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Another candid shot from time spent shooting a bit of street photography in the beautiful Piazza San Marco in Turin.
I do seem to have rather a lot of shots of woman and very few of men....... I don't think that was a conscious decision, just a representative reflection of the population promenading around in the lovely early evening light.
Click here to see more of my photos from various trips to Italy : www.flickr.com/photos/darrellg/albums/72157603213111374
From Wikipedia : "Piazza San Carlo is one of the main city squares in Turin, Italy. It was laid out in the 16th and 17th century and is an example of Baroque style. Its current name is an hommage to Charles Borromeo while the square was previously known as Piazza Reale, Piazza d'Armi, and Place Napoleon.
The Caval 'd brons (piedmontese for bronze horse), equestrian statue of Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, by Carlo Marochetti (1838), is located at the center of the square, that is surrounded by porticos designed by Carlo di Castellamonte around 1638. The twin churches of Santa Cristina and San Carlo Borromeo close the southern edge of the square.
The square has become a normal stage of different historical and social events, including election rallies, concerts, events, live TV (like the 2006 Winter Olympics and Juventus matches)."
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© D.Godliman
Shot on a Nikon FM2n
Glass by Zeiss, ZF.2 Distagon 35 f/2
Film by Fuji, 100
Developer by Tetenal, C41 Press Kit
** file replaced - Nikon Coolscan 4000ED re-scan **
At certain brain wave frequencies, a sense of "ego boundary" vanishes. In the "theta" state, we are resting deeply and still conscious, at the threshold of drifting away from or back into conscious awareness.There is also a prana breathing tube that runs through the body. It connects the apexes of this Star Tetrahedral field. Learning how to breathe through this tube, combined with rotating the fields, produces the merkaba, a vehicle of ascension. As the brain enters deeper states, our consciousness is less concerned with the physical state, our 'third eye' is active, and separation becomes natural. You can be aware of your truth in every moment of every day by drawing on the deepest blue strand you can find. That strand won’t let you listen to third-dimensional words that are designed to deceive you. You will walk away from words that are not in the highest truth. With your truth strand out front, you won’t be deceived. You’ll know and hear truth, and if you hear an untruth, it will not work for you.Your blueprints have always been available to you, and when they’re interwoven, you can use this exercise to travel through the etheric fabric to find what you’re looking for. When you present your request properly to your higher self, you’ll be surprised by just how much you do know about where you want to go. Much of what you know is unsaid, hidden in your feelings, but accessible..Prana breathing tube that runs through the body. It connects the apexes of this Star Tetrahedral field. Learning how to breathe through this tube, combined with rotating the fields, produces the merkaba, a vehicle of ascension.he photon energy belt that the Earth will move through during the Shift is so huge that I cannot provide you with a precise description of its immensity. Second, prana is a vital life-giving breath, involving deep inhalation, which allows the photon energy to enter into the body through the crown chakra. Finally, your pineal gland is the receptacle of the photon energy in the body..These are three identical fields superimposed over each other, the only difference among them being that the physical body alone is locked, it does not rotate. The merkaba is created by counter-rotating fields of energy. The mental Star Tetrahedral field is electrical in nature, male, and rotates to the left. Since the higher energies work with your feelings, your focus must be on your emotional body. If you learn to think emotionally, you will be aware that your emotions guide everything within your realm. Your emotional body is between your mental and physical bodies, so when you feel something, the latter two bodies go along for the ride..The emotional Star Tetrahedral field is magnetic in nature, female, and rotates to the right. It is the linking together of the mind, heart, and physical body in a specific geometrical ratio and at a critical speed that produces the merkaba.The MerKaBa (sometimes spelled merkavah and, or merkabah) is a vehicle of Ascension. It was believed in ancient times, and even written about by the Hebrews, that the merkavah could be turned on by certain principles in meditation. This involves breathing changes & mind, heart, and body changes that alter the way a person perceives reality..The word “Mer” denotes counter-rotating fields of light, “Ka” Spirit, and “Ba” body, or reality. So the Mer-Ka-Ba then, is a counter-rotating Living field of light that encompasses both Spirit and body and it’s a dimensional vehicle. It’s far more than just that, in fact there isn’t anything that it isn’t. It is the image through which all things were created, and that image is around your body in a geometrical set of patterns.The field extends out a full fifty to sixty feet in diameter (18 to 20 meters), depending on your height. It looks like a flying saucer (Fig. 1). That field is an immense science that is being studied everywhere throughout the cosmos. How well someone understands the MerKaBa, is usually in direct relationship to their consciousness level..
If, when speaking to your higher self, you say, “I want to get from here to there and I want you to guide me,” your higher self will do whatever it wants, and it might be years before you see any results, because your higher self has no concept of time. If you want the unseen energies to guide you, you must learn to communicate with them effectively, and that means you must work with your feelings. The unseen energies do not understand language or words as you know them. They can feel you, and if they can feel you, they will know what you want. When these energies respond to your feelings, you will feel the responding communication from them. So, when you ask your higher self to guide you from here to there in the shortest manner possible, it means nothing, unless you focus on getting the feeling of where you want to go, and how and when you want to get there. If you give those feelings to your higher self, after you’ve woven them through the two brains, you will accomplish your goal. The key here is weaving the local and omni brains together. Practice this by contacting the Elven world, where the language is closest to yours here on the Earth plane. Photon, or love, energy is at the root of the current Shift in Consciousness. Pineal gland is the true master gland. It is situated between the eyes. It is the organ of clairvoyance, Third eye, the eye of Ra or Heru (God). Biblical Jacob saw God face to face on the island of Pe-ni-el. Its secretes melatonin which is anti ageing in effect and anti oxidant in nature. This also secretes melanin which colours our skin. The pineal gland, the most enigmatic of endocrine organs, has long been of interest to anatomists. Several millennia ago it was thought to be a valve that controlled the flow of memories into consciousness. René Descartes, the 17th-century French philosopher-mathematician, concluded that the pineal was the seat of the soul. A corollary notion was that calcification of the pineal caused psychiatric disease, a concept that provided support for those who considered psychotic behavior to be rampant; modern examination techniques have revealed that all pineal glands become more or less calcified..The pineal organ is small, weighing little more than 0.1 gram. It lies deep within the brain between the two cerebral hemispheres and above the third ventricle of the spinal column. It has a rich supply of adrenergic nerve fibers that greatly influence its secretions. Microscopically, the gland is composed of pinealocytes (rather typical endocrine cells except for extensions that mingle with those of adjacent cells). Supporting cells that are similar to astrocytes of the brain are interspersed.. The pineal gland contains a number of peptides, including GnRH, TRH, and vasotocin, along with a number of important neurotransmitters such as somatostatin, norepinephrine, serotonin, and histamine. The major pineal hormone, however, is melatonin, a derivative of the amino acid tryptophan. Melatonin was first discovered because it lightens amphibian skin, an effect opposite to that of melanocyte-stimulating hormone of the anterior pituitary. Secretion of melatonin is enhanced whenever the sympathetic nervous system is stimulated. Of greater interest, however, is the fact that secretion increases soon after an animal is placed in the dark; the opposite effect takes place immediately upon exposure to light. Its major action, well documented in animals, is to block the secretion of GnRH by the hypothalamus and of gonadotropins by the pituitary. While it was long thought that a decrease in melatonin secretion heralded the onset of puberty, this hypothesis cannot be supported by studies in humans. It is possible that the pineal contains an as yet unidentified hormone that serves that function. Melotonin is the only hormone secreted by the pineal gland. (The pineal gland is a tiny endocrine gland situated at the centre of the brain.) Melatonin was discovered in 1958 by Aaron B. Lerner and other researchers working at Yale University. Melatonin is produced in humans, other mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians. It is present in very small amounts in the human body. Melatonin was previously known to cause the skins of amphibians to blanch, but its functions in mammals remained uncertain until research discoveries in the 1970s and '80s suggested that it regulates both sleeping cycles and the hormonal changes that usher in sexual maturity during adolescence. The pineal gland's production of melatonin varies both with the time of day and with age; production of melatonin is dramatically increased during the nighttime hours and falls off during the day, and melatonin levels are much higher in children under age seven than in adolescents and are lower still in adults. Melatonin apparently acts to keep a child's body from undergoing sexual maturation, since sex hormones such as luteotropin, which play a role in the development of sexual organs, emerge only after melatonin levels have declined. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that children with tumors of the pineal gland often reach sexual maturity unusually early in life, presumably because the pineal's production of melatonin has been hampered. Melatonin also seems to play an important role in regulating sleeping cycles; test subjects injected with the hormone become sleepy, suggesting that the increased production of melatonin coincident with nightfall acts as a fundamental mechanism for making people sleepy. With dawn the pineal gland stops producing melatonin, and wakefulness and alertness ensue. The high level of melatonin production in young children may explain their tendency to sleep longer than adults. In mammals other than humans melatonin possibly acts as a breeding and mating cue, since it is produced in greater amounts in response to the longer nights of winter and less so during summer. Animals who time their mating or breeding to coincide with favorable seasons (such as spring) may depend on melatonin production as a kind of biological clock that regulates their reproductive cycles on the basis of the length of the solar day.When activated, the pineal gland becomes the line of communication, with the higher planes. The crown chakra, reaches down, until its vortex touches the pineal gland. Prana, or pure energy, is received through this energy center in the head. With Practice, the vibration level of the astral body is raised, allowing it, to separate from the physical. To activate the 'third eye' and perceive higher dimensions, the pineal gland and the pituitary body, must vibrate in unison, which is achieved through meditation and / or relaxation. When a correct relationship is established, between personality, operating through the pituitary body, and the soul, operating through the pineal gland, a magnetic field is created. The negative and positive forces, interact and become strong enough, to create the 'light in the head. ' With this 'light in the head' activated, astral projectors can withdraw themselves, from the body, carrying the light with them. Astral Travel, and other occult abilities, are closely associated with the development of the 'light in the head'. After physical relaxation, concentration upon the pineal gland, is achieved, by staring at a point in the middle of the forehead. Without straining the muscles of the eye, this will activate the pineal gland and the 'third eye'. Beginning with the withdrawal of the senses and the physical consciousness, the consciousness is centered in the region of the pineal gland. The perceptive faculty and the point of realization, are centralized in the area between the middle of the forehead and the pineal gland. The trick is to visualize, very intently, the subtle body... escaping through the trap door of the brain. A "popping sound" may occur at the time separation of the astral body, in the area of the pineal gland. Visualization exercises, are the first step, in directing the energies in our inner systems, to activate the 'third eye'. The magnetic field is created around the pineal gland, by focusing the mind on the midway point, between the pineal gland and the pituitary body. The creative imagination visualizes something, and the thought energy of the mind gives life and direction to this form. 'Third eye' development, imagination, and visualization are important ingredients, in many methods to separate from the physical form. Intuition is also achieved, through 'third eye' development. Knowledge and memory of the astral plane, are not registered in full waking consciousness, until the intuition becomes strong enough. Flashes of intuition come, with increasing consistency, as the 'third eye' is activated to a greater degree, through practice. Universal Knowledge... can also be acquired...The pineal gland, corresponds with divine thought, after being touched by the vibrating light of Kundalini. Kundalini starts its ascent, towards the head center, after responding to the vibrations from the 'light in the head.' The light is located at the top of the sutratma, or 'soul thread', which passes down from the highest plane of our being... into the physical vehicle. The 'third eye,' or 'Eye of Siva,' the organ of spiritual vision, is intimately related to karma, as we become more spiritual in the natural course of evolution. As human beings continue to evolve, further out of matter, on the journey from spirit to matter... back to spirit, the pineal gland will continue to rise from its state of age - long dormancy, bringing back to humanity... astral capacities and spiritual abilities...Your body produces its own photon energy, but you can bring more of this golden energy into your body by prana breathing it in through your crown and down through your pineal. That simple activity will awaken your God cell, also known as your Signature Cell, which is in your pineal gland. Prana breathing will flow the golden particles from the pineal through the whole of your physical body, affecting the emotional, mental and spiritual bodies in the process.Next, your thought process must be pure. If you want to get from Manhattan to a specific place in Queens and you’ve never been to Queens, you must have pure thoughts about the journey, concentrating only on the specific place you want to reach, feeling every aspect of it. Then you must go into the etheric pattern until you find and get through that little “gray space” that lets you know you’ve left the third-dimensional reality. You will find yourself in Queens, looking at the specific place you wanted to reach. You will then have to back away from it until the neighborhood where it actually is comes into focus. You will recognize the surrounding neighborhood. You may not have seen how you got there, but you will have enough information, such as an address, to Google it or to ask someone how to get there. You can go from where you are to any place in the world that way during these pre-Shift times. As a four-bodied energy, you have spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical bodies, and you have four strands of DNA that correspond to each of those bodies. The first strand of DNA is the physical, the second, the emotional, the third, the mental, and the fourth, the spiritual...The four strands of DNA are powerful, but one strand is more powerful than the rest and that is the golden strand. Each set of four strands of DNA has one golden strand, which is found in the spiritual, or etheric, body. The golden strand is pure photon energy. The photon energy you bring into your body through prana breathing gets woven with everything else via the pineal gland. During the Shift, you will let go of your third-dimensional reality with the help of that magical golden fourth strand of DNA, which is equipped to transfer you into the fourth dimension.The foundation of our spiritual practice has to be very clear to us, otherwise it is very easy to enter into mistaken techniques and practices. In the Gnostic tradition, we always seek to re-evaluate our spiritual approach; our teacher Samael Aun Weor was very rigorous in his analysis of himself, his spiritual practice, and his technique. He constantly re-evaluated his method, and corrected himself in order to ensure he was on the right path. This is because he relied on practical experience, and was constantly examining the nature of suffering in himself, and was not satisfied with concept or theory. Samael Aun Weor suffered a lot, and that suffering is what gave him the impulse, the motivation, to constantly revise his spiritual practice in order to conquer suffering, and also to help others to do the same. Really, this viewpoint about suffering is the foundation of every genuine path, so understanding suffering is the foundational aspect of all teachings. In essence, spiritual practice is about harnessing energy. In the first levels, in the foundational and Mahayana levels, the two classifications of teaching, we are really learning how to discipline our mind stream and attune it with the mind stream of Christ. This is why Bodhichitta can also be translated as Christ mind (bodhi = wisdom = Chokmah; chitta = mind).
