered on God, the one center of all, which is “everywhere and nowhere,” in whom all are encountered, from whom all proceed. Thus from the very start this consciousness is disposed to encounter “the other” with whom it is already united anyway “in God.”

Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite

[thetrickbrain-blog]

In brief, this form of consciousness assumes a totally different kind of self-awareness from that of the Cartesian thinking-self which is its own justification and its own center. Here, the individual is aware of himself as a self-to-be-dissolved in self-giving, in love, in “letting go,” in ecstasy, in God - there are many ways of phrasing it.

Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite

[thetrickbrain-blog]

Would that all people were prophets

Moses