A Joyful Practice

Living, Dying, & Dreaming of the Mind’s Awareness of the Mind’s Awareness (mostly the music) *UPDATED w/link* July 9, 2025

Peace and blessings to all, and especially to those commemorating the Martyrdom of the Báb!

“Rodolfo Llinás and his colleagues at New York University, comparing the electrophysiological properties of the brain in waking and dreaming, postulate a single fundamental mechanism for both—ceaseless inner talking between cerebral cortex and thalamus, a ceaseless interplay of image and feeling irrespective of whether there is sensory input or not. When there is sensory input, this interplay integrates it to generate waking consciousness, but in the absence of sensory input it continues to generate brain states, those brain states we call fantasy, hallucination, or dreams. Thus waking consciousness is dreaming—but dreaming constrained by external reality.”

— quoted from the commentary/notes in An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales by Oliver Sacks (b. 07/09/1933)

CLICK HERE FOR THE RELATED POST.

Please join me today (Wednesday, July 9^th) at 4:30 PM or 7:15 PM for a yoga practice on Zoom. You can use the link from the “Class Schedules” calendar if you run into any problems checking into the class. You can request an audio recording of this practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email myra  (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

Wednesday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “07092022 Awareness of the Mind’s Awareness”]

If you are thinking about suicide, worried about a friend or loved one, or would like emotional support, you can dial 988 (in the US) or call 1-800-273-TALK (8255) for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also call this TALK line if you are struggling with addiction or involved in an abusive relationship. The Lifeline network is free, confidential, and available to all 24/7. YOU CAN TALK ABOUT ANYTHING.

White Flag is an app, which I have not yet researched, but which may be helpful if you need peer-to-peer (non-professional) support.

If you are a young person in crisis, feeling suicidal, or in need of a safe and judgement-free place to talk, you can also click here to contact the TrevorLifeline (which is staffed 24/7 with trained counselors).

In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es). Donations are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.)

“A MONTH ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out — a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver….

I feel grateful that I have been granted nine years of good health and productivity since the original diagnosis, but now I am face to face with dying. The cancer occupies a third of my liver, and though its advance may be slowed, this particular sort of cancer cannot be halted.

It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can. In this I am encouraged by the words of one of my favorite philosophers, David Hume, who, upon learning that he was mortally ill at age 65, wrote a short autobiography in a single day in April of 1776. He titled it My Own Life.

‘I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution,’ he wrote. ‘I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment’s abatement of my spirits. I possess the same ardour as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company.’”

— quoted from the essay “My Own Life” by Oliver Sacks (published in The New York Times, Feb. 19, 2015)

CORRECTION: Original post contained wrong date and class times.

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