watershedplus:

An innovative initiative is taking place in the Philippines to bring sustainable lighting to homes in impoverished communities. Empty plastic bottles are installed in the roof, filled with water and bleach they refract sunlight. These “solar light bulbs” provide light equivalent to a 55watt light bulb.

See how they’re made here. From Visual News

Artistic glasswork always amazes me.

Is a tree considered an inanimate object?  Photosynthesis is the only way it moves by its own mechanisms…

This begs the question: what makes an organism animate?  The Latin, Old English, Greek, and Sanskrit words all denote the meaning of the origin as breath.  Plants, in the photosynthesis process, do breathe.  As we know, they what gives the atmosphