Ways of watching sport

"Sport sets up artificial, pointless contests, making the competitors push themselves to their limits. But doing so leads to the instantiation of aesthetic value: human bodies fully-extended, graceful style, intricate tactics, and real drama." (Stephen Mumford: source)

There is a certain intuitive appeal in seeing life the same way, perhaps we're all just works of art in the making!

Sometimes not giving up is loosing

First of all we have to know what is essential, and what is not.

Then we have to be able to be able to focus and pursuit the essential.

And that already takes a whole life.

Of course, we need some distractions too, to have fun, to meet people, to laugh and sing and make absurd things, and to remember that everything is a bit absurd. At least in the perspective of one who knows nothing.

But even so there is a kind of step of magic that allows us to distinguish between what's essential and not. It's different for each one of us. It's what makes us feel fulfilled, flowering, growing.

In sum, it is putting our will outside. Fulfilling it and see what happens, how reality responds.

But many times, like a fish caught in a net, we "want" something. We feel bad if we don't have it. And so we go after it and we can go for the longest time.

Meanwhile, our heart is beating somewhere else, or perhaps completely asleep, dreaming dreams far away from our consciousness, but that, nevertheless, are part of our most inner being.

Communion / Communication

To be here as a light from beyond

(a possible way to live)

I only have questions

Life is complicated.

So much so that it seems nobody has ever got it completely. We do understand part of what's going on, but we don't really know the measure of what escape us.

And in the midst of all this ignorance, we have to go about making choices. For instance, to destroy in order to create. To destroy an apple, an illusion, a white page, in order to create some more red cells, a conjecture, music.

If I had to decide being born, would I?

Knowing that so much would be destroyed in order for me to exist?

But I am just another rolling grain of sand living in a much bigger grain of sand in the vastness of the world (universe). I am just another part of life, a speck, just like the specks being destroyed in order for me to continue. I'm not sure of what's good or bad, of who I am or even if I am anything at all. Perhaps Budhists are right and the I is nothing but illusion, we are perhaps, truly, "nothingness" as they say. But I would be very surprised that any person has unravelled the mysteries of the universe. In fact, budhists, in their behavior, seem just like ordinary man, perhaps with different abilities (meditation, etc) just like a musician or anyone else.


In the vastness of this cosmic soup it doesn't seem terribly important if it's me or the tiger that survives. But for me it is. It is, in fact, in my perspective, one of the most important questions in existence. And I don't know the answer to that. In fact, I only have questions.

The only thing I know for sure is that there are things which I don't know. And it seems to me that these things are huge, both in quantity, complexity and meaning.

I will never be found

I have never been found.
Some people believe that I am just a set of nerve cells, or some other bodily set of things.
Other people believe that we have souls.
Still other might believe that I am dream in their imagination.
But no one can pin point my exact location.
They can know which part of me is necessary for me to speak, to perceive visual objects.  If they take away certain of my brain I will not be able to do certain things.
Animals have been experimented, widely, and we know all sorts of things about brain functioning. If it were not for the Nazis loosing the war I'm sure they'd be plenty of subhumans to make even more experiments. As it is, we restricted the set of conscious beings to which we are prepared to inflict unimaginable suffering.

Humanity... oh well...

Other people say it is possible to find me. It is like finding the "court" in the physical building. It's a mix-up they say. One thing is the building, another is the logical entity. It cannot be found in the building for it is an entirely different thing.

However, these people are speaking about the person Pedro. Whereas I'm speaking about the consciousness Pedro. The person Pedro, who has plenty of attributes, could eventually be re-enacted in some other point and time in the universe. Perhaps someone who had studied me very well could make an indistinguishable replica of me. So the person Pedro can be cloned, replicated, destroyed in many ways, rebuilt in many ways, combined and recombined an innumerable amount of times.

But I am aware, I am conscious, and that eye of the mind, the I of the mind, does not seem to change much through my personality changes. The act of will, the freedom I feel inside, may be annihilated by strong impulses, desires or simple "hormonal unbalances". But whenever it exists it is kind of a "light", an inner light, so much spoke of in less knowledgeable kinds of literature. And this does not seem to change.

Where does creativity come from? Where do thoughts come from? Where does love come from? And that immense sense of beauty when we look at the universe around us?

Of course, there are billions of well-thought out explanations about the mechanisms that brought us to what we are. But I am not speaking about that.

I am speaking about consciousness itself, which, as far as I know, no one was able to properly define (quite contrary to England's courts).

Perhaps it is here. Perhaps it is somewhere in my brain. Perhaps.

Syd Barret once wrote

"It's awfully considerate of you to think of me here 
And I'm most obliged to you for making it clear 
That I'm not here"

Well, I never got to that point. I don't know if "I'm here" or not. I'm not even sure about what that would mean. Perhaps it means we are free to travel anywhere, as long as we don't feel trapped, an indissociable part, in this world. Perhaps it is just a metaphor for "don't believe and you will see the immense abilities of the psychedelic mind".

Whatever it means, however, I would like to add to it a further piece of gibberish: Perhaps I don't belong here, but, since I am, in fact, here, perhaps I am really somewhere between nowhere and everywhere, and, "therefore" (had this made any sense) I AM also here.

Power over nothing

Power... the eternal struggle of the monkey (especially the male).

We see all through those glasses: we see all life as a struggle to power.

Look at all the species, the better are the stronger, the best predator, grass, trees, snails... oh! so immensely powerful. How wish to be the apex predator.

Obviously, apex predators are far from being very successful in the story of our planet. If we look around what we see is cooperation and differentiation. Cells gave rise to sets of cells, which gave rise to all sorts of organisms, some with different organs, etc. Plants are one of the most successful kind of organisms, they are not "powerful" in the sense of the growling monkey with lots of females and submissive allies. They don't have even the concept of territory, they don't go to war.

How many species, successful species, have frontiers, go to war, mistreat even the females?

We long for power, that's where we came from, that is our inheritance. Had we come more from bonobos we would have a whole different kind of civilization.

But we are martial. We crave for power...

And although we can easily understand why (because gestation times are very prolonged, so if a male fights for the control of many females his genes will be more spread out in the long run, which leads to a preponderance on that kind of violent disposition) it is also very easy to see that such a disposition can never lead to very technologically advanced societies.

If you get a bunch of animals all trying to enhance their frontiers, they will tend to use their assassin powers on "the enemy". As technology evolves so does the means of mass murder. So it is simply a matter of time between we destroy a large part of what is now humanity.

The good news is: there's still at least a thousand more million years before Earth becomes to hot for life (our sun is getting brighter). In that time, just as life as previously developed photosynthesis, through all forms of organisms, so life will develop increasingly more expanded minds. We discovered symbolic language. We were able to speak it, then to write it, now to digitize it.

We have created many images of Gods. We are very slowly on a path to become like those that we describe.

So, even if our killing instincts use our technology to destroy ourselves, in the long run, those genes will be less frequent. Precisely for the same reasons that they were selected before: there are others better equipped to survive in the long run.

Beauty, cooperation, integration, sharing, love... are other qualities that will work much better now.  The more advanced the technology, the more advanced must the "heart" be, so that we can direct ourselves to the goals that truly bring us happiness and ecstasy.

Of course, many of us think that power is the best way for ecstasy and pleasure.

But what do you control really? If you have a slave, who is your slave? What dreams, aspirations, creativity, everything that makes one beautiful... what does he / she have? In the measure he / she is a slave, there will be nothing of that, just a willingness to obey every order, to fulfill every one of your desires.

By creating slaves you surround yourself with misery, with hollow specters, with adulators and parasites. You will become alone.

You have power over nothing really...

The world, out there, is much more beautiful, even the simple waves and the sea, have a music that escapes you, surrounded, as you are, in the prison of your own crusade for glory.

Loose yourself, understand that there is nothing over which you are powerful. You can die at any moment, you don't even know why you live, or what life is. You have control over nothing really, not even your self. You are a perfect unknown.

Look at the world outside...
it's full of mysteries... no one really understands it...

come... let's explore it, together, among all things of which we are part...

like brothers, like parts of a gigantic whole which we are just beginning to understand...

let's LIVE

Looking at the Stars...

Swirling in the Universe, like a droplet of water... so many friends, so many visions, and, looking outside my window, so many worlds tightly woven into this one.

It is good to be alive...

From what I can imagine, there's nothing more Marvelous than being part of such a Wonderful history, encompassing also all the stories, facts and feelings, adventures and misadventures we can tell... : )

But we must learn how to die... Beauty is everywhere, but we're only the droplet. Sometimes we're up, on the edge, other times down, in the shit-hole. And Life may take us anywhere, and we must be ready: if we are to fall, Beauty will still be all-around, although we will not be able to see it. Sometimes only pain comes in,

That's when Faith is useful - it becomes the door to what we know is there, all that Magic, but we can't really feel it...

But, whether we Feel it or not... it's there... spreading through the billions of light-years, through countless planets, almost completely (I guess) oblivious to the fate of humanity or even the planet with all its wonderful creatures and events. We're simply too common, too little, to make a difference in such a Beautiful Cosmos.

But it IS Wonderful to be part, even an infinitesimal part, of such a Beautiful Vastness...

Carl Sagan, we need more of you!! : )