Bodhichitta is a kind of energy that vibrates with the ray of creation, with the Ain Soph Aur, a type of light that emerges out of the Absolute, a light that comes from Adhi-Buddha, the primordial Buddha. This light, which is the supreme clear light, is the type of light that is absolutely perfect, and is the first and primordial expression of the divine. It is a light of unbelievable, indescribable radiance, whose chief characteristic is a brilliant, shining love. If you meditate on that, simply that, you will comprehend why most of the teachings of Tantra you find in the world are black. They are completely contradictory to that light. That light is not interested in pleasure. That light is not interested in the satisfaction of desire. Those are the interests of demons.
When that light emerges out of the Absolute abstract space, it emerges as a form of an archetype, related to the world of Atziluth in Kabbalah. An archetype is a blue print, a primordial form that has not yet become. For that becoming to happen, there has to be a long process of development, and that is the path of initiation, the path through which the soul is born, the soul is created. We are only the embryo of soul, a seed. We are not a soul yet. This is why Jesus said, “With patience you will possess your soul.”
The development and creation of the soul depends upon it being nourished by the light of Christ, this Christic force, which is also called Avalokiteshvara, Quetzalcoatl, Vishnu, and Osiris. They are all the same force. Christ is not a person, but an energy, an intelligence, a light.
That energy creates what we see here as the Tree of Life. That energy descends and condenses and unravels and reveals everything that exists. It is also called the great breath, and is symbolized in Kabbalah and other religions as the breath of God that emerges out of the nothingness. That great breath, that exhalation, is how everything comes to exist, macrocosmically and microcosmically. That Great Breath in Sanskrit is called Prana. The relationship between the Pineal Gland and the Sun shows how much influence the Sun has on us. It is our body clock. The Pineal Gland also reads the Sun and informs animals when it is time to hibernate..Many primitive cultures related to the Sun as the closest physical structure to God due to it’s influence on daily life. Without the Sun life would be over, but the Sun shows up everyday and on-time. The Sun not only influences human bodies internally, but provides the energy for the food humans need to survive to grow. Thus the Sun is the source of life on this planet.
Consciously or subconsciously, when I dress I try to emulate the women I so admire out in the world. This is one of the looks I refer to. If I can come anywhere close to approaching how those well-dressed ladies look, then I have succeeded.
Published! Conscious Dance Magazine Spring 2010.
More of the threesome dance troop Eden shoot HERE
LOCATION: Viroqua, Wisconsin ...gateway to America's unglaciated, Driftless Region ...a small portion of Earth that has miraculously watched virtually unperturbed as each ice age came and went. Viroqua, forever unglaciated it seems.
Conscious understanding is not always what we think it is. Some times we just do things only in an unconscious way thinking we did them from our conscious mind. Are we awake or are we sleeping all the time? Is this the dream or is this the life fully awake knowing all we can know? Do I read the words or is it all scribes on the wall? I need to let go of what I think I know and look at what I don't know. Tomorrow is just fantasy to me right now. Yesterday is only the fuzzy recollection of what I slightly recall. Bits and pieces of myself are memories locked in time and conscious desitions I have made. Is this how I use my free will? Why do I like to be in a box? Who made my box but me. When will I explore the dream out side my box of black and white colors. What are the real colors I should see?
Mike
Father and son collaboration
Our photographic art is a kinetic motion study, from the results of interacting with my son A.J and his toys.
He was born severely handicapped much like a quadriplegic. On December 17,1998. Our family’s goal has always been to help A.J. use his mind, even though he has minimal use of his body.
A.J. likes to watch lights and movement. One of the few things he can do for himself is to operate a switch that sets in motion lights and various shiny, colorful streamers and toys that swirl above his bed.
One day I took a picture of A.J. with his toys flying out from the big mobile near his bed like swings on a carnival ride. I liked the way the swirling objects and colors looked in the photo.
I wanted to study the motion more and photograph the whirling objects in an artful way, I wanted my son A.J. to be a part of it. After all, he’s the one who inspires me. When A.J. and I work together on our motion artwork, A.J. starts his streamers and objects twirling, I take the photographs.
Activating a tiny switch might not seem like much to some, but it’s all A.J. can do. He controls the direction the mobile will spin, as well as when it starts and stops. The shutter speeds are long, and sometimes, I move the camera and other times I hold it still.
I begin our creation with a Nikon digital camera. Then I use my computer with Photoshop to alter the images into what I feel might be an artistic way. Working with Photoshop, I find the best parts from several images and combine them into the final composite photograph. I consider the finished work to be fine art. The computer is just the vehicle that helps my expressions grow.
I take the photographs and A.J. adds the magic. It’s something this father and son do together. After I’ve taken a few shots, I show him the photos in the back of the camera. When the images are completed, I show him from a laptop. He just looks. He can’t tell me whether or not he likes the images, but he’s always ready to work with me again.
It offers me my only glance into A.J.’s secret world. We’ve built a large collection of images and I hope the motion and color move you as much as they do me.
A.J. inspires me to work harder to understand my life in the areas of art, photography, people, spirituality, and so much more. He truly sets my mind in motion and helps me find the beauty in everyday things.
Mike
Abstract Art set:
www.flickr.com/photos/patnode-rainbowman/sets/72157602269...
AJ Patnode - A Journey of Hope (documentary):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR7m8QFcmRM
This shows how I do the Camera work:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmjVVGraUVw
AJ'S blog:
"For Álvaro Siza Vieira, the formation, the point of the author’s interior development is crucial to solve the gradual implementation of the knowledge, of developing the rationalization course and communication, that is specific of the project, inside of the production of Architecture. For himself, the spontaneous never falls from the sky, it is one more assemblage of the information and knowledge, conscious or subconscious. Each projectual experience accumulates to form part of the next solution."
Extract from alvarosizavieira.com/philosophy-theory-and-practice
Santa Maria Church | Marco de Canavezes
Architecture by Álvaro Siza Vieira
I often have to consciously remind myself to make more of an effort to incorporate people into my landscapes. I only do this because I don't generally do this and I like to be aware of my own trends and work now and then to buck them or tweak them into other curves. Landscape photography for me is often a solo pursuit... even when I am with others. It is almost meditative. It isn't that I avoid people in my landscapes and with my use of ND filters I often enjoy the random passerby creating unexpected ghosts in my scenes, but I generally don't set out to make images of people in landscapes, or landscapes around people. So when Angela here accompanied me on her first trip through the Ape Caves and we reached the skylight that immediately precedes the exit of the cave I got her to pause in her light basking long enough to make this image of her.
Strangely enough, with the purchase of my new Flexbody I am feeling inspired to make more portraits. I don't know what it is about tilting planes of focus that does that for me, but it does. This image meanwhile was on my old, rigid-bodied 500C.
Hasselblad 500C
Kodak Portra 400
Excerpt from an edge-stained, lousy printed photo card. A wider crop was not possible. Slightly sharpened and colors corrected. Single code on back: .903
1342
Since the fall, not merely of the hierarchic nature of society, but of almost all traditional forms, the consciously conservative man stands as it were in a vacuum. He stands alone in a world which, in its all opaque enslavement, boasts of being free, and, in all its crushing uniformity, boasts of being rich.
It is screamed in his ears that humanity is continually developing upwards, that human nature, after developing for so and so many millions of years, has now undergone a decisive mutation, which will lead to its final victory over matter.
The consciously conservative man stands alone amongst manifest drunks, is alone awake amongst sleep-walkers
who take their dreams for reality.
From understanding and experience he knows that man, with all his passion for novelty, has remained fundamentally the same, for good or ill; the fundamental questions in human life have always remained the same; the answers to them have always been known, and, to the extent that they can be expressed in words, have been handed down from one generation to the next. The consciously conservative man is concerned with this inheritance.
Since nearly all traditional forms in life are now destroyed, it is seldom vouchsafed to him to engage in a wholly useful and meaningful activity. But every loss spells gain: the disappearance of forms calls for a trial and a discernment; and the confusion in the surrounding world is a summons to turn, by-passing all accidents, to the essential.
----
Titus Burckhardt
no conscious thought or self-awareness
Music: Right Click and select "Open link in new tab"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFLGQ6waxck
John Zorn's Dreamers (as Electric Masada) - Marciac 2010 Track 4 Karaim
Kogal (コギャル kogyaru?) is a subculture of conspicuous consumption among girls and young women in urban Japan Is is one of several types of so-called gyaru, or peer conscious social groupings. Kogal are characterized by flaunting their disposable income through distinctive tastes in fashion, music, and social activity. In general, the kogal roughly approximates a sun-tanned California Valley Girl, and indeed, there are even some linguistic similarities between these Western groups and Kogal. Both subcultures have derived entire sets of slang terms (such as Kogalese; (コギャル語 kogyaru-go?)). Kogals are not to be confused with the ganguro subculture, although they are similar.
Kogals are known for wearing platform boots, a miniskirt, copious amounts of makeup, hair coloring (usually blonde or brown), artificial suntans, and designer accessories. If in school uniform, the look typically includes skirts pinned very high and loose socks (large baggy socks that go up to the knee). Kogals' busy social lives and desire for new material goods lead them to be among the first consumers of Japanese mobile phone technology, and their taste in clothes tends toward Burberry scarves and Louis Vuitton handbags. Kogals spend much of their free time (and their parents' income) shopping, and their culture centers on the Shibuya district of Tokyo, in particular the 109 building, although major Japanese cities are sure to have a small population. During the summer, kogals may sometimes be seen at the beach. They are generally not seen in high-end department stores.
Critics of the Kogal subculture decry its materialism as reflecting a larger psychological or spiritual emptiness in modern Japanese life. Some kogals support their lifestyle with allowances from wealthy parents, living a free; or parasite single; existence that grates against traditional principles of duty and industry.
The kogal phenomenon emerged in the mid-1990s and its effects can still be seen today in its numerous off-shoots of sub-categories, although conservative tastes in dress and hair color seem to be on the upswing. The Gothic Lolita aesthetic has been described as a reaction to the kogal look, since it attempts to reclaim childhood innocence, though skeptics point out that most Lolita merely model after J-rock cosplay and spend just as much, if not more money on their appearance when compared to kogals.
This is my most stolen photo, all copyright is reserved on all of my images, please contact me should you wish to use this image.
© Rick Grehan, imageMILL, All Rights Reserved
"Consciously adopt the mindset of a young child,
to whom all of life is a grand adventure.
Life is your playground.
Fashion grand castles and sweeping boulevards,
defeat fire-breathing dragons,
leap tall buildings in a single bound."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
To those of you that asked... the rainbow stairs in the previous photo lead to a small balcony on the front of the tower of the Gingerbread Castle. We didn't go all the way up the stairs because there was one missing and they didn't seem to be all that securely attached to the wall...and if all 95 lbs of Sharon wasn't going to try it, I wasn't either! But, maybe next time! ; )
I am ever so thankful for the people in my life that have chosen not to grow up in spite of chronologically having been considered to be adults for many years! To have such great friends willing to go on grand adventures with me, put up with me, and keep pointing me in the right direction when I am lost (as well as being willing to go to jail with me) is such a tremendous blessing!! Time spent in side-splitting laughter with you are the best times of my life! Thank you! Love you! ♥
“Everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious: i.e., endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception.”
H. P. Blavatsky
Have a great start to your week!
2/60
Listen: Pressure by The 1975
this picture is from the summer that i never even thought about editing until a couple of days ago. i really like how it turned out because it's something different from what i usually do.
i've decided that i'm not going to upload daily of this project just yet. for now, i'm going to wait until i meet with my mentor and get the ok that i can officially start it. this picture was kind of just an update.
view large
I rarely photograph a scene with myself in it so when a hoped for colorful sunrise didn't materialize at Lake of Two Rivers in Algonquin Park, I thought I would give it a try.
The question of a pose came up and after several attempts, I realized that standing with arms at my sides didn't work well and pointing at some imaginary distant object or having my arms akimbo just looked tacky. I finally settled for hands on hips.
As an afterthought, 10 seconds is not a lot of time to run into position on snowshoes - I completely forgot about the on camera intervalometer.
Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.
Sensitiveness is closely allied to egotism; and excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness. The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of our selves.
Secret 1:
I really do think I'm overweight. It started five years ago... but I don't want to get into that story. It's a secret I'll never tell.
I have often come across other landscape photographers criticising the ‘cliché snapshot’. Oversaturated, lacking in originality and void of subtleties. Now I understand and partly agree with many of the points put forward in their arguments and I personally put quite a bit of effort into trying to avoiding the obvious, (but I’m sure for some, I do massage the wider target audience’s sensibilities from time to time).
Now what I find interesting is why some are so upset about this perfectly innocent, totally harmless pursuit of the wow. Surely if it makes somebody happy, the photographer and the audience then its cool, (whatever their taste). But it clearly isn’t and I can only assume that this attitude arises in people in defence of generalised perception of ‘landscape photographers’. Maybe they feel that the wider audiences misunderstand the more peripheral practitioners and there is a kind of popular vortex, attempting to suck them towards the centre. Anyway, the direction I wanted this ramble to explore, was is in partly related to this pull to the centre, even though it’s a tenuous thread.
I’ve often thought that when on location I shouldn’t try to think too much and just react to the conditions. Anyway, the other morning on a sunrise I began to let my analytical mind interfere with the way I made images. It was as though the conscious thinking about trying to produce something new, something that was different to the cliché, distorted my flow and gave me a creative block! Ironic I know, but it confirmed a view that I’ve been toying with for some time now. Get as much analysis and reflection done away from the field and when in the field, just rely on your subconscious gut feelings to make use of your past experiences and guide you. If you have done the right amount of reflection, analysis and thinking before (and after) you head into the field, what you like and make your subject will be shaped by this work in a subconscious way. Your style will hopefully shine through!
Now I’m not saying this is the correct way to approach making images, and I know that many of you out there have systems that work for you. But for me the next time I go out on a shoot, I intend to leave my frontal hemisphere at home and we shall see what my subconscious comes up with!
What will you experience, after your human vessel passes away (die). The human vessel is destroyed by a happening or by aging and the body can’t fulfill the tasks at hand to sustain life and the body and brain passes away. The Soul, your consciousness of your awareness will pass over. Suppose a person has a car accident and the body and brain died. On that moment the Soul will stop projecting consciousness more or less in your body. And the Soul will observe your physical body and what is happening to your physical expression of energy. As awareness you will float next to your body or look at it from above. On this moment of passing over, you cannot reason and you do not remember who you are. This makes dying or passing over as we call it, a very tranquil process. You just observe everything that is happening to your physical body. Because also how you died, is an experience and as Souls we want to gather all information we can and we do. Our observer is not in our brain and not in our body, the observer is always our direct conscious part of our Soul as awareness. On the moment of passing over, you just observe. Than suddenly you will be pulled to another location, a location of a funeral, cremation or even a ceremony, by the thoughts of the loved ones who are still on earth. Again you will observe everything that is happening on the funeral, cremation or ceremony, you can hear thoughts, see people who are saying goodbyes to you of your previous life. Again to gather all information about this life, we observe automatically, what happens to us. How long it will take for a passed over Soul to use the conscious awareness of the Soul again, is different for all Souls. With one it goes quicker than another Soul. Depending, when you are ready for it or not. Normally we observer in a human life, direct with our conscious part of our Soul without our senses, this happens on a high energetic frequency. That is the reason why we can observe in life, as well as after we passed over. Our human life happens in the apparently material dimension, everything looks real, still it is an expression of energy we are dreaming. Because of the cause and consequence in repetitive cycles we experience life as a constant, that means we see life as a reality, however it is still an important dream. That gives us the opportunity to experience a seemingly material life. When we pass over we will come into the In-between dimension (This is the dimension between earth and Heaven. Heaven is the immaterial pure positive dimension. The Soul is always present in this in-between dimension and can’t be part of the apparently material dimension. That is why the Soul projects consciousness into the human vessel. To become a part in this dream and a play its part. Our senses are like a filter over our awareness, and works on a low energetic frequency, this means, that we can’t use this in the In-between dimension. Because our senses just like the apparently material dimension happens all on a lower energetic frequency. To make things simple for our Soul and we can see, hear, taste, smell and feel and that creates the so called reality.When the Soul focus of attention is in the in-between dimension as we passed over, we first only observe as told above. After this we start to reason and to remember with our conscious part of our Soul on a high energetic frequency, this takes a while. That is the reason that after you passed over there is no panic. Again real passing over is very tranquil. You feel an incredible love surrounding you, this is happening. Because you feel the connection you have with Oneness (=God), all energetic awarenesses have an individuality AND on the same time they are all connected to each other. So in the in-between dimension, you feel this incredible love around you and you feel very comfortable. This is also depending on how large your ego perspective has grown in life. You start to learn how to remember your previous life (last life), with your conscious part of your Soul. You start to reason again, and slowly you become the same perspective and personality, you were as you lived your human life. You are literally the same person as you were in life, only you don’t have a physical body anymore, but an esoteric body. A body of energetic light, because everything is created from energy. You will notice that when you think about a loved one on earth, you will be there too. And you can observe this loved one doing his or her things on earth. Or when a loved one speaks to you in thoughts, you will hear them and be there to communicate. Only the loved ones on earth, rarely understand, sense or hear you. When someone on earth a loved one thinks of you, you think of this person and visa versa. That is how we as Souls are connected. You can even split your consciousness again, and talk with more people on the same time. As Soul we can do so much more. When you think about a place you visited in the past when you were alive, you can visit it again, to see it again and float around in the streets, beach or what ever you like to visit again. When a loved one is thinking about you with thoughts, you can hear the thoughts too. Because we don’t have the flat simple senses, we had on earth. After a while you will feel an urge to move on and to go back home, to Heaven. Because the love is drawing you home. This happens also depending on how large your ego perspective has developed. Can you let go of the loved ones, can you let go of your possessions on earth, can you let go of the ego perspective you have taught yourself and was taught by others Also the loved ones on earth have to let you as passed over Soul go too. When they hold tide to your being, your Soul will stay longer connected to earth because of the loved ones. Many people experience the passed over loved one, talking to them, to let them go. Which is really necessary. Some people have a big trouble of letting go the passed over loved one, and pull them constantly back to earth. This can take a while, because the loved one has to accept that you have passed over and moves on in her or his life. Better is for a loved one to accept right away that you passed over, and focus again on positivity in their lives.
When you let go of the loved ones on earth, the possessions and earth, you are ready to move on on your journey to Heaven. When your loved ones let you go, you will go into a next phase of passing over. This phase is called the path to enlightenment. When people really get enlightened in life and die, they will immediately merge with the Higher Self and enter Heaven, the immaterial pure positive dimension. To be enlightened means that you bring your conscious part of your Soul, what is your awareness and equals all your thoughts, memories and formulation of thoughts unto a pure positive angelic level. We humans are ALL reincarnated angels. Believe it or don’t, still it is true. That is the reason why we have to bring our thoughts back on the angelic level of formulating all the time pure positive thoughts. Thoughts are energy patterns moving in space. When you formulate positive thoughts, you create your awareness to vibrate energetically on a high frequency. When you formulate negative thoughts, you create your awareness to vibrate energetically on a low frequency. In a human life most people create more negative thoughts than positive thoughts, this will cause a split Soul. Between your awareness and your Higher Self. Your awareness is vibrating energetic on a much lower frequency than your Higher Self. The Higher Self is your angelic pure positive awareness. The voice of the Higher Self can be heard by your intuition and conscience. That is how you can know, why we are angelic beings from origin. Before you were born, your Soul split into a conscious and a subconscious part. The conscious part is your awareness, your formulation of thoughts, memories and everything we learn into our memory. Not in our brain, because the brain is an expression of energy, to give form to our thoughts. At birth, the awareness is cleared from memory of previous lives, and in total cleared from your Souls life. So you can start living this experience fresh and clean. In some cases young children can remember past lives, because they have still a good connection with the Higher Self. Some can tell you some interesting details of real past lives. That is another story for another time. Which you can find in previous answers about past lives.
