Sacred Words

It may be stretching it a bit to call this thing sacred, but since we have the unheard-of luxury of diving deeper into spirituality and writing simultaneously (for free), I think it's appropriate.

Ran across a word at work today that gave me an aha.

I'd seen the word around, in places I liked, but never had actually looked it up before. Thought I knew what it meant, but didn't. Googled it, went to Wikipedia, and this is what they said….

Liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning “a threshold”)

The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One's sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition, during which your normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed, opening the way to something new.

………………………....

Holy crap, that's us! Oh God, please let it be true! Something new is what I've hoped for all my life. But change is hard, and I only like easy stuff.

Darn.

Oh well, for the rest of you like Karen Lynn, for whom courage is mother's milk and action second nature, I thought the treehouse might could use a wee little listy of words like liminal that we run across from day to day. Those words that talk to soul and move to wonder.

So if anyone has a word that opens up vistas in their wildly-dreaming artistic spirits, please share.

Yours in all liminality,

Tom

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Oh! What a wonderful word!!!! Thank you for sharing it!

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Holy Liminality, batman!

How about a little liminality with your tea???

I love it:
 I added this word to my personal dictionary.  I collect words. I enjoy words.

We enter that glorious state of limiality every time we take the next step up the rung of the ladder of our life, take a new class, ….we kiss this baby more that we may realize, eh?!

Thanks for the delectable treat.
 All to LOVe, sharon

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Don't you just love a threshold? Since we're just starting our playshop, Diving Deeper, we're at a threshold, that mysterious zone of liminality. Plus Zaadz is a threshold space.

Here's an adjunct word:
 

Aporia:

A term from the Greek, meaning ‘without an opening' (a = without; poria = gate). In Classical and Renaissance handbooks of rhetoric ‘aporia' is a figure of speech naming a state of doubt or a speaker's uncertainty about how to proceed with an argument. A celebrated example would be Hamlet's ‘to be or not to be' speech. The term has been revived in poststructuralist thought to similarly name a paradox or moment of self-contradiction that cannot be resolved dialectically and where meaning therefore becomes undecidable.

A deconstructive reading in particular seeks to disclose how a philosophy or literary or other text arrives through its own operation at such a moment. According to Christopher Norris, aporia is consequently, ‘the nearest one can get to a label or conceptual cover-term for the effects of differance… What deconstruction persistently reveals is an ultimate impasse of thought'.

A further connection is with the concept of the DIFFEREND employed by Jean-Francois Lyotard to describe the situation where two opposed arguments cannot be reconciled or judged from an ‘objective' third position. In narrative, an aporia may occur where there is no resolution of the traditional kind provided by a marriage, inheritance or the explanation of a mystery. This has become an accentuated feature of postmodern writing and film. In well-known examples such as Paul Auster's New York Trilogy or the film The Usual Suspects, for instance, the suspense conventionally associated with detective and thriller stories is reinforced in a self-conscious way and remains unresolved. The reader or viewer is presented less with the explanation of a mystery than the black hole of aporia in which the unanswered questions are as much about writing or film-making as about the intrinsic events of the story.

(Ashamed to say I don't have an attribution for that excerpt. May the gods of copyright forgive me, not to mention the author & publisher.)

………………………………….

Aporia reminds me of the zen “Gateless Gate”, the gate that cannot be entered and yet must be. All thresholds, especially spiritual and esthetic ones, hold the paradox of the gateless gate.

 

Preface to The Gateless Gate by Mumon


Our teaching makes our mind the principle and the gateless gate its very gate. Since it is the gateless gate, how can one pass through it?

Are you not aware of the insight that purports:

“Those who have entered the gate are no family treasures. What is gained as a result of cause and effect has beginning and end, and thus will become nothing.”

Such remarks are like raising up waves in the windless ocean, or gouging a wound into healthy skin. Those who cling onto words are fools who believe that they can catch the moon with a stick or scratch their itchy foot through a leather shoe. How can they see reality as it actually is?

In the Summer of the first year of Shjoting, Ekai Mumon was lecturing on koans of the ancient masters to the monks at the monastery of Luinghsiang temple in East China. He intended to use the koans as bricks for battering the gate in order to inspire the pursuer of Zen according to his ability. His notes were collected arbitrarily. There is no order as to the beginning or the end. In total there are 48 koans, now called “The Gateless Gate.”

If anyone, like eight-armed Nata who bravely goes straight forward, ventures into Zen practice, no delusion will disturb him. The Indian and Chinese patriarchs will beg for their lives in his commanding presence. If, however, he hesitates even a moment, he is just a person that watches from a narrow window for a speedy horseman to pass by, and misses everything in a wink and a saddening sigh.

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Gateless because it has no gate barrier.  The gate that one sees is but an image/mirage that one's  belief  has   placed there.  And, even though the gate is nonexistent, Oh, it exits for the creator who put it there.  Dismiss or de+fuse the belief, and “poof!”  the gate is an open Archway beckoning the weary traveler to enter and be free.


think on this —  THen, we train our eyes to see that which is not there as being there.  Then, we get others to agree with us and share our belief and reinforce the belief of this gate. THen, the collective unconscous of man “sees” the gateless gate as having a gate, and we “see” it with a lock.  ANd then,… yada yada yada……..yet, all along, the gate was was simply an unaccepted open Arch.  Mirages: Do we love 'em or leave 'em? 

think on this  —  Like zaadz is a “web that has no weaver”

All to Love,   Sharon

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Laws a mercy! Sharon you blow my mind. Literally. You blow the gates off my mind. It never even occurred to me that gateless could mean there is no barrier. I figured it for a paradox when it was just a plain statement of fact.

That shows how closed my mind was. But not on purpose. It was an invisible gate. Those gates are invisible not because you can see through the gates, but because you can't see them at all, even when you're staring right at 'em. Those damned gates are figments of the mind - which lets you know how strong a figment can be at times. A figment of adamant.

Boy those Zen dudes are tricky, eh? Talk about hiding something in plain sight.

That's what I love about Zaddz: it is magic. For a long time I've lived in a dead world, but couldn't figure out why. I had to give up because trying would have killed me. Thing is, I never realized what I missed was magic. I must have alchemy in my genes or something, trickster bones. The whole “real world” thing has always struck me as kind of arbitrary and bizarre, despite many people hurrying over to remind me how normal it is. Normal?

Pfffft!

In Shock and Awe (but the good kind),

Love,

Tom

…not having an aporia, as you can see.

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Oh, What can I say, dear Tom, but

YES!

~ Sandra

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I have another word that opens up vistas:

Sandra

Oh yeah, and:

Alex:

(Except she doesn't open up vistas, she opens up little teeny tiny twinkling worlds, like landscapes inside a Fabergé egg. She's on a word diet at present, so is busy prying open places we didn't know exist. Those vistas will come later.)

Heartfelt thanks to you both, my two new favorite words.

Love Yes,

Tom

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Yammy… words for brekfast, words for dinner, words as late night snack. Keeping our digestion ongoing, nuturing our weighless enbodyment still heavy to carry from time to time - knowledge and the lack of it.

(I might invent own words accidently and with purpose when my english don't keep up with my thought's)

The Gateless Gate - it reminds me of something… there is no gate, just the illusion dwelling upon our retina, a fragment of our imagenation that makes us belive that we are separated. There is no gate.

May I introduce myself, I am Nothing. I salute you.

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Welcome Nothing, great to meet you! Always wanted to meet nothing, from whence everything comes, just didn't know it would be so soon.

One of my cherished beliefs is that Nothing is never someway all the time. Is that true?

Thanks & wild-ass language ya ya's to the polyglots! Go for it, you blessed few!

If you're here to learn correct usage, you stopped at the wrong bar.

Love,

Tom

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Thank you Tom… no correct usage needed, I'm here because I love to write and where would I otherwise feel good and free if not in a place were those are who love to write and also do so?

Your belivings about Nothing… hmm, hmm, hmm (thinking). I would say that Nothing is the essence of absence of Everything and the idéa that Everything excist's… now a days it's more going in direction where not even Nothing excist's and everything just is. As I said, pointless mumble. What does a fish know about birds and flowers.

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Esprit

…from from Life's 2% Solution: Simple Steps to Achieve Happiness and Balance

by Marcia M. Hughes

Esprit d'Core is the spirit at the core of our being. It is that unique element that makes up one's fundamental core self. It dwells in our innermost self. Our core spirit must be integrated and expressed in our daily living in order to be fulfilled and happy.

When I created the concept of Esprit d'Core, I was inspired by the term esprit de corps, which is defined as “the selfless and often enthusiastic and jealous devotion of the members of a group or association of persons to the group or to its purposes.” In both phrases, the heart of the meaning is based on the word esprit, which, according to The Oxford English Dictionary, was first used by a Frenchman in 1591, and means “spirit mind” […]

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Oh Tom, you have released me from the chains of advertising - when I think of Esprit I think of Esprit.
No longer, thanks to you.
~ Sandra

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Amphisbaema: a serpent with a head at each end.

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Urinator: an archaic term for someone who dives under the sea in a diving bell.

