Consciousness
The significance of consciousness comes from what it brings to the human mind, and from what it subsequently allows the mind to discover.
Consciousness makes mental experiences possible, from pleasure to pain, along with all that we perceive and memorize, and recall and manipulate as we describe the world around and within us, in the process of observing, thinking, and reasoning.
Feeling and Knowing: Making Minds Conscious
Antonio Damasio
Acceptance & Forgiveness
Bring to mind a person you feel angry or annoyed at, and ask yourself what exactly it is that you dislike in him or her. Once you have identified that, check: “Is this something that I have in myself? Have I ever behaved like that?” If you are able to find in yourself the same thing (or something similar) that you don’t like in the other person, the solution is to learn acceptance and forgiveness toward yourself. When you can be more tolerant and compassionate toward yourself, with whatever faults you have, you will be better able to accept others as they are, and less likely to get angry at them.
Awakening the Kind Heart
Kathleen McDonald
Quiet Sitting
Quaker silent prayer & silent worship, along with Eastern Orthodox Hesychasm and Chan/Zen Buddhist silent illumination are said to be to be some of the closest modern correlates to Daoist Quiet Sitting (which is a primary meditation method of the Daoist school of Quanzhen). Each of the mentioned practices could be considered “quietistic” and involves abandonment of personal will to “divine will”, as well as, calm acceptance of things as they are without attempts to resist or change them. In the language of Daoism, this relates to wu wei/effortlessness and “guarding the feminine”, or abiding in and maintaining a state of open receptivity.
Handbooks for Daoist Practice
Louis Komjathy
Rituals are a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, actions, or objects, performed according to a set sequence. Rituals, like play, create “as if” worlds through the imaginative capacity of the mind.
The practice of ritual helps us to live together in a broken world. Ritual is work, endless work. But it is among the most important things we do.
Ritual and Its Consequences
Adam Seligman, Robert Weller
Chinese character for Qi
Energy of Life
Qi (pronounced chē) is the energy that fuels living – it’s the circulating life force whose existence and properties are the basis of much Chinese philosophy and medicine.
In Chinese philosophy, we are born with Qi, or prenatal energy, which we get from our mothers, and we receive energy from various outside sources such as the food we eat, our environments, and from rest.
Worldwide Concept
Qi is Chinese — similar words and concepts can be found throughout a wide range of culture and history, including:
Cultivating Qi: The Root of Energy, Vitality, and Spirit
David Clippinger
Who Knows Anyhow? 