What is balance in yourself, balance in yourself, is to bring the thoughts of your awareness on the same level as the Higher Self awareness is thinking. A difference in thoughts, will cause negative emotions and bad feelings. As a signal to tell you, that you are not on the positive path in life. Transform your negative thoughts into positive thoughts. What equals the same thoughts as your Higher Self and you will create positive emotions and you feel good, balanced and positive again. You are then on the right positive path in life. It is a guidance to help the Soul to find its way in a human life. We only lost touch with this guidance system of the Higher Self. This balance in thoughts of your awareness and the higher Self is also called enlightenment. To create One Soul again. When your awareness formulates positive thoughts the same as your Higher Self does, than your awareness vibrates energetically on the same high frequency. Just like Jesus has told us too. When you are born you are One (One Soul), when you grow up you become TWO (Soul and Ego), when you die, what will you do, when you are TWO? We explain this later. We need long explanations, because it is necessary to understand what happens when you passed over. You see that we have never been told the truth, that is why we have such a lack of information about this event. The enlightened persons after death, will pass over and merge with the Higher Self and enter Heaven. They are home. This is the quickest way to go back home to Heaven. The normal persons in life who has formulated positive thoughts in life which is called thoughts and actions upon by the perspective of the Soul. And they have on the same time formulated negative thoughts in life, what is called thoughts and actions by the egoistic and greedy ego perspective. The ego perspective is always the creator of negative thoughts. Most people have this split Soul and can’t merge with the Higher Self and can’t enter Heaven. Negative thoughts creates negative emotions and feels bad or sad. Positive thoughts creates positive emotions and feels great. How you feel is always a result of the thoughts you have been formulating consciously or subconsciously. A positive thought is good for you AND on the same time it is good for all people on the world AND good for Nature. This is the only way to create balance in yourself, balance between all people and balance with Nature. The people who have a split Soul, they will go into a next phase after they passed over, in the In- between dimension and let go of their loved ones and earth. They will have to become enlightened as an angel, other wise you can’t enter Heaven. Believe me, this is the best place to be. These people, most of you, will experience that our fears, worries, and other negative emotions which are based on negative thoughts and indirect actions in life will repeat again in new dreams. Again to give you a choice. To choose a positive thought or a negative thought. When you choose a negative thought. The dream will repeat itself, perhaps slightly in a different way. You will see all the wrong doings and consequences in your life. Until you choose the positive thoughts and reach enlightenment. That means that you choose pure positive thoughts that equals your higher Self. When you do, you cause your Soul to become ONE< that means that your awareness and Higher Self vibrates on the same energetic high frequency. The Higher Self is than able to merge with your awareness and now you will go into Heaven, the immaterial pure positive dimension that vibrates on a high frequency. Than you are able to remember all previous lives including the total life of your Soul. Enlightenment is the key to enter Heaven. As I explained also in the Gospel to Heaven, the real path to Heaven in my first pinned answer in my profile on Quora.
Children are helped by spirit guides to go through this process. No one is alone. All humans have at least two spiritual guides. Only most of you don’t know this, because you are all busy to enjoy yourself, to get what you want. Instead of evolving as a human being into enlightenment. Spiritual development means therefor the development of negative thoughts into positive thoughts in your perspective. That is how you can evolve in life. Than you have people who embrace the occult, satanism and made very egoistic decisions in life, by killing, deceiving, destroying, etc. These people have a very large ego perspective, and they will need many centuries to restore their Soul as One. They will often choose again and again negative thoughts. They will experience a kind of Hell, because they created this experience, by their expectation. Everything that you desire, wish to experience, consciously AND subconsciously will immediately manifest in the in-between dimension. So thoughts have consequences. In this last group of passed over Souls you have also Souls of a human life or other lives from other planets, that chooses to stay negative, egoistic and destructive. They desire to keep their influence in life on certain people, who connects with them through blood rituals, sacrificing and others. We call these the Fallen angels. The angels who desire not to return to Heaven. They don’t want to do the effort to become enlightened. They are the creators of negativity in life, which are performed by humans in our society to make our civilization more and more negative, evil and bad. These are the people who desire power, possessions and oppression, by force and negative actions. They want to pull other Souls into the same fallen angel situations, as they are or will be. In the end every one will come back to Heaven. That is our natural state of being of everyone. That is why it is said: God forgives everyone. When you choose to go to Heaven, do the effort of becoming enlightened and embrace pure positive thoughts, you will return to Heaven. This is all the real judgment of our lives. No one will escape their thoughts and actions on earth. Like Jesus said; the first in life (people with a large ego perspective) will be the last in Heaven. Which is true and confirms these statements again and again. God forgives everyone, but do you forgive yourself? Than you have what is called repentance, repentance means to become enlightened. To do the effort to develop your thoughts into pure positive thoughts. That is repentance. Something so easy, so misunderstood by many. False prophets? There are many. It is your decision to find out, who is right and who is wrong. How more enlightened you will be, how more awakened you will become, how more you will see the truths in life. Religious scriptures, books, movies and even main stream media all are rewritten for power and control. Many untruths are told and spread, to keep you trapped into a repetitive cycle, without transforming your negative thoughts into positive thoughts. Why is this no where mentioned? Because the people with power don’t want to share knowledge and wisdom. Negative people are easy to enslave and positive happy souls are not. Last point. A hell does not exist as the opposite of Heaven. This is very logical. A human being, a Soul and even a fallen angel as Soul all are constructed from a harmonious energetic intelligence and being. This can only happen in a harmonious and balanced positive dimension. It is only the thoughts with free will, that makes the difference, the thoughts we choose to embrace. Positive or negative thoughts. Still the body and construction of the Souls or a human vessel is all angelic perfection. The same is with humans, we are part of our own angel being projected as consciousness in a human vessel. All humans are equal, only the thoughts they choose with free will are different. Do you see what I mean? We choose positive thoughts or negative thoughts. This decision, decides who we will become in our awareness, a good or a bad person or somewhere in between. Still humans are part of the developed intelligence angelic pure positive dimension, other wise we cannot even exist. Therefore hell does not exist. The opposite of Heaven is real CHAOS and no intelligence or being can exist here. Some of us will experience a hell as they have embraced evil thoughts in life, they will manifest this, in the in between dimension like a dream. You will reap, what you sow.
Most people forgot that at every situation in life you have a choice, to formulate positive or negative thoughts. A human life was created for our Souls. This means that a human life is in fact the school for the Soul. To experience a material life with fun and enjoyment, to learn from the experiences, to create new experiences and to evolve in the end. We lost our guidance and control of our thoughts. When you don’t master your thoughts, you don’t master your feelings. Most of us want to embrace, hide, avoid and even justify negativity in life, instead of transforming negativity into positivity. This is the biggest problem in life, what has created our unbalanced world.
Read my words and study them, which I have described in my answers and you see that everything interlinks and is connected on this way. Still it is your choice if you want to do something with it or not.
St. Hilda’s By The Sea is a small Anglican church in Sechelt. Set among the verdant green trees of the temperate rainforest, it is an eclectic mix of old and new: retired British pensioners polish the altar crystal and set out flowers for Sunday services, presided over by a gay Chinese-Canadian priest. Tai chi mixes with Celtic mysticism in a melange that is somehow stronger than its parts. And isn’t that what community is all about?
From the official website:
Walking the labyrinth is an ancient spiritual act that is being rediscovered during our time.
Usually constructed from circular patterns, labyrinths are based on principles of sacred geometry. Sometimes called “divine imprints”, they are found around the world as sacred patterns that have been passed down through the ages for at least 4,000 years. When a pattern of a certain size is constructed or placed on the ground, it can be used for walking meditations and rituals.
Labyrinths and their geometric cousins (spirals and mandalas) can be found in almost every religious tradition. For example, the Kabbala, or Tree of Life, is found in the Jewish mystical tradition. The Hopi Medicine Wheel, and the Man in the Maze are two forms from the Native American labyrinth traditions. The Cretan labyrinth, the remains of which can be found on the island of Crete, has seven path rings and is the oldest known labyrinth (4,000 or 5.000 years old).
In Europe, the Celts and later the early Christian Celtic Church revered labyrinths and frequently built them in natural settings. Sacred dances would be performed in them to celebrate solar and religious festivals. During the Middle Ages, labyrinths were created in churches and cathedrals throughout France and Northern Italy. These characteristically flat church or pavement labyrinths were inlaid into the floor of the nave of the church.
The Chartres Labyrinth
The labyrinth constructed at St. Hilda’s is an 11-circuit labyrinth. It is a replica of the one embedded in the floor of Chartres Cathedral in France. The design of this labyrinth, and many of the other church labyrinths in Europe, is a reworking of the ancient labyrinth design in which an equal-armed cross is emphasized and surrounded by a web of concentric circles. As with many Christian symbols, this was an adaptation of a symbol; that is known to have predated the Christian faith. This medieval variation is considered a breakthrough in design because it is less linear than the preceding, more formal, Roman design that developed from quadrant to quadrant. The medieval design made one path as long as possible, starting at the outer circumference and leading to the centre. Fraught with twists and turns, the path’s meanderings were considered symbolic representations of the Christian pilgrim’s journey to the Holy City of Jerusalem and of one’s own journey through life. This classical design is sometimes referred to as “the Chartres Labyrinth” due to the location of its best known example. The labyrinth was built at Chartres in the early 13th century (~ 1215 A.D.). No one knows the source of this classical 11-circuit labyrinth design, and much of its spiritual meaning and use has been lost.
The Chartres Labyrinth is located in the west end of the nave, the central body of the cathedral. When you walk in the main doors and look towards the high altar, you see the center of the labyrinth on the floor about 50 feet in front of you. It is approximately 42 feet in diameter and the path is 16 inches wide. At Chartres, the center of the Rose Window mirrors the center of the labyrinth. The cathedral is perfectly proportioned, so that if we put the west wall of the cathedral on hinges and folded it down on the labyrinth, the Rose Window would fit almost perfectly over the labyrinth.
Labyrinth or Maze?
The difference between a labyrinth used for meditation and mazes can be confusing. Mazes often have many entrances, dead-ends and cul-de-sacs that frequently confound the human mind. In contrast, meditation labyrinths offer only one path. By following the one path to the center, the seeker can use the labyrinth to quiet his or her mind and find peace and illumination at the center of his or her being. “As soon as one enters the labyrinth, one realizes that the path of the labyrinth serves as a metaphor for one’s spiritual journey. The walk, and all that happens on it, can be grasped through the intuitive, pattern-discerning faculty of the person walking it. The genius of this tool is that it reflects back to the seeker whatever he or she needs to discover from the perspective of a new level of conscious awareness.”
The Labyrinth is a Universal Meditation Tool
Anyone from any tradition or spiritual path can walk into the labyrinth and, through reflecting in the present moment, can benefit from it. A meditation labyrinth is one of many tools that can be used for spiritual practice. Like any tool, it is best used with a proper, good, intention. A church or temple can be used simply as a refuge from a rainstorm, but it can be so much more with a different intention. The same is true of the labyrinth. The seeker is only asked to put one foot in front of the other. By stepping into the labyrinth, we are choosing once again to walk the contemplative spiritual path. We are agreeing to let ourselves be open to see, to be free to hear, and to becoming real enough to respond. The labyrinth is a prayer path, a crucible of change, a meditation tool, a blueprint where psyche meets soul.
The best way to learn about the labyrinth is to walk a well-constructed one a few times, with an open heart and an open mind. Then allow your experience to guide you as to whether this will be a useful spiritual tool for you.
The Chartres Labyrinth and the Pilgrim’s Journey
Pilgrims are persons in motion – passing through territories not their own – seeking something we might call completion, or perhaps the word clarity will do as well, a goal to which only the spirit’s compass points the way.
Richard R. Niebuhr in Pilgrims and Pioneers
“The tradition of pilgrimage is as old as religion itself. Worshippers on pilgrimage traveled to holy festivals whether to solstice celebrations, to Mecca to gather around the Ka’aba for the high holy days of Islam, or to Easter festivals in the Holy City of Jerusalem. Pilgrimages were a mixture of religious duty and holiday relaxation for the peasant, the commoner and rich land owner alike. The journey was often embarked on in groups with designated places to stay at night. The pilgrims were restless to explore the mystical holy places, and many were in search of physical or spiritual healing.
The Christian story, which emphasized the humanity of Christ, fascinated the pilgrims. In the Middle Ages, most people did not read. As a result, they were much more oriented to the senses than we are today. They learned the story by traveling to Jerusalem to walk where Jesus walked, to pray where he prayed, and to experience, in a solemn moment, where he died. Unlike today, Pilgrims encountered the truth of the Christian mystery through an ongoing intimacy with all their senses.
When a person committed his or her life to Christ in the early Middle Ages, they sometimes made a vow to make a pilgrimage to the Holy City of Jerusalem. However, by the 12th century when the Crusades swept across Europe and the ownership of Jerusalem was in tumultuous flux, travel became dangerous and expensive. In response to this situation, the Roman Church appointed seven pilgrimage cathedrals to become “Jerusalem” for pilgrims. Consequently, in the pilgrimage tradition, the path within the labyrinth was called the Chemin de Jerusalem and the center of the labyrinth was called “New Jerusalem”.
The walk into the labyrinth marked the end of the physical journey across the countryside and served as a symbolic entry-way into the spiritual realms of the Celestial City. The image of the Celestial City – taken straight out of the Book of Revelation to John – captivated the religious imagination of many during the Middle Ages. The wondrous Gothic cathedrals, with painted walls either in bright, even gaudy colours, or else white-washed, were designed to represent the Celestial City. The stained glass windows – when illuminated by the sun – created the sense of colourful, dancing jewels, allowing the pilgrim to experience the awesome mystery of the City of God.”
The Journey of Life
A fundamental approach to the labyrinth is to see it as a metaphor for life’s journey. The labyrinth reminds us that all of life, with its joys, sorrows, twists and turns, is a journey that comes from God (birth) and goes to God (death). It is a physical metaphor for the journey of healing, spiritual and emotional growth and transformation. Following the path is like any journey. Sometimes you feel you are at or nearing your destination, and at other times you may feel distant or even lost. Only by faithfully keeping to the path will you arrive at the physical center of the labyrinth, which signifies God, the center of our lives and souls.
Applying the Three Fold Mystical Tradition to the Labyrinth
In the Christian mystical tradition, the journey to God was articulated in the three stages. These stages have become recognized as being universal to meditation: to release and quiet; to open and receive; and to take what was gained back out into the world.
The Three Stages
The first part of the Three- Fold Mystical Path is Purgation. This archaic word is from the root word “to purge”, meaning to cleanse, to let go. Shedding is another way of describing the experience. The mystical word is empting or releasing. It is believed that monks journeyed the first part of the labyrinth Purgation on their knees as a penitential act. This was not done for reasons of punishment as we might think, but as a way to humble oneself before God.
The second stage of the Three-Fold Path, Illumination, is found in the center of the labyrinth. Usually it is a surprise to reach the center because the long winding path seems “illogical” and cannot be figured out by the linear mind. After quieting the mind in the first part of the walk, the center presents a new experience: a place of meditation and prayer. Often people at this stage in the walk find insight into their situation in life, or clarity about a certain problem, hence the label “illumination”. As one enters the
center, the instruction is simple: enter with an open heart and mind; receive what there is for you.
The third stage, Union, begins when you leave the center of the labyrinth and continues as you retrace the path that brought you in. In this stage the meditation takes on a grounded, energized feeling. Many people who have had an important experience in the center feel that this third stage of the labyrinth gives them a way of integrating the insights they received. Others feel that this stage stokes the creative fires within. It energizes insight. It empowers, invites, and even pushes us to be more authentic and confident and to take risks with our gifts in the world. Union means communing with God.
The Monastic Orders experienced a union with God through their community life by creating a fulfilling balance between the work that was assigned, sleep and the many hours of worship attended daily. Our times present a similar challenge: we struggle to find balance between work, sleep, family and friends, leisure and spiritual life. The lack of structured communities in which people share work responsibilities and the “every person for himself or herself” mentality (or every family for itself) prevalent in our highly individualistic society makes the task of finding balance even more difficult.
Monastic communities offered a mystical spirituality that spoke to highly intuitive and intensely introverted people and (paradoxically to some) at the same time provided an economic structure throughout Europe. Monasteries during the Middle Ages provided schools and hospitals managed by monks; yet, at the same time, cloistered life helped the monks stay inwardly directed. Today, without any reliable structure directing us, the way of union needs to be re-thought. Our times call for most of us to be outer-directed. We are called to action in every aspect of our society in order to meet the spiritual challenges that confront us in the 21st century. Gratefully, there are still people in religious orders holding the candle for deep contemplation, but the majority of people involved in the spiritual transformation are searching for a path that guides them to service in the world in an active, extroverted, compassionate way. The third stage of the labyrinth empowers the seeker to move back into the world replenished and directed – which makes the labyrinth a particularly powerful tool for transformation.
Walking the Labyrinth: The Process
The purpose of all spiritual disciplines – prayer, fasting, meditation – is to help create an open attentiveness that enables us to receive and renew our awareness of our grounding and wholeness in God.
The Experience of Walking Meditation
Many of us have trouble quieting our minds. The Buddhists call the distracted state of mind the “monkey mind”, which is an apt image of what the mind is frequently like: thoughts swinging like monkeys from branch to branch, chattering away without any rhyme or conscious reason. When the mind is quiet, we feel peaceful and open, aware of a silence that embraces the universe.
Complete quiet in the mind is not a realistic goal for most of us. Instead, the task is to dis-identify with the thoughts going through our minds. Don’t get hooked by the thoughts, let them go. Thomas Keating, a Cistercian monk who teaches Centering Prayer (meditation) in the Christian tradition, described the mind as a still lake. A thought is like a fish that swims through it. If you get involved with the fish (“Gee what an unusual fish, I wonder what it is called?”), then you are hooked. Many of us have discovered through learning meditation how difficult it is to quiet the mind; yet, the rewards are great.
In the labyrinth, the sheer act of walking a complicated, attention demanding path begins to focus the mind. Thoughts of daily tasks and experiences become less intrusive. A quiet mind does not happen automatically. You must gently guide the mind with the intention of letting go of extraneous thoughts. This is much easier to do when your whole body is moving – when you are walking. Movement takes away the excess charge of psychic energy that disturbs our efforts to quiet our thought processes.
Two Basic Approaches to the Walk
One way to walk the labyrinth is to choose to let all thought go and simply open yourself to your experience with gracious attention. Usually – though not always – quieting happens in the first stage of the walk. After the mind is quiet, you can choose to remain in the quiet. Or use the labyrinth as a prayer path. Simply begin to talk to God. This is an indication that you are ready to receive what is there for you, or you allow a sincere part of your being to find its voice.
A second approach to a labyrinth walk is to consider a question. Concentrate on the question as you walk in. Amplify your thoughts about it; let all else go but your question. When you walk into the center with an open heart and an open mind, you are opening yourself to receiving new information, new insights about yourself.
Guidelines for the Walk
Find your pace. In our chaotic world we are often pushed beyond a comfortable rhythm. In this state we lose the sense of our own needs. To make matters worse, we are often rushed and then forced to wait. Anyone who has hurried to the bank only to stand in line knows the feeling. Ironically, the same thing can happen with the labyrinth, but there is a difference. The labyrinth helps us find what our natural pace would be and draws our attention to it when we are not honouring it.
Along with finding your pace, support your movement through the labyrinth by becoming conscious of your breath. Let your breath flow smoothly in and out of your body. It can be coordinated with each step – as is done in the Buddhist walking meditation – if you choose. Let your experience be your guide.
Each experience in the labyrinth is different, even if you walk it often in a short period of time. The pace usually differs each time as well. It can change dramatically within the different stages of the walk. When the labyrinth has more than a comfortable number of seekers on it, you can “pass” people if you want to continue to honour the intuitive pace your inner process has set. If you are moving at a slower pace, you can allow people to pass you. At first people are uncomfortable with the idea of “passing” someone on the labyrinth. It looks competitive, especially since the walk is a spiritual exercise. Again, these kinds of thoughts and feelings, we hope, are greeted from a spacious place inside that smiles knowingly about the machinations of the human ego. On the spiritual path we meet every and all things. To find our pace, to allow spaciousness within, to be receptive to all experience, and to be aware of the habitual thoughts and issues that hamper our spiritual development is a road to self-knowledge.
Summary of How to Walk the Labyrinth
Pause at the entry way to allow yourself to be fully conscious of the act of stepping into the labyrinth. Allow about a minute, or several turns on the path, to create some space between yourself and the person in front of you. Some ritual act, such as a bow, may feel appropriate during the labyrinth walk. Do what comes naturally.
Follow your pace. Allow your body to determine the pace. If you allow a rapid pace and the person in front of you is moving slower, feel free to move around this person. This is easiest to do at the turns by turning earlier. If you are moving slowly, you can step onto the labyrs (wide spaces at the turns) to allow others to pass.
The narrow path is a two-way street. If you are going in and another person is going out, you will meet on the path. If you want to keep in an inward meditative state, simply do not make eye contact. If you meet someone you know, a touch of the hand or a hug may be an important acknowledgement of being on the path together.
Symbolism and Meanings Found in the Chartres Labyrinth
Circles and Spirals
The circle is the symbol of unity or union and it is the primary shape of all labyrinths. The circle in sacred geometry represents the incessant movement of the universe (uncomprehensible) as opposed to the square which represents comprehensible order. The labyrinth is a close cousin to the spiral and it, too, reflects the cyclical element of nature and is regarded as the symbol of eternal life.