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Glad you clarified this one. Seems like a pissed off terminator!!!LOL

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The Urinator: Submit or Drown

“Make my pee….”

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LOL

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Hmm,  I wonder if our pod should be renamed??!

Thanks so much for all these wonderful words, Tom.

~ Sandra

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Urinating Deeper just doesn't have the same zing to me, too much machinery involved. But it's a good thought, Sandra! Outside the box, that's you.

And you're very welcome for the words, dear, I'm glad you like them. I got a beauty that I ran across today which I'm about to post. You're gonna love it, bigtime. Kind of like a job description of what you do.

In Love with Words,

Tom

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Sigil

A sign, symbol, or cypher created for a specific magical purpose. The term sigil derives from the Latin sigilum meaning “seal,” though it may also be related to the Hebrew סגולה (segulah meaning “word, action or item of spiritual effect”). The old Norse binding rune is an example of the idea.

A sigil may have an abstract, pictorial or semi-abstract form. It may appear in any medium, physical, virtual, or mental. Visual symbols are the most popular form, but the use of audial and tactile symbols in magic is not unheard of.

from Wikipedia

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Quinzilbop

…wasn't on Google. Still looking for the meaning of that one.

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Thanks Tom! My head is now swimming with new words and ideas to ponder….

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Symbiotic (as in relationship)

any interdependent or mutually beneficial relationship between two persons, groups, etc.

This place in a nutshell

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I think some artists may be symbiotic, most of them I bet. Feeding off of other artists. Dream feeding dream. And then to combine spirit, now that's mutually beneficial!

I love that “bio” is part of the word. Life. Wonder what the “sym” part means? It's also part of symbol, which is very cool. Maybe something to do with togetherness?

I was starting to wonder if anybody else had any words they especially love that they wanted to share, about writing, art, and soul. No pressure though.

Perfect that the first one is symbiotic.

Thanks ever-so-much, ET!

In Wholehearted Communication,

Tom

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Hi Tom:

Like your expansion on this word…always a joy! powerful

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Hiden (Japanese)

The term hiden literally means secret (hi) transmission (den). It indicates the act of secret and inner transmission of knowledge. In various traditions (i.e., communities) of hiden, esoteric practitioners have conveyed knowledge to a few chosen disciples with great care. They have called the knowledge itself hiden, and they have also referred to the method of transmission, whereby they leave the knowledge to their successors, as hiden. When doing so, they transmit not only knowledge but also power and authority, along with symbolic objects to signify the legitimacy of a recipient, such as a praised sword, fan, or the like. In this paradigm, both the transmission and knowledge do not depend on what is called modern “reason,” which was once believed to ensure objective Truth. Hiden knowledge (i.e., how to dance Dying Moth on Evening Lotus Opus A) is precious not because it is true in objective terms, but, rather, because this particular choreography has been defined as truthful by successive mentors, that is, the possessors of the knowledge.

from “Secrecy in Japanese Arts: Secret Transmission as a Mode of Knowledge”

by Maki Isaka Morinaga

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Chiasmus

A figure of speech, where you do that ol' reverse dipsy-doodle thing with the words, as in Robert Bryne's “The purpose of life is a life of purpose.”

www.chiasmus.com

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I like chasm too.

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When I wrote my first book (memoirs in short prose glimpses) I called the book:

Recapitulation = A condensation of the essential or main points of something.

In my own head it means something totally different though. I have always thought of this word being the one that describes how we capitulate in front of something bigger, in this case it was life itself. It's the moment when that stubborn “I” bow her head - not defeated, but convinced with that force, the force that makes even lowest of the low crawl ahead, and it has always a direction, it can't stop.

And then I found this meaning:

recapitulation, theory, stated as the by E. H. Haeckel, that the development of the individual repeats the stages in the evolutionary development of the species. For example, the beginnings of gill clefts appear in both humans and fish, but while they are elaborated and eventually function in the fish, in humans, except for the modified gill cleft that becomes the, they disappear as the embryo develops. Though drastically modified and qualified since its proposal, the historical significance of this theory - ”ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis” - is that with its appearance it lent support to the theory of evolution by seeming to it.

Hmm, that Haeckel fella…!

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Tom~ All your great words have inspired me:

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LOVED your poem Josy! Its form is even like a gate or a big barrier. A poem that's like a painting, visually depicting what it says. Very cool.

We can do more than ponder, you know. We can write. We can write what happens when the gate that was never there comes down. We can tell what we see, or sense, if seeing isn't possible.

Rock On, O Mighty Threshold-Girl!

Tom

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jOSY:  awesome!

