Beautiful Gray Sponge

“I am a daughter of adventure.” Art by Hailey Russell Music by Peter Bille Larsen I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my personal page.

“To be means to communicate.” Art by Hailey Russell Music by Peter Bille Larsen I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my personal page.

“All real living is meeting.” Art by Hailey Russell Music by Peter Bille Larsen I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my personal page.

"Of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful." Art by Hailey Russell Music by Peter Bille Larsen I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my personal page.

“How wonderful yellow is. It stands for the sun!” Art by Hailey Russell Music by Erik Satie I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my personal page.

“I want to find a bigger life… I want to amount to something…” Art by Hailey Russell Music by Eubie Blake I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my personal page.

Wisdom from the mustard seed Art by Hailey Russell Music by Emotiona I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my personal page.

“They did not cause me to begin, and they shall not cause me to stop.” Art by Hailey Russell Music from Cameron Bailey (Table 9) I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my personal page.

"The beginning is always today." Art by Hailey Russell Music from Musopen I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my personal page.

"Life is too short for a man to hold bitterness in his heart." Art by Hailey Russell Music by Emotiona I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my personal page.

"I want to live a simple, inexpensive life so I can read and write and think to my heart's content." Art by Hailey Russell Music by Emotiona I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my personal page.

"I am going to make everything around me beautiful – that will be my life." Art by Hailey Russell Music from Pixabay I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my personal page.  

“The understanding of art depends finally upon one's willingness to extend one's humanity and one's knowledge of human life.” Art by Hailey Russell Music by Emotiona I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my personal page.

“Go to the limits of your longing… Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” Art by Hailey Russell Music by Emotiona I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my personal page.

"If you know you are on the right track, if you have this inner knowledge, then nobody can turn you off... no matter what they say." Art by Hailey Russell Music by Emotiona I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my personal page.

The poet sees better than other mortals. I do not see things as they are, but according to my own subjective impression, and this makes life easier and simpler. - Robert Schumann Art by Hailey Russell Music by Schumann through Musopen I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my personal page.

"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." - Heraclitus Art by Hailey Russell Music by Emotiona I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my personal page.

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” - Simone Weil Art by Hailey Russell Music by Emotiona I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my personal page.