The labyrinth functions like a spiral, creating a vortex in its center. Upon entering, the path winds in a clockwise pattern. Energy is being drawn out. Upon leaving the center the walker goes in a counter clockwise direction. The unwinding path integrates and empowers us on our walk back out. We are literally ushered back out into the world in a strengthened condition.
The Path
The path lies in 11 concentric circles with the 12th being the labyrinth center. The path meanders throughout the whole circle. There are 34 turns on the path going into the center. Six are semi-right turns and 28 are 180° turns. So the 12 rings that form the 11 pathways may symbolically represent, the 12 apostles, 12 tribes of Israel or 12 months of the year. Twelve is a mystical number in Christianity. In sacred geometry three represents heaven and four represents earth. Twelve is the product of 3 x 4 and, therefore, the path which flows through the whole is then representative of all creation.
The obvious metaphor for the path is the difficult path to salvation, with its many twists and turns. Since we cannot see a straight path to our destination, the labyrinth can be viewed as a metaphor for our lives. We learn to surrender to the path (Christ) and trust that he will lead us on our journey.
The path can also be viewed as grace or the Church guiding us through chaos.
The Cruciform and Labyrs
The labyrinth is divided equally into four quadrants that make an equal-armed cross or cruciform. The four arms represent in symbol what is thought to be the essential
structure of the universe for example, the four spatial directions, the four elements (earth, wind, water and fire), the four seasons and, most important, salvation through the cross. The four arms of the cross emerging from the center seem to give order to the would-be chaos of the meandering path around it.
The Chartres labyrinth cross or cruciform is delineated by the 10 labyrs (labyr means to turn and this is the root of the word labyrinth). The labyrs are double-ax shaped and visible at the turns and between turns. They are traditionally seen as a symbol of women’s power and creativity.
The Centre Rosette
In the Middle Ages, the rose was regarded as a symbol for the Virgin Mary. Because of its association with the myths of Percival and the Holy Grail at that time, it also was seen as a sign of beauty and love. The rose becomes symbolic of both human and divine love, of passionate love, but also love beyond passion. The single rose became a symbol of a simple acceptance of God’s love for the world.
Unlike a normal rose (which has five petals) the rosette has six petals and is steeped in mysticism. Although associated with the Rose of Sharon, which refers to Mary, it may also represent the Holy Spirit (wisdom and enlightenment). The six petals may have corresponded to the story of the six days of creation. In other mystical traditions, the petals can be viewed as the levels of evolution (mineral, plant, animal, humankind, angelic and divine).
The Lunations
The lunations are the outer ring of partial circles that complete the outside circle of the labyrinth. They are unique to the Chartres design.
Celtic Symbols on the St. Hilda’s Labyrinth
The Celtic peoples have given us seven enduring spiritual principles:
1. A deep respect of nature, regarding creation as the fifth Gospel.
2. Quiet care for all living things.
3. The love of learning.
4. A wonder-lust or migratory nature.
5. Love of silence and solitude.
6. Understanding of time as a sacred reality and an appreciation of ordinary life, worshipping God through everyday life, and with great joy.
7. The value of family and clan affiliation, and especially spiritual ties of soul friends.
To show our respect for such wisdom, two Celtic designs adorn the St. Hilda’s labyrinth.
To mark the entrance to the labyrinth is a Celtic zoomorphic design painted in red. Traditionally, Celtic monks used intricate knotwork and zoomorphic designs (odd animals intertwined in uncomfortable ways) as mere filler for their illuminated gospel texts. They had no discernible meaning.
However, because of their unique design components, zoomorphs are now associated with transformations.
Transformation, change, action, and passion are also associated with red, the colour of fire. Therefore, this entrance symbol may well be an appropriate sign for the journey ahead.
At the labyrinth’s centre is a Celtic triquetra. This interlocked knotwork design of three stylized fish (whales) is often interpreted as the Trinity knot. It is a perfect representation of the concept of "three in one" in Christian trinity beliefs. Having the design enclosed within the centre circle further emphasizes the unity theme.
The triquetra can also be considered to represent the triplicities of mind, body, and soul, as well as the three domains of earth- earth, sea, and sky.
Final Reflection: The Labyrinth as a “Thinning Place”
In Celtic Christianity, places where people felt most strongly connected with God’s presence were referred to as thin places. It was these places in nature (forest groves, hilltops and deep wells) that the seen and unseen worlds were most closely connected, and the inhabitants of both worlds could momentarily touch the other. Today our churches, temples and sacred sites are the new thin places to meet the Divine. Here, at St Hilda’s, we have opportunities to encounter many thinning places – whether it be during Eucharistic or Taize services, while singing or praying, or through the love of a welcoming inclusive community. The labyrinth is a welcome addition; and with the right intent can also become a new thinning place for the modern pilgrim/spiritual seeker.This outward journey is an archetype with which we can have a direct experience. We can walk it. It can serve to frame the inward journey – a journey of repentance, forgiveness and rebirth, a journey that seeks a deeper faith, and greater holiness, a journey in search of God.
This 360° High Dynamic Range panorama was stitched from 66 bracketed photographs images with PTGUI Pro, tone-mapped with Photomatix, processed with Color Efex, and touched up in Aperture.
Original size: 20000 × 10000 (200.0 MP; 1.04 GB).
Location: St. Hilda’s By The Sea Anglican Church, Sechelt, British Columbia, Canada
Having done a lap internally of the Albert Dock, I walked over to the 'Liverpool 1' shopping centre.... there were a few maintenance men hanging around so I felt a little self conscious but managed to take one photo.. outside 'Ann Summers'! The pic is a little bit blurry but a nice momento... pity the shop wasn't open. it would have been nice to have a browse inside, as a woman!
A dark pattern is "a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills." The neologism dark pattern was coined by Harry Brignull on July 28, 2010 with the registration of darkpatterns.org, a "pattern library with the specific goal of naming and shaming deceptive user interfaces.Bait-and-switch patterns advertise a free (or greatly reduced) product or service which is wholly unavailable or stocked in small quantities. After it is apparent the product is no longer available, they are exposed to other priced products similar to the one advertised. This is common in software installers, where a button will be presented in the fashion of a typical continuation button. It is common that one has to accept the program's terms of service, so a dark pattern would show a prominent "I accept these terms" button on a page where the user is asked to accept the terms of a program unrelated to the program they are trying to install. Since the user will typically accept the terms by force of habit, the unrelated program can subsequently be installed. The installer's authors do this because they are paid by the authors of the unrelated program for each install that they procure. The alternative route in the installer, allowing the user to skip installing the unrelated program, is much less prominently displayed or seems counter-intuitive (such as declining the terms of service).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern
This pattern is also used by some websites, where the user is shown a page where information is asked that is not required. For example, one would fill out a username and password on one page, and after clicking the "next" button the user is asked for their email address with another "next" button as the only option. It is not apparent that the step can be skipped. When simply pressing "next" without entering their personal information, however, the website will just continue. In some cases, a method to skip the step is visible but not shown as a button (instead, usually, as a small and greyed-out link) so that it does not stand out to the user. Other examples that often use this pattern are inviting friends by entering someone else's email address, uploading a profile picture, or selecting interests.
”This is a civilizational moment in a way I’m not sure we’re all reckoning with,” Harris said on stage. “It’s a historical moment when a species that is intelligent builds technology that ... can simulate a puppet version of its creator, and the puppet can control the master. That’s an unprecedented situation to be in. That could be the end of human agency, when you can perfectly simulate not just the strengths of people but their weaknesses.”
Where does technology exploit our minds weaknesses?
I learned to think this way when I was a magician. Magicians start by looking for blind spots, edges, vulnerabilities and limits of people’s perception, so they can influence what people do without them even realizing it. Once you know how to push people’s buttons, you can play them like a piano.
That’s me performing sleight of hand magic at my mother’s birthday party
And this is exactly what product designers do to your mind. They play your psychological vulnerabilities (consciously and unconsciously) against you in the race to grab your attention.
I want to show you how they do it.
Hijack #1: If You Control the Menu, You Control the Choices
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Western Culture is built around ideals of individual choice and freedom. Millions of us fiercely defend our right to make “free” choices, while we ignore how we’re manipulated upstream by limited menus we didn’t choose.
This is exactly what magicians do. They give people the illusion of free choice while architecting the menu so that they win, no matter what you choose. I can’t emphasize how deep this insight is.
When people are given a menu of choices, they rarely ask:
“what’s not on the menu?”
“why am I being given these options and not others?”
“do I know the menu provider’s goals?”
“is this menu empowering for my original need, or are the choices actually a distraction?” (e.g. an overwhelmingly array of toothpastes)
Photo by Kevin McShane
How empowering is this menu of choices for the need, “I ran out of toothpaste”?
For example, imagine you’re out with friends on a Tuesday night and want to keep the conversation going. You open Yelp to find nearby recommendations and see a list of bars. The group turns into a huddle of faces staring down at their phones comparing bars. They scrutinize the photos of each, comparing cocktail drinks. Is this menu still relevant to the original desire of the group?
It’s not that bars aren’t a good choice, it’s that Yelp substituted the group’s original question (“where can we go to keep talking?”) with a different question (“what’s a bar with good photos of cocktails?”) all by shaping the menu.
Moreover, the group falls for the illusion that Yelp’s menu represents acomplete set of choices for where to go. While looking down at their phones, they don’t see the park across the street with a band playing live music. They miss the pop-up gallery on the other side of the street serving crepes and coffee. Neither of those show up on Yelp’s menu.
Yelp subtly reframes the group’s need “where can we go to keep talking?” in terms of photos of cocktails served.
The more choices technology gives us in nearly every domain of our lives (information, events, places to go, friends, dating, jobs) — the more we assume that our phone is always the most empowering and useful menu to pick from. Is it?
The “most empowering” menu is different than the menu that has the most choices. But when we blindly surrender to the menus we’re given, it’s easy to lose track of the difference:
“Who’s free tonight to hang out?” becomes a menu of most recent people who texted us (who we could ping).
“What’s happening in the world?” becomes a menu of news feed stories.
“Who’s single to go on a date?” becomes a menu of faces to swipe on Tinder (instead of local events with friends, or urban adventures nearby).
“I have to respond to this email.” becomes a menu of keys to type a response (instead of empowering ways to communicate with a person).
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All user interfaces are menus. What if your email client gave you empowering choices of ways to respond, instead of “what message do you want to type back?” (Design by Tristan Harris)
When we wake up in the morning and turn our phone over to see a list of notifications — it frames the experience of “waking up in the morning” around a menu of “all the things I’ve missed since yesterday.”
A list of notifications when we wake up in the morning — how empowering is this menu of choices when we wake up? Does it reflect what we care about? (credit to Joe Edelman)
By shaping the menus we pick from, technology hijacks the way we perceive our choices and replaces them new ones. But the closer we pay attention to the options we’re given, the more we’ll notice when they don’t actually align with our true needs.
Hijack #2: Put a Slot Machine In a Billion Pockets
If you’re an app, how do you keep people hooked? Turn yourself into a slot machine.
The average person checks their phone 150 times a day. Why do we do this? Are we making 150 conscious choices?
How often do you check your email per day?
