Books To The Ceiling

Books to the ceiling, books to the sky.
My piles of books are a mile high.
How I love them!
How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
≈ Arnold Lobel
http://owlsquarepress.com/bttc36.html

Dear Human...

"A little perspective, like a little humor, goes a long way." - Allen Klein

original: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2223

Noise and Silence

There are two kinds of sufferers in this world: those who suffer from a lack of life and those who suffer from an overabundance of life. I've always found myself in the second category. When you come to think of it, almost all human behavior and activity is not essentially any different from animal behavior. The most advanced technologies and craftsmanship bring us, at best, up to the super-chimpanzee level. Actually, the gap between, say, Plato or Nietzsche and the average human is greater than the gap between that chimpanzee and the average human. The realm of the real spirit, the true artist, the saint, the philosopher, is rarely achieved.

Why so few? Why is world history and evolution not stories of progress but rather this endless and futile addition of zeroes. No greater values have developed. Hell, the Greeks 3,000 years ago were just as advanced as we are. So what are these barriers that keep people from reaching anywhere near their real potential? The answer to that can be found in another question, and that's this: Which is the most universal human characteristic - fear or laziness?

~ Waking life | Noise and Silence
http://wakinglifemovie.net/Transcript/Chapter/8

A Culminating Process

“Each species that crosses our paths tells us something about our situation, what part of ourselves we must call upon to handle the circumstances we face. Animals reflect our own level of consciousness and expectation. If our level of vibration is low, the animals will merely be there with us, performing their usual ecological functions. When a skeptical biologist reduces animal behavior to mindless instinct, he sees the restriction that he himself has put upon the animal. But as our vibration shifts, the actions of the animals that come to us become ever more synchronistic, mysterious, and instructional. Animals represent aspects of ourselves that we developed when we were those animals during the course of evolution, but have lost. Our consciousness moved through each animal as it represented the end point of life’s development and then leaped to the next. We experienced the way each species views the world, which is an important aspect of the complete spiritual consciousness. When a particular animal comes around, that means we’re ready to integrate its consciousness into our waking awareness again. And I’ll tell you something: there are some species that we aren't even close to catching up with. That’s why it’s so important to preserve every life-form on this Earth. We want them to endure not just because they are a part of the balanced ecosphere, but because they represent aspects of ourselves that we’re still trying to remember."

~ The Tenth Insight

Assassin's Creed

D: Whoa... where am I?

V: You're inside the Animus.

D: Which is...?

V: It's a projector which renders genetic memories in three dimensions.

D: Genetic memories...

V: Seems you'll need a bit of a tutorial... very well. Let's start simple.
What is a memory, Mr. Miles?
(A brain shows on the visor.)

D: It's the... recollection of a past event.

V: ...specific to the individual remembering the event.
(A woman's silhouette.)

D: Yeah, sure.

V: What if I told you the human body not only housed an individual's memories but the memories of his ancestors as well? Genetic memory, if you will. (A bird is shown.) Migration, hibernation, reproduction... how do animals know when and where to go? What to do?

D: That's just animal instinct.

V: Now you're arguing semantics, Mr. Miles. Whatever you call it, the fact remains. These creatures hold the knowledge absent the first-hand
experience. I've spent the last thirty years trying to understand why. (A symbolic genetic strand is shown.) Our DNA functions as an archive. It contains not only genetic instructions passed down from previous generations, but memories as well. The memories of our ancestors.

D: And the Animus lets you decode and read these DNA files.

V: Precisely.

Lucy: But there's a problem. This is the specific memory we're trying to
access. (The Animus highlights a memory at the end of the strand.)
Unfortunately, when we try to open the memory, your mind withdraws. You lack the confidence to step into your ancestor's body. That's what happened earlier. You got knocked out of the target memory and pushed back into a more stable state.

D: Why?

L: It's your subconscious. It's resisting. We found similar reactions among patients who undergo hypnosis to relive traumatic events. They can't jump directly into the specific memory. You need to be eased in. Even then there can be problems.

D: So how do we fix it?

L: We find a memory you CAN synchronize with. And we move forward from there. You'll get used to it. This is the closest we can get. (The Animus highlights the first memory "block.") So it's where we'll have to start. I'm uploading the tutorial program now.

D: Desmond
V: Vidic