TOM:  LOOK WHAT YOU STARTED!  A TSUNAMIFEST OF WORDS! :)

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.

Ollendorffian (ah-lun-DORF-ee-un) is a brilliantly precise adjective: It means “written in the artificial and overly formal style of foreign-language phrase books,” and is derived from the name of German grammarian Heinrich Ollendorff.

The most aggressively Ollendorffian phrase we learned in French class was, “I am going to the library with my acquaintance Robert who works as an acrobat.”

Another fine example, from Erin McKean's Weird and Wonderful Words, is “Unhand me, Sir, for my husband, who is an Australian, awaits without.”

From The Arts and the Creation of Mind
 
by Elliot W. Eisner

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Earworm

A word for the phenomenon where a song gets stuck in your head: Such a song is an earworm. A study conducted by a professor at the University of Cincinnati found that the theme from Gilligan's Island and ”It's a Small World After All” were among the earwormiest songs on the planet. It's a world of laughter, a world of something / It's a world of hmm and a world of mmm.

Wait. Where were we? Oh, right.

Researchers hypothesize that one of the reasons earworms stick in our heads is that we're trying to fill in the blanks - either the notes don't resolve satisfactorily, or we don't quite remember the rhymes. Our brains want to bring closure to the song and so they repeat it over and over again, looking for the resolution. Other times, earworms are catchy, repetitive songs we liked in our youth but slowly grew to despise, which come back as ghouls to haunt our long-term memories.

From The Arts and the Creation of Mind

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Mu (Japanese)

A word which can be roughly translated as “none” or “without”. While typically used as a prefix to imply the absence of something (e.g., 無線 musen for “wireless”), it is more famously used as a response to certain koans and other questions in Zen Buddhism, intending to indicate that the question itself was wrong.

The Mu koan is as follows:

A monk asked Zen master Zhaozhou, a Chinese Zen Master: “Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?”  Zhaozhou answered: ”Mu”.

Some earlier Buddhist thinkers had maintained that creatures such as dogs did have the Buddha-nature; others, that they did not. Therefore, to answer “no” is to deny their wisdom, whereas to say “yes” would appear to blindly follow their teachings. Zhaozhou's answer has subsequently been interpreted to mean that all such categorical thinking is in fact a delusion. In other words, yes and no are both right and wrong . This Koan is traditionally used by students of the Rinzai School of Zen as their initiation into Zen study.

In his 1974 novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig translated mu as “no thing”, saying that it meant “unask the question”. He offered the example of a computer circuit using the binary numeral system:

For example, it's stated over and over again that computer circuits exhibit only two states, a voltage for “one” and a voltage for “zero”. That's silly!

Any computer-electronics technician knows otherwise. Try to find a voltage representing one or zero when the power is off! The circuits are in a mu-state.

According to the Jargon File, a collection of hacker jargon and culture, mu (here pronounced “moo”) is considered by Discordians to be the correct answer to the classic logical fallacy of the loaded question “Have you stopped beating your wife?”

Assuming that you have no wife or you have never beaten your wife, the answer “yes” is wrong because it implies that you used to beat your wife and then stopped, but “no” is worse because it suggests that you have one and are still beating her. As a result, various Discordians proposed mu as the correct answer, alleged by them to mean “Your question cannot be answered because it depends on incorrect assumptions”.

Mu is also the name of a legendary lost continent in the Pacific, analogous to Atlantis in the Atlantic.

- Wikipedia

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Mu, huh?

hmm!?

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that one was for you, Nono!

more on mu

i cannot not help my non-self, i just had to not not write something about something other than what i wasnt thinking.

other interesting notes, the character in japanese which stands for the word “mu” is taken from the chinese word “wu”.  the characters are identical and the meaning is the same with perhaps the exception of cultucal context.  the origin of the character “wu” and “mu” has a long history as most chinese characters do.

originally, it is believed that the character depicted trees above men.  the story goes, there were trees and then the men came.  wu is what was left of the trees after they were cut down.  this is interesting: the word wu is not the word “no” or “nothing” or “not”… it is closer to the word “void” or “emptiness remaining”.  in fact, the other words mentioned all have their own distinct characters and words.

another interesting note along those lines: the tao te ching, classic taoist text alleged to lao-tzu, begins with the lines:

way becomes way
not immortal way
name becomes name
not immortal name
void name is mother heaven and earth.

there are lots of ways to translate it- this is my own lousy example.  here, though, the word used in the last phrase, “void”, is wu or mu.  given that the author(s) did not use one of the other words for “not” or “no”, we can guess that they likely did not mean the unnamed or without name… but rather.. something like kant meant in the beginning of his critique of reason when he described how an object when removed leaves a void of that object that is as much part of its being as is its manifestation.