One major reason why is the #1 psychological ingredient in slot machines:intermittent variable rewards.
If you want to maximize addictiveness, all tech designers need to do is link a user’s action (like pulling a lever) with a variable reward. You pull a lever and immediately receive either an enticing reward (a match, a prize!) or nothing. Addictiveness is maximized when the rate of reward is most variable.
Does this effect really work on people? Yes. Slot machines make more money in the United States than baseball, movies, and theme parkscombined. Relative to other kinds of gambling, people get ‘problematically involved’ with slot machines 3–4x faster according to NYU professor Natasha Dow Shull, author of Addiction by Design.
But here’s the unfortunate truth — several billion people have a slot machine their pocket:
When we pull our phone out of our pocket, we’re playing a slot machineto see what notifications we got.
When we pull to refresh our email, we’re playing a slot machine to see what new email we got.
When we swipe down our finger to scroll the Instagram feed, we’replaying a slot machine to see what photo comes next.
When we swipe faces left/right on dating apps like Tinder, we’re playing a slot machine to see if we got a match.
When we tap the # of red notifications, we’re playing a slot machine to what’s underneath.
Apps and websites sprinkle intermittent variable rewards all over their products because it’s good for business.
But in other cases, slot machines emerge by accident. For example, there is no malicious corporation behind all of email who consciously chose to make it a slot machine. No one profits when millions check their email and nothing’s there. Neither did Apple and Google’s designers want phones to work like slot machines. It emerged by accident.
But now companies like Apple and Google have a responsibility to reduce these effects by converting intermittent variable rewards into less addictive, more predictable ones with better design. For example, they could empower people to set predictable times during the day or week for when they want to check “slot machine” apps, and correspondingly adjust when new messages are delivered to align with those times.
Hijack #3: Fear of Missing Something Important (FOMSI)
Another way apps and websites hijack people’s minds is by inducing a “1% chance you could be missing something important.”
If I convince you that I’m a channel for important information, messages, friendships, or potential sexual opportunities — it will be hard for you to turn me off, unsubscribe, or remove your account — because (aha, I win) you might miss something important:
This keeps us subscribed to newsletters even after they haven’t delivered recent benefits (“what if I miss a future announcement?”)
This keeps us “friended” to people with whom we haven’t spoke in ages (“what if I miss something important from them?”)
This keeps us swiping faces on dating apps, even when we haven’t even met up with anyone in a while (“what if I miss that one hot match who likes me?”)
This keeps us using social media (“what if I miss that important news story or fall behind what my friends are talking about?”)
But if we zoom into that fear, we’ll discover that it’s unbounded: we’ll always miss something important at any point when we stop using something.
There are magic moments on Facebook we’ll miss by not using it for the 6th hour (e.g. an old friend who’s visiting town right now).
There are magic moments we’ll miss on Tinder (e.g. our dream romantic partner) by not swiping our 700th match.
There are emergency phone calls we’ll miss if we’re not connected 24/7.
But living moment to moment with the fear of missing something isn’t how we’re built to live.
And it’s amazing how quickly, once we let go of that fear, we wake up from the illusion. When we unplug for more than a day, unsubscribe from those notifications, or go to Camp Grounded — the concerns we thought we’d have don’t actually happen.
We don’t miss what we don’t see.
The thought, “what if I miss something important?” is generated in advance of unplugging, unsubscribing, or turning off — not after. Imagine if tech companies recognized that, and helped us proactively tune our relationships with friends and businesses in terms of what we define as “time well spent” for our lives, instead of in terms of what we might miss.
Hijack #4: Social Approval
Easily one of the most persuasive things a human being can receive.
We’re all vulnerable to social approval. The need to belong, to be approved or appreciated by our peers is among the highest human motivations. But now our social approval is in the hands of tech companies (like when we’re tagged in a photo).
When I get tagged by my friend Marc (above), I imagine him making aconscious choice to tag me. But I don’t see how a company like Facebook orchestrated him doing that in the first place.
Facebook, Instagram or SnapChat can manipulate how often people get tagged in photos by automatically suggesting all the faces people should tag (e.g. by showing a box with a 1-click confirmation, “Tag Tristan in this photo?”).
So when Marc tags me, he’s actually responding to Facebook’s suggestion, not making an independent choice. But through design choices like this,Facebook controls the multiplier for how often millions of people experience their social approval on the line.
Facebook uses automatic suggestions like this to get people to tag more people, creating more social externalities and interruptions.
The same happens when we change our main profile photo — Facebook knows that’s a moment when we’re vulnerable to social approval: “what do my friends think of my new pic?” Facebook can rank this higher in the news feed, so it sticks around for longer and more friends will like or comment on it. Each time they like or comment on it, I’ll get pulled right back.
Everyone innately responds to social approval, but some demographics (teenagers) are more vulnerable to it than others. That’s why it’s so important to recognize how powerful designers are when they exploit this vulnerability.
Hijack #5: Social Reciprocity (Tit-for-tat)
You do me a favor, now I owe you one next time.
You say, “thank you”— I have to say “you’re welcome.”
You send me an email— it’s rude not to get back to you.
You follow me — it’s rude not to follow you back. (especially for teenagers)
We are vulnerable to needing to reciprocate others’ gestures. But as with Social Approval, tech companies now manipulate how often we experience it.
In some cases, it’s by accident. Email, texting and messaging apps are social reciprocity factories. But in other cases, companies exploit this vulnerability on purpose.
LinkedIn is the most obvious offender. LinkedIn wants as many people creating social obligations for each other as possible, because each time they reciprocate (by accepting a connection, responding to a message, or endorsing someone back for a skill) they have to come back through linkedin.com where they can get people to spend more time.
Like Facebook, LinkedIn exploits an asymmetry in perception. When you receive an invitation from someone to connect, you imagine that person making a conscious choice to invite you, when in reality, they likely unconsciously responded to LinkedIn’s list of suggested contacts. In other words, LinkedIn turns your unconscious impulses (to “add” a person) into new social obligations that millions of people feel obligated to repay. All while they profit from the time people spend doing it.
Imagine millions of people getting interrupted like this throughout their day, running around like chickens with their heads cut off, reciprocating each other — all designed by companies who profit from it.
Welcome to social media.
After accepting an endorsement, LinkedIn takes advantage of your bias to reciprocate by offering *four* additional people for you to endorse in return.
Imagine if technology companies had a responsibility to minimize social reciprocity. Or if there was an “FDA for Tech” that monitored when technology companies abused these biases?
Hijack #6: Bottomless bowls, Infinite Feeds, and Autoplay
YouTube autoplays the next video after a countdown
Another way to hijack people is to keep them consuming things, even when they aren’t hungry anymore.
How? Easy. Take an experience that was bounded and finite, and turn it into a bottomless flow that keeps going.
Cornell professor Brian Wansink demonstrated this in his study showing you can trick people into keep eating soup by giving them a bottomless bowl that automatically refills as they eat. With bottomless bowls, people eat 73% more calories than those with normal bowls and underestimate how many calories they ate by 140 calories.
Tech companies exploit the same principle. News feeds are purposely designed to auto-refill with reasons to keep you scrolling, and purposely eliminate any reason for you to pause, reconsider or leave.
It’s also why video and social media sites like Netflix, YouTube or Facebookautoplay the next video after a countdown instead of waiting for you to make a conscious choice (in case you won’t). A huge portion of traffic on these websites is driven by autoplaying the next thing.
Facebook autoplays the next video after a countdown
Tech companies often claim that “we’re just making it easier for users to see the video they want to watch” when they are actually serving their business interests. And you can’t blame them, because increasing “time spent” is the currency they compete for.
Instead, imagine if technology companies empowered you to consciously bound your experience to align with what would be “time well spent” for you. Not just bounding the quantity of time you spend, but the qualities of what would be “time well spent.”
Hijack #7: Instant Interruption vs. “Respectful” Delivery
Companies know that messages that interrupt people immediately are more persuasive at getting people to respond than messages delivered asynchronously (like email or any deferred inbox).
Given the choice, Facebook Messenger (or WhatsApp, WeChat or SnapChat for that matter) would prefer to design their messaging system to interrupt recipients immediately (and show a chat box) instead of helping users respect each other’s attention.
In other words, interruption is good for business.
It’s also in their interest to heighten the feeling of urgency and social reciprocity. For example, Facebook automatically tells the sender when you “saw” their message, instead of letting you avoid disclosing whether you read it(“now that you know I’ve seen the message, I feel even more obligated to respond.”) By contrast, Apple more respectfully lets users toggle “Read Receipts” on or off.
The problem is, while messaging apps maximize interruptions in the name of business, it creates a tragedy of the commons that ruins global attention spans and causes billions of interruptions every day. This is a huge problem we need to fix with shared design standards (potentially, as part of Time Well Spent).
Hijack #8: Bundling Your Reasons with Their Reasons
Another way apps hijack you is by taking your reasons for visiting the app (to perform a task) and make them inseparable from the app’s business reasons(maximizing how much we consume once we’re there).
For example, in the physical world of grocery stories, the #1 and #2 most popular reasons to visit are pharmacy refills and buying milk. But grocery stores want to maximize how much people buy, so they put the pharmacy and the milk at the back of the store.
In other words, they make the thing customers want (milk, pharmacy) inseparable from what the business wants. If stores were truly organized to support people, they would put the most popular items in the front.
Tech companies design their websites the same way. For example, when you you want to look up a Facebook event happening tonight (your reason) the Facebook app doesn’t allow you to access it without first landing on the news feed (their reasons), and that’s on purpose. Facebook wants to convert every reason you have for using Facebook, into their reason which is to maximize the time you spend consuming things.
In an ideal world, apps would always give you a direct way to get what you want separately from what they want.
Imagine a digital “bill of rights” outlining design standards that forced the products that billions of people used to support empowering ways to navigate towards their goals.
Hijack #9: Inconvenient Choices
We’re told that it’s enough for businesses to “make choices available.”
“If you don’t like it you can always use a different product.”
“If you don’t like it, you can always unsubscribe.”
“If you’re addicted to our app, you can always uninstall it from your phone.”
Businesses naturally want to make the choices they want you to make easier, and the choices they don’t want you to make harder. Magicians do the same thing. You make it easier for a spectator to pick the thing you want them to pick, and harder to pick the thing you don’t.
For example, NYTimes.com let’s you “make a free choice” to cancel your digital subscription. But instead of just doing it when you hit “Cancel Subscription,” they force you to call a phone number that’s only open at certain times.
NYTimes claims it’s giving a free choice to cancel your account
Instead of viewing the world in terms of choice availability of choices, we should view the world in terms of friction required to enact choices.
Imagine a world where choices were labeled with how difficult they were to fulfill (like coefficients of friction) and there was an FDA for Tech that labeled these difficulties and set standards for how easy navigation should be.
Hijack #10: Forecasting Errors, “Foot in the Door” strategies
Facebook promises an easy choice to “See Photo.” Would we still click if it gave the true price tag?
People don’t intuitively forecast the true cost of a click when it’s presented to them. Sales people use “foot in the door” techniques by asking for a small innocuous request to begin with (“just one click”), and escalating from there (“why don’t you stay awhile?”). Virtually all engagement websites use this trick.
