To ancient Greeks, atoms (primordia) represented indestructibility, indivisibility, unity
Absolutes comfort us; “the best and most beautiful we can imagine”
“The Now isn’t enough. We want to go behind the moment. We want to build systems and patterns and memories that connect moment to moment to eternity. We long to be part of the Infinite.”
“Why should I insist on meaning?”
Rolland’s “oceanic feeling”: “a sensation of eternity, a feeling of something limitless, unbounded—as it were oceanic… a feeling of an indissoluble bond, of being at one with the external world as a whole.”
Self and Consciousness are names we give to the sensations produced by electrical and chemical flows in humans
Damasio’s levels of consciousness: protoself (basic life processes), core consciousness (self-awareness, thinking and reason but without memories or future), and extended consciousness (what healthy humans have)
Study showed the greater the uncertainty, the greater the electrical activity in the amygdala
Earth is “a large family of noisy and feeling animals—the living, throbbing kingdom of life on our planet, of which we are a part. A kingdom that consecrates life and its possibilities even as each of its individuals passes away. A kingdom that dreams of unity and permanence even as the world fractures and fades. A kingdom redesigning itself, as we humans now do. All is in flux and has always been so. … Flux is beyond sadness and joy. Flux and impermanence and uncertainty seem to be simply what is.”
“I will end this day listening to Bach’s exquisite Mass in B Minor. Written to celebrate the Christian God, I will take it to celebrate all gods, for the gods of our faiths are not so different from each other. I will take it to celebrate those who believe and those who do not, for we all want to believe something. I will take it to celebrate life and its myriad forms, even as that life passes away. I will take it to celebrate meaning, even if that meaning is only the moment. The moment is now. As I gaze out the window, slender blue heron lifts off from the shore and glides over the bay.”