so mu (wu) has a pretty significant background…

another interesting koan for enjoyment which is, in a way to speak, the compliment of mu and not it:

Mark-san turned to DaiJu and said, “you realize, of course, that you aren't REALLY sweeping that sidewalk.”
DaiJu swatted him with the broom and went back to sweeping.
Mark-san came back the next day as DaiJu was again doing his chores and said, “You're still not sweeping!”  And DaiJu again wopped him with the broom.
Again, the third day, the same thing happened but this time DaiJu grabbed Mark-san by the shirt and said, “tell me, then.  what am i doing?”
Mark-san hollered, “MU!”
DaiJu said, “wrong! try again!”
Mark-san was stunned.  Surely that was the answer!  He remained dangling by his shirt and goggling as the monk stared into his face.
DaiJu suddenly relaxed, patted Mark-san on the shoulder, smiled and went back to sweeping.
Years later, Mark-san was sweeping the floor when DaiJu, now very old, approached him and said, “you realize that you're not sweeping, eh?”  Mark-san swatted him with the broom, laughing, “I sure as hell am!”

giggles,
darvich

Re: more on mu

delightful! i find rather enlightened on mu now, never really had a handle on it at all before.

love to you, davie,

nicole

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mu

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Ouroboros

An ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon swallowing its own tail and forming a circle. It has been used to represent many things over the ages, but it most generally symbolizes ideas of cyclicality, primordial unity, or the vicious circle. The ouroboros has been important in religious and mythological symbolism, but has also been frequently used in alchemical illustrations. More recently, it has been interpreted by psychologists, such as Carl Jung, as having an archetypal significance to the human psyche.

The name ouroboros (or, in Latinized form, uroborus) is Greek οὐροβóρος, “tail-devourer”. The depiction of the serpent is believed to have been inspired by the Milky Way, as some ancient texts refer to a serpent of light residing in the heavens.

Plato described a self-eating, circular being as the first living thing in the universe - an immortal, perfectly constructed animal.

The living being had no need of eyes when there was nothing remaining outside him to be seen; nor of ears when there was nothing to be heard; and there was no surrounding atmosphere to be breathed; nor would there have been any use of organs by the help of which he might receive his food or get rid of what he had already digested, since there was nothing which went from him or came into him: for there was nothing beside him.

Of design he was created thus, his own waste providing his own food, and all that he did or suffered taking place in and by himself. For the Creator conceived that a being which was self-sufficient would be far more excellent than one which lacked anything; and, as he had no need to take anything or defend himself against any one, the Creator did not think it necessary to bestow upon him hands: nor had he any need of feet, nor of the whole apparatus of walking; but the movement suited to his spherical form was assigned to him, being of all the seven that which is most appropriate to mind and intelligence; and he was made to move in the same manner and on the same spot, within his own limits revolving in a circle.

All the other six motions were taken away from him, and he was made not to partake of their deviations. And as this circular movement required no feet, the universe was created without legs and without feet.

- Wikipedia

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Tom!

You've somehow got a copy of my unfinished novel and are slowly pouring the words out here…. one by one. Tricky fellow you are. Trying to get me writing I see, harrumph ;-)

~ S

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It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it.

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Have you tried pretending that you don't want to write? Maybe if you can make it illicit, it will have more charm. Sneak away, escape from yourself, hide out, and do your worst.

You have so many writing duties maybe you should make your novel an un-duty, a transgression.

I can see you now, hunched furtively over your desk, wild-eyed and jumpy, snapping your head around at the least faint door closing or tiniest mouse scrabbling in the wall, writing frantically in hopes you can scrawl a couple pages before you get caught.

Heh heh heh,

Tom

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I can see you now, hunched furtively over your desk, wild-eyed and jumpy, snapping your head around at the least faint door closing or tiniest mouse scrabbling in the wall, writing frantically in hopes you can scrawl a couple pages before you get caught.

Oh YES! I'm going to have to steal this scene! ;-)
 
!

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Trickster

Walk with us now through another doorway, this time not into the physical space of the writing center, but into the mythical space of Trickster. Doorways represent, in fact, crossroads for Trickster figures, sites of contingency and leakage. Lewis Hyde writes, “All Tricksters like to hang around the doorway, that being one of the places where deep-change accidents occur” We like to think of our writing centers as places where deep-change accidents occur, of the doorways to our writing centers as something other than the familiar gate-keeping devices; and we use this chapter to explore the application of the concept of Trickster to the work of [writing].

WHO/WHAT IS TRICKSTER?