Imagine if web browsers and smartphones, the gateways through which people make these choices, were truly watching out for people and helped them forecast the consequences of clicks (based on real data about what it actually costs most people?).
That’s why I add “Estimated reading time” to the top of my posts. When you put the “true cost” of a choice in front of people, you’re treating your users or audience with dignity and respect.
In a Time Well Spent internet, choices would be framed in terms of projected cost and benefit, so people were empowered to make informed choices.
TripAdvisor uses a “foot in the door” technique by asking for a single click review (“How many stars?”) while hiding the three page form behind the click.
Summary And How We Can Fix This
Are you upset that technology is hijacking your agency? I am too. I’ve listed a few techniques but there are literally thousands. Imagine whole bookshelves, seminars, workshops and trainings that teach aspiring tech entrepreneurs techniques like this. They exist.
The ultimate freedom is a free mind, and we need technology to be on our team to help us live, feel, think and act freely.
We need our smartphones, notifications screens and web browsers to be exoskeletons for our minds and interpersonal relationships that put our values, not our impulses, first. People’s time is valuable. And we should protect it with the same rigor as privacy and other digital rights.
Tristan Harris was Product Philosopher at Google until 2016 where he studied how technology affects a billion people’s attention, wellbeing and behavior.
For more information and get involved, check out timewellspent.io. This piece is cross-posted on Medium.
MARCH 7, 2016 by TRISTAN HARRIS
Tech Companies Design Your Life, Here’s Why You Should Care
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Four years ago, I sold my company to Google and joined the ranks there. I spent my last three years there as Product Philosopher, looking at the profound ways the design of screens shape billions of human lives – and asking what it means for them to do so ethically and responsibly.
What I came away with is that something’s not right with how our screens are designed, and I’m writing this to help you understand why you should care, and what you can do about it.
I shouldn’t have to cite statistics about the central role screens play in our lives. Billions of us turn to smartphones every day. We wake up with them. We fall asleep with them. You’re looking at one right now.
Of course, new technologies always reshape society, and it’s always tempting to worry about them solely for this reason. Socrates worried that the technology of writing would “create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they [would] not use their memories.” We worried that newspapers would make people stop talking to each other on the subway. We worried that we would use television to “amuse ourselves to death.”
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“And see!” people say. “Nothing bad happened!” Isn’t humanity more prosperous, more technically sophisticated, and better connected than ever? Is it really that big of a problem that people spend so much time staring at their smartphones? Isn’t it just another cultural shift, like all the others? Won’t we just adapt?
Invisibility of the New Normal
I don’t think so. What’s missing from this perspective is that all these technologies (books, television, radio, newspapers) did change everything about society, we just don’t see it. They replaced our old menus of choices with new ones. Each new menu eventually became the new normal – “the way things are” – and, after our memories of old menus had faded into the past, the new menus became “the way things have always been.”
gold-fish-in-waterASK A FISH ABOUT WATER AND THEY’LL RESPOND, “WHAT’S WATER?”
Consider that the average American now watches more than 5.5 hours of television per day. Regardless of whether you think TV is good or bad, hundreds of millions of people spend 30% of their waking hours watching it. It’s hard to overstate the vast consequences of this shift– for the blood flows of millions of people, for our understanding of reality, for the relational habits of families, for the strategies and outcomes of political campaigns. Yet for those who live with them day-to-day, they are invisible.
So what best describes the nature of what smart phones are “doing” to us?
A New “Perfect” Choice on Life’s Menu
If I had to summarize it, it’s this: Our phone puts a new choice on life’s menu, in any moment, that’s “sweeter” than reality.
If, at any moment, reality gets dull or boring, our phone offers something more pleasurable, more productive and even more educational than whatever reality gives us.
And this new choice fits into any moment. Our phone offers 5-second choices like “checking email” that feel better than waiting in line. And it offers 30-minute choices like a podcast that will teach you that thing you’ve been dying to learn, which feels better than a 30-minute walk in silence.
Once you see your phone this way, wouldn’t you turn to it more often? It always happens this way: when new things fill our needs better than the old, we switch:
When cheaper, faster to prepare food appears, we switch: Packaged foods.
When more accurate search engines appear, we switch: Google.
When cheaper, faster forms of transportation appear, we switch: Uber.
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So it goes with phones.
But it also changes us on the inside. We grow less and less patient for reality as it is, especially when it’s boring or uncomfortable. We come to expect more from the world, more rapidly. And because reality can’t live up to our expectations, it reinforces how often we want to turn to our screens. A self-reinforcing feedback loop.
And because of the attention economy, every product will only get more persuasive over time. Facebook must become more persuasive if it wants to compete with YouTube and survive. YouTube must become more persuasive if it wants to compete with Facebook. And we’re not just talking about ‘cheap’ amusement (aka cat videos). These products will only get better at giving us choices that make every bone in our body say, “yeah I want that!”
So what’s wrong about this? If the entire attention economy is working to fill us up with more perfect-feeling things to spend time on, which outcompete being with the discomfort of ourselves or our surroundings, shouldn’t that be fantastic?
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Clearly something is missing from this picture. But what is it?
Maybe it’s that “filling people up,” even with incredible choices on screens somehow doesn’t add up to a life well lived. Or that those choices weren’t what we wished we’d been persuaded to do in the bigger sense of our lives.
With design as it is today, screens threaten our fundamental agency. Maybe we are “choosing,” but we are choosing from persuasive menus driven by companies who have different goals than ours.
And that begs us to ask, “what are our goals?” or how do we want to spend our time? There are as many “good lives” as there are people, but our technology (and the attention economy) don’t really seem on our team to give us the agency to live according to them.
A Whole New Persuasive World
And it’s about to get a lot worse. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality will offer whole new immersive realities that are even more persuasive than physical reality.
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When you could have sex with the person of your dreams, or fly through jungles in the Amazon rainforest while looking over at your best friend flying next to you, who would want to stick with reality?
By the way, this isn’t your usual “look, VR is coming!” prediction. This is the real deal. Facebook recently spent $2 billion to buy Oculus Rift, and hopes to put them in every home for this holiday season. Just like the late 1980’s when suddenly everyone you knew had a Nintendo.
Acknowledging the Problem
So we have a fundamental misalignment– between what the attention economy is competing to produce (more perfect, persuasive choices that fit into any moment), the design of our phones, and the aspirations people have for their lives (their definition of “the good life”).
AttentionEconomyMisalignment
So what’s missing from the design of our phones? I like to use the metaphor of ergonomics. When you think of ergonomics, you might think of boring things like how a cup fits into someone’s hand, but it’s way more than that.
If regular design is about how we want things to work, ergonomics is concerned with failure modes and extremes: how things break under repetition, stress or other limits. And the goal of ergonomics is to create an alignment between those limits, and the goals people have for how they want to use it.
10 Handle diameter
For example, an ergonomically designed coffee mug aligns the natural fatigue of forearm muscles during use (as a person “lifts” it to sip) with how frequently people want to use it, so they still can lift it successfully with repetition.
What does this have to do with phones?
Our minds urgently need a new “ergonomics,” based on the mind’s limited capacities, biases, fatigue curves and the ways it forms habits. The attention economy tears our minds apart. With its onslaught of never-ending choices, never-ending supply of relationships and obligations, the attention economy bulldozes the natural shape of our physical and psychological limits and turns impulses into bad habits.
Just like the food industry manipulates our innate biases for salt, sugar and fat with perfectly engineered combinations, the tech industry bulldozes our innate biases for Social Reciprocity (we’re built to get back to others), Social Approval (we’re built to care what others think of us), Social Comparison (how we’re doing with respect to our peers) and Novelty-seeking (we’re built to seek surprises over the predictable).
Millions of years of evolution did a great job giving us genes to care about how others perceive us. But Facebook bulldozes those biases, by forcing us to deal with how thousands of people perceive us.
This isn’t to say that phones today aren’t designed ergonomically, they are just ergonomic to a narrow scope of goals:
for a single user (holding the phone)
for single tasks (opening an app)
for individual choices
And a narrow scope of human physical limits:
how far our thumb has to reach to tap an app
how loud the phone must vibrate for our ear to hear it
So what if we expanded the scope of ergonomics for a more holistic set of human goals:
a holistic sense of a person
a holistic sense of how they want to spend their time (and goals)
a holistic sense of their relationships (interpersonal & social choices)
an ability to make holistic choices (including opportunity costs & externalities)
an ability to reflect, before and after
…and what if we aligned these goals with a more holistic set of our mental, social and emotional limits?
A New Kind of Ergonomics
Let’s call this new kind of ergonomics “Holistic Ergonomics”. Holistic Ergonomics recognizes our holistic mental and emotional limits [vulnerabilities, fatigue and ways our minds form habits] and aligns them with the holistic goals we have for our lives (not just the single tasks). Holistic Ergonomics is built to give us back agency in an increasingly persuasive attention economy.
Joe Edelman and I have taught design workshops on this, calling it EmpoweringDesign.org, or designing to empower people’s agency.
It includes an interpersonal ergonomics, to “align” our social psychological instincts with how and when we want to make ourselves available to others (like in my TED talk), so that we can reclaim agency over how we want to relate to others.
Just like an ergonomic coffee mug is safe to live by, even under repetition, over and over again, without causing harm to ourselves or others, in a Time Well Spent world our phones would be designed with Holistic Ergonomics, so that even under repetition, over and over again, our phones do not cause harm to ourselves or others — our phones become safe to live by. They support our Agency.
How to Change the Game
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Right now, two companies are responsible for the primary screens that a billion people live by. Apple and Google make the two dominant smartphone platforms. Facebook and Microsoft make leading Virtual and Augmented Reality platforms, Oculus and Hololens.
You might think that it’s against the business models of Apple and Google to facilitate people’s agency, which might include making it easier to spend time off the screen, and use apps less. But it’s not.
Apple and Google, like all companies, respond to what consumers demand.
When Privacy became important to you, they responded. They developed new privacy and security features, and it sparked a whole new public conversation and debate. It’s now the most popular concern about technology discussed in media.
When Organic food became important to you, they responded too. Walmart added it to their stores.
We need to do the same thing with this issue. Until now, with this experience of distraction, social media, and this vague sense that we don’t feel good when we use our phones for too long, there’s been nothing to rally behind. It’s too diffuse. We receive so many incredible benefits from tech, but we’ve also been feeling like we’ve been losing ourselves, and our humanity?
But we’re naming it now.
What’s at stake is our Agency. Our ability to live the lives we want to live, choose the way we want to choose, and relate to others the way we want to relate to them – through technology. This is a design problem, not just a personal responsibility problem.
If you want your Agency, you need to tell these companies that that’s what you want from them– not just another shiny new phone that overloads our psychological vulnerabilities. Tell them you want your Agency back, and to help you spend your time the way you want to, and they will respond.
I hope this helps spark that bigger conversation.
whose biggest worry is the polluted air. Even in front of a moving train.
Somewhere near Komlapur Station. Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Asistentica Marina dovršava i uređuje privremene zube koji se nose svo vrijeme prije ugradnje završnih, stalnih zubi
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Our lovely assistant Marina is finishing temporary teeth which are worn all the time before the final teeth
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Marina, l'assistente del dott. Jovčević rifinisce i denti provvisori che il paziente porterà in bocca prima di ricevere i denti definitivi.