Mind like water: Tao 46
Neil April 9th, 2008
Tao 46
There is no greater calamity
Than not knowing what is enough.
There is no greater fault
Than desire for success.
Therefore,
Knowing that enough is enough
is always
Enough.
Archive for the 'Mind Like Water' Category
Mind like water: Tao 12
Neil April 2nd, 2008
Tao 12
The five colors blind the eye.
The five tones deafen the ear.
The five flavors dull the taste.
Racing and hunting maddens the mind.
Precious things lead one astray.
Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees.
He lets go of that and chooses this.
Mind Like Water - seeing games
Neil March 2nd, 2008
I don’t really need to tell you that I don’t watch TV do I?
How about I challenge you to improve your seeing by escaping from the bombardment of your senses in front of the TV?
You see TV makes you a captive audience to 30 second intelligence aimed at motivating you to buy something or continue to be glued to the nonsense. Kill your TV and watch movies if you must, but kill your TV and play a seeing game!
Othello is a great option. In it, you must capture pieces by surrounding them with your color of chip. This game can challenge your mind to make strategy and predictive decisions, help you to see in B+W, and improve your pattern recognition skills. The game is pretty exciting and can go from win to loose in several moves. And as a strategy hint, win the corners!
Chinese checkers is probably my favorite board game. Maybe cause I hardly loose. Chinese checkers is unique in that it’s a positivist strategy game - no pieces die or are captured - it’s only who can get to the other side first. Chinese checkers will demand that you analyze a complex and changing system to make the most positive move within the current design. The game reflects the efficiency of nature and will help you see connections and act on them, this will transfer to your photographic and artistic endeavors.
I believe each of these games will improve your visual awareness, calm your mind, and give you some fun with your loved ones.
Mind Like Water - Bruce Lee
Neil February 20th, 2008
“One does not accumulate but eliminate.
It is not daily increase but daily decrease.
The height of cultivation
always runs to simplicity.”
- Bruce Lee
Train your body, and your mind will follow.
Mind like Water - Tao 8
Neil January 31st, 2008
Tao 8
The highest good is like water.
Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.
The Myth of Talent
Neil January 14th, 2008
Craig M. Tanner has a nice PDF download of an article titled “The Myth of Talent” available at The Radiant Vista
We need this presence because the truth about talent is this – talent is a set of skills you develop over time through desire.
Craig has gone over a few bumps in his photographic education:
And there waiting for me in Atlanta, mailed from the Kodachrome processing plant, was
a national monument sized stack of little cardboard, slide filled boxes with all of the
photography from my trip…… And when you look up the word disappointment in the
dictionary there ought to be at least one picture of me going through each box, slide by
slide, desperately looking for, but never seeing – not even once – anything on film that
even remotely approached the awe inspiring beauty of my experience. At the time it was
the most devastating let down of my life. I had never felt so foolish. The written journal I
kept was a better record of what I saw than my photography.The truth about the images from my trip in 1988 is that not one image from that body of
work has ever been included in any of my portfolios.
Read his full article to see how he bounced back creatively and professionally. It’s worth it to get to page six and take action on his “Seven Ways to Create Your Own Space for Artistic Growth”
1) Breathe - Fear needs a timeline to exist. When we are afraid we are worried about our
past actions or possible future outcomes. Worrying about time we do not control robs us
of the power we have in the present to transform ourselves. When the fear of being a
beginner (or any other fear creeps into our minds) we can respond by simply paying
attention to our breathing. Just a few seconds of observing our breathing can dissolve our
fears by bringing us back to now and to the presence we need to be the artist we desire to
become.
Craig’s recommended reading is very good:
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
The Work by Byron Katie
Art and Fear by Ted Orland and David Bayles
The Artist Way by Julia Cameron *I’m working on it now and highly recommend it!*
Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch
Marc Hauser interview and video
Neil November 1st, 2007
His heart is the main inspiration for Hauser, “My vision is people coming into my world. I give them my heart and they give me their heart back. Ooh it feels so nice - we share. Two people committed to an idea and we work together to make it real.”
I also found this little DVD by Marc titled “Bold and Simple: The Light of Marc Hauser” might be interesting, might be fluff - anyone who’s seen it can leave their comments or review in the comments.
More music triggers
Neil October 27th, 2007
[audio:http://makelightreal.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/mark-brown-journey.mp3]
Here’s a lovely snippit from Pete Tong’s BBC Radio 1 show - the track is Mark Brown - The Journey Continues Dub Mix
Have you decided on the artist for your trigger? I’m also considering some tracks from LAGQ - The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet - on their Labryth album they cover everything from Led Zeppelin to Appalachian folk
Music builds the trigger
Neil October 18th, 2007
What kind of music puts you in THE ZONE?
I find that the best type of music to edit photos to is something that has a strong rhythm, here’s one from KCRW’s Today’s Top Tune podcast. It seems that tunes where the melody carry both the rhythm and the tune strike a particular chord with my brain.
[audio:http://makelightreal.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/Airpushers-Disco-Express.mp3]
I haven’t yet chosen a song for my ZONE trigger, but I have a couple records that I’d pull from. The composer Yann Tiersen who’s music was featured in the film Amelie.
What are some great tunes you like for computer work or getting psyched?
Jumpstart your ZONE mindset
Neil October 4th, 2007
Practicing a routine to build your ZONE mindset may take an hour a day for the first month. Take as long as you need to fully reach a state of heightened awareness. Build you’re minds acceptance and expectation of THE ZONE with each day’s successful routine, the deeper you internalize the routine the more potent it remains as it is condensed. Give yourself a month, as more time will deepen the connections in your psyche.
The really intriguing aspect of this is how Josh trained himself to trigger into THE ZONE within a single inhalation and exhalation. Shorten your routine slowly. You have been working to deepen your trigger, now you make it portable and lower maintenance. A great first step that would boost your general productivity would be to do your routine while going to work. Don’t go all out and cut down to 5min all at once - give yourself a few weeks just the same as you took to build your trigger.
For me personally this would mean having a 2min routine so that after finishing the hecktic family photos I could jump into my ZONE and access my inner vision while working with the bride and groom, just after I have exausted myself trying to meet the expectations of a diverse group of people. With some parts of the wedding, I don’t have a chance to think ahead or prepare myself with ideas I’m just dropped into a situation and I have to respond to everything - clearing my mind first will help me see the most important pictures.
To close this post I’d like to leave you with one more quote from Josh:
And if we only encapsulate all that into our photographs…..