Common Trickster figures include familiar classical god-like characters such as Loki and Hermes, or the Raven, Blue Jay, and Fox; and, especially in North America, Coyote. As the name suggests, Trickster loves to play tricks on other gods (and sometimes on humans and animals). But his main function is that of “boundary-crosser”. Hyde in fact refers to Trickster as “the god of the threshold in all its forms”. Trickster crosses both physical and social boundaries; Trickster is often a traveler, and he frequently breaks societal rules, blurring connections and distinctions between “right and wrong, sacred and profane, clean and dirty, male and female, young and old, living and dead”, changing shape (turning into an animal, for example) to move between worlds.

The implications of Trickster stories are many, according to Michael Webster, professor of English at Grand Valley State University: Trickster stories … have something to say about how culture gets created, and about the nature of intelligence. Trickster represents a certain flexibility of mind and spirit, a willingness to defy authority and invent clever solutions that keeps cultures (and stories) from becoming too stagnant.

(http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/Tricksters.htm)

from Everyday Writing Center: A Community of Practice

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“Places where deep-change accidents occur…”  Thanks for these excellent notes on the Trickster, who can often be a Threshold Guardian and Guide. Super notes!  AJN

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Alchemist

The transforming power of imagination played a key role in the alchemist's attempt to achieve a unity which was symbolized by gold but was as much psychological as physical in nature - the alchemist projected his own psychic background, his unconscious, into the matter on which he experimented, so that the latter became, as it were, his other self, with whom he entered into a living relationship equivalent to an “inner dialogue.”

from The Labyrinth of Universality: Wilson Harris's Visionary Art of Fiction

by Hena Maes-Jelinek

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Pentimento

A painting in which the author paints an ugly picture and then repents and paints a beautiful one over the grotesque images underneath.

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Author and painting Tom? Do you mean when an author paint with words? Or if it is painting with brushes and stuff, does it need to be an author or can an artist also do that “Penimento” painting? How about if one is both, as I am?

Aww… Tom, so many questions. That sounds a lot like Italian to me.

Love,

Nono

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Hi Nono, thank God you're still here. I've been off in lala land for a few days and missed my precious resource most deeply.

I just thought pentimento was a cool word. Loved the metaphor of what we do sometimes with writing, taking something grotesque and making it beautiful. And its connection with the word repentance. The idea of that specific genre - that even has its own name and everything - of painting/art/writing being a kind of repentance. No wonder it's Italian.

Your Loving Thing,

Tom

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I think the inspiration is the concept.

I shall use the word is relating how we seek to remake or reinvent ourselves as we grow and mature.

The very act of releasing resentment from one's heart and replacing it with a caring interest or acceptance seems a fine Penimento act.  Wouldn't you agree?

All to Love, Sharon
Pentimento

A painting in which the author paints an ugly picture and then repents and paints a beautiful one over the grotesque images underneath.

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Leave it to you, Sharon, to strike right to the heart of the matter. Of course that's it!

Translating a genre of painting into the Art of Being. You Dive like a porpoise, dear one. Or maybe you're down there already, swimming around, waving up at us, motioning us deeper, “Come on you guys, the water's fine!”

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Emily Dickenson

Founder and inventor of the Diving Deeper Workshop, in August, 1853, except she held it with herself.

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She did?? I wondered. I knew I'd been here before ;-)

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My beloved Thing…

Then I belive both Pentimento and Alhcemist are the same? Jaa..? (swedish sound)
I would like to share something Einstein once said:

”Where ever I go, I notice that a poet has been there before me.” And this is about quantum physics.

Love love love,

Nono

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grass widow

1528 chiefly dialect  a: a discarded mistress b: a woman who has had an illegitimate child c: a woman whose husband is temporarily away from her d: a woman divorced or separated from her husband

Thanks Josy!

Re: Sacred Words

wordhord    This chapter aims to help you over the first hurdles by introducing you to some useful and quickly identifiable Old English words, and suggesting some strategies with which you can begin to build up your own ‘word hoard' (Old English wordhord) of ancient expressions. With the minimum of effort, many Old English words are easy to recognise. They have not changed very much for over a thousand years. For instance, most if not all of the following words should be recognisable (their present-day equivalences are given at the end of this chapter). It often helps to say the words aloud.

and east gold help blis god
west understandan word wundor

From Beginning Old English by Hough and Corbett

Chiaroscuro

One of my favorites:

chiar·oscu·ro
Pronunciation: -'skyur-(“)O, -'skur-
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -ros
Etymology: Italian, from chiaro clear, light + oscuro obscure, dark
1 : pictorial representation in terms of light and shade without regard to color
2 a : the arrangement or treatment of light and dark parts in a pictorial work of art b : the interplay or contrast of dissimilar qualities (as of mood or character)
3 : a 16th century woodcut technique involving the use of several blocks to print different tones of the same color; also : a print made by this technique
4 : the interplay of light and shadow on or as if on a surface
5 : the quality of being veiled or partly in shadow

So many fun ways to play with this word, which was the inspiration for the name of a child I never had, who was to have been “Chiara”…..

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My brother in law is reputed to have said to his mum & dad - during the early period of his language aquisition -

May I protrude !

Forgive me for my own “intrusion” - in the context that I have oft been asked to write a book but never had the inclination to do so - but I would like to share this with YOU ALL - from my own “virtual treehouse” in Coed Sylen, Carmarthanshire.

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Panopticism

According to Foucault in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Panopticism is a technology that arose in the eighteenth century, similar to other technologies, such as industrialization and agronomy. Panopticism is based on Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, an architectural plan for an ideal prison (it could also be applied to mental hospitals or schools). In this structure, the architecture itself sets up the control system for the prisoners. The prison cells surround the guards' rooms, forming a hexagon. The guards' rooms are always kept dark, while the prisoners' cells are made of glass and are kept lit at all times. The prisoners assume that they will be monitored and punished if they violate the rules supposedly established by the guards (the form such punishment will take is not discussed). The prisoners assume that they are under constant surveillance because it is always possible for them to be viewed, but they cannot see the guards in the center of the hexagon.

This assumption of constant scrutiny leads the prisoners to fear punishment at all times, which leads them to control their own behavior. As Foucault writes, “The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen.” This dynamic is constitutive of the Panoptic gaze, whereby those being controlled do not see or understand who or what controls them.

This Panoptic gaze is crucial to the foundation of control, as those who are subjected to the gaze learn to control their own behavior, with or without the presence of an actual guard. In this way, “a real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation… . He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.” After a time, there is no need for an actual guard in the architectural structure, as long as the prisoners believe that they are being watched, even if they are not; as a result, they begin to self-police.

According to Foucault, the power structures fundamental to the Panopticon also work in a similar manner in larger society. At its simplest level, it is the way that power functions in society. He argues that members of this society control themselves based on invisible means of coercion called disciplines. In the larger society, as in the prison, the structure and the gaze inherent in the structure are no longer necessary. The person or message controlling and the people controlled no longer need to be physically proximate. Instead, disciplinary mechanisms form the foundation of control, and people self-police in response to these mechanisms.

from The Oprah Phenomenon by Robert J. Thompson, Jennifer Harris, and Elwood Watson

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Apophatic

Negative theology - also known as the Via Negativa (Latin for “Negative Way”) and Apophatic theology - is a theology that attempts to describe God by negation, to speak of God only in terms of what may not be said about God.

In brief, the attempt is to gain and express knowledge of God by describing what God is not (apophasis), rather than by describing what God is. The apophatic tradition is often, though not always, allied with the approach of mysticism, which focuses on a spontaneous or cultivated individual experience of the divine reality beyond the realm of ordinary perception, an experience often unmediated by the structures of traditional organized religion or learned thought and behavior.

Apophatic description of God

In Negative theology, it is accepted that the Divine is ineffable, an abstract experience that can only be recognized - that is, human beings cannot describe the essence of God, and therefore all descriptions if attempted will be false and conceptualization should be avoided:

Neither existence nor nonexistence as we understand it applies to God, i.e., God is beyond existing or not existing. (One cannot say that God exists in the usual sense of the term; nor can we say that God is nonexistent.)

God is divinely simple. (One should not claim that god is one, or three, or any type of being. All that can be said is, whatever God is, is not multiple independent beings)

God is not ignorant. (One should not say that God is wise since that word arrogantly implies we know what wise means on a divine scale, whereas we only know what wise means to a man.)

Likewise, God is not evil. (To say that God can be described by the word 'good' limits God to what good means to human beings.)

God is not a creation (but beyond this we do not know how God comes to be)

God is not conceptually definable in terms of space and location.

God is not conceptually confinable to assumptions based on time.

Even though the via negativa essentially rejects theological understanding as a path to God, some have sought to make it into an intellectual exercise, by describing God only in terms of what God is not. One problem noted with this approach, is that there seems to be no fixed basis on deciding what God is not.

from Wikipedia

…in my opinion there is nothing that God is not.

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God is not Dog, or is it?

(This from a woman who named  a child Mikala Kim) Sorry, couldn't resist.


nice double-negative, btw…

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Michele, surely you've heard about the insomniac dyslexic agnostic who lays awake at night








…….wondering if there is a Dog.