Ten Percent Happier Podcast - #383 - An "Erotic" Approach to the Climate Crisis | Dr. Andreas Weber Kind Mind Podcast - Principles of Polarity Emotiona - the music you hear I got a lot out of listening to Dan Harris's talk with German biologist, philosopher, and journalist, Andreas Weber. I always like how Harris “restates” back what he hears whenever he's conversing with his guests. It's a mindful and respectful way of checking the filters of interpretations in our communication.    Some favorite take-aways…   Weber defines himself as a pessimist in that it's too late to correct our path toward self-destruction but, and I think this is incredible, he still believes that people are capable of changing and “waking-up.”     This made me think of the stories we sometimes hear of people facing their own death… they suddenly realize that all along, the most important things in their life have been their relationships and not about acquiring wealth, fame, or things. Now, facing our own apocalypse, we realize that our attention and priorities were off and we cling, as we say goodbye, to what we wish we'd paid attention to before, our relationship to the earth.    Weber also talks about the disconnection and detachment that science once expected and even highly regarded in research. How it discarded emotion, leading to an apathetic relationship to nature. While I really appreciate scientific thought, that's a problem with science.  I've recently been considering the argument of anthropomorphism - attributing human characteristics to animals or nature - and, if it connects us to earth, I'm a proponent, in that sense.    I loved what Weber shared about the former Czech Republic leader, Vaclav Havel, “Hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” Havel stated this sometime after the Berlin Wall came down. Weber paraphrased it as, “Hope is what makes sense, regardless of what is the outcome.”    Later in his conversation with Harris, Weber also talks about love… love as a foundational principle of reality. Not the “feeling” of desire and love toward an object or person, but LOVE as an action and a practice, taking an active interest in the aliveness of another. He credited this to Erich Fromm's teachings.    In talking about nature, I like how he encouraged that people start to be in a meditative practice with non-human beings. I find that in watching fire, or simply the flame of a burning candle, I find this meditation. But also, the web of connection with the whole… that “It's not about gaining something - it's about giving something.” He talked about how one balances self-interest with the collective-interest. “You won't really be satisfied with life if you're only accumulating pleasure and objects. It's shallow. It's also not good for you. You'll feel empty.”  We need to dissolve again into the WHOLE from which we come, making a gift out of ourselves; in his words, to “become edible.” Dying to these little deaths, to accepting what is, the paradox of existence. And this leads me to the next podcast episode I happened to listen to, Todd Fink's Kind Mind Episode #56, about the Principles of Polarity. (I love making connections!)    I always appreciate the depth and breadth of Fink's teachings. In this episode he really draws out multiple wisdom traditions relating to the concept of “paradox,” starting out with a beautiful story, the mythology of Chinese cosmology about the sunrise and sunset. Among the many traditions, he mentions the Hermetics principle #4, of polarity; where seemingly opposite things are actually one-and-the-same at varying degrees. A good example I came across while researching more about this principle in Hermetics, was in using the terms, hot and cold, “Cold is just the absence of heat, and they're both one thing; temperature.” ( www.mindbodygreen.com ) Spirit and matter are opposite poles of the same thing.    Fink uses other examples, expanding upon light/dark, north/south, yin/yang, and masculine/feminine. “You can't have opposite without opposition… but that doesn't necessarily mean that there's a fight. There can be a dance… a cycle in all areas of our life.” “Relativity is important in understanding and applying the principles of polarity.”    Paradox is a seeming contradiction, and I sometimes interchange “polarity” and “paradox.” I think they both can involve what we think of as opposites, but that they also surprise us by how well they can work together.    Fink goes on to talk about listening vs. speaking, one of my personal favorites because I wish to be a better listener. How do we use them, listening versus speaking? When do we use them? Some people are always waiting to speak, they're not really listening, they're just waiting… this is an imbalance.     In the polarities of our life, how do we respond? How do we participate in life? Fink says that in a healthy way, in a natural way, we engage. We are never going to be ONE thing; there is never an end to the dance. With paradox or polarity, in our relationships, finding compliments to our qualities can keep us expanding and growing. People are always in flux; it's about listening to the “exchanges in moments.”    During the Q&A session, I drew out a few things as well: “Avoidance is aversion” and “It's unnatural to resist what is natural.” “… to resist what is, that's control and there is no control. Our resistance to reality disrupts our mental equilibrium.” Thank you Fink!    About love, “Love is not about possession… it's about appreciation… when you try to control it, you lose it.”    For me, the big takeaway here is, ALLOWING. Intimate first, YIN - sit with it, be with the moon, the feminine. Then take or respond, the YANG, and manifest.    In the end, Fink shared a beautiful passage from Frank Townshend, “… life is not a static thing, but a perpetual change.”    I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my Patreon page.

This episode is dedicated to the memory of Philippe and to those who feel lost or alone. I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my Patreon page.

Subject: Business & Economics / Decision-Making & Problem Solving, Psychology / Applied Psychology, Psychology / Cognitive Psychology & Cognition, Psychology / Social Psychology, Social Science / Sociology / Social Theory, Education / Decision-Making & Problem Solving Source: Frye, D. (2021, May/June). Why we're imperfect judges. Psychology Today, 54(3), 12. Side Note: I chose this article because I have been coming across many talks with Kahneman on other great podcasts and I think the subject is very relevant. The book referenced in this article is, Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass Sunstein. I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my Patreon page.

You can visit: lmtrostle.com for more information about myself and each episode. To request or suggest an article, contact me at: lmtrostle@gmail.com The music you hear is the creative work of EMOTIONA. Thank you for listening! I'm super grateful to you for liking and sharing this podcast, but if you'd also like to support me with a no-gift-too-small donation, you can do that by visiting my Patreon page.