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(Liking what I'm reading…prolific!)

In keeping with the original theme and bringing our attention back to the liminal state that Tom has found us in…

How about Namaste? It seems to be used a lot.


Meanings in global culture

Namaste is one of the few Sanskrit words commonly recognized by Non-Hindi speakers. In the West, it is often used to indicate South Asian culture in general. “Namaste” is particularly associated with aspects of South Asian culture such as vegetarianism, yoga, ayurvedic healing, and Hinduism.

In recent times, and more globally, the term “namaste” has come to be especially associated with yoga and spiritual meditation all over the world. In this context, it has been viewed in terms of a multitude of very complicated and poetic meanings which tie in with the spiritual origins of the word. Some examples:

• “I honor the Spirit in you which is also in me.” – attributed to author Deepak Chopra^{[citation needed]}
• “I honor the place in you in which the entire Universe dwells, I honor the place in you which is of Love, of Integrity, of Wisdom and of Peace, When you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, we are One.”^[3][4]
• “I salute the God within you.”
• “I recognize that we are all equal.”^[5]
• “The entire universe resides within you.”^[5]
• “The divine peace in me greets the divine peace in you.”^[5]
• “Your spirit and my spirit are ONE.” – attributed to Lilias Folan's shared teachings from her journeys to India.^{[citation needed]}
• “That which is of the Divine in me greets that which is of the Divine in you.”^[6]
• “The Divinity within me perceives and adores the Divinity within you”.^[7]

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Holy liminal, Batman! Thanks so much, Michele, for adding to our list. Namaste is a liminal word, for there is a threshold between two people that they cross when they meet, and namaste is a grand gate, as well as a threshold between languages. It's important to me that you chose this word because before it was something I was a little uncomfortable saying. Made me feel like a poser. Longmont boy makes the bigtime, eastwise.

But you've helped me make it my own. It's not as if I don't use other foreign words, like when I say, “You reconnoiter the east building and I'll check over the wall,” I don't get all weirded out feeling like a fake French guy.

Maybe I'm not solemn enough for nameste. I sure love the variety of meanings. We are all equal is huge with me. Grant others their sacred worth and they will love you for it, especially dogs and butterflies.

Namaste and Whew,

Tom

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“…especially the dogs and butterflies.”

Nice reply, Tom. I'll take it to “Heart.” I like what you said about stretching the ol' comfort zones.

:)))


(Would somebody please start a pun thread somewhere?!)

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Okay, here it is.  BANANA.   Just say it and tell me the God of linuistics does not have a sense of humour and wants us to be happy. 

whisper it like it's something you want a lover to do to you after several tequillas.
shout it like a statement of truth–a bloody manifesto, nailed to the door of a cathedral.
chant it like sanskrit words of praise.

if you're not laughing your ass off after all of this, call in sick and suck the helium out of afew balloons–you need a vacation…

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Sparrow,

'Banana' shall be my new mantra, pickup line, and battle cry – and it's your fault.

Simply lovely.  thanks for the chuckle (OK guffaw).

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With the guffaw out of the way, I'd like to (seriously) propose the word 'before' as a sacred word.  It has a nice way of lifting me out of mind-talk.

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Okay, perhaps I should behave myself and offer something abit more worthy of standing beside words like liminality and chiaroscuro.  But glad for the guffaw (can guffaw be sacred?) Okay, it's coming,  here it comes. 

no, I got nothing yet, but it's coming…..   Do quite like Before


also Leaf
and Wander
and Sorrow
and Squish
and Peppercorn
Everywhere
Blossom
Button
Pocket
and
Blue

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Sparrow,

It's a good thing I'm not your writing coach or a moderator here.  Otherwise, I'd charge you to develop each of those words as a poem or prose piece.  As it is, I can only wish that I could hear what you would say.

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hmmmmm, a challenge methinks….will chew on challenge today and see what I comes up with….

;)

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What a delightful twist! Thanks Sparrow!

Here's an offer.

In mimicry, my precocious 7 yo walks around the house, eyes half-closed, fingers in a mudra position, (like me sitting in meditation,) chanting:


“Waaaaaaaaah

Dahhhhhhhhh

Goooooooooo

Siiiiiiiiiiiam”


(Apparantly, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.)

She learned this little funny from Daddy.

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oops. Sorry, Rumi. What were you saying before?

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Michele,
I forget what I was saying 'before'.  That's the beauty of 'parts-heimer's disease' – when I say 'before' my mind goes blank – can't remember a thing.  Pretty cool, huh?

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LOVE it! The path to enlightenment through memory loss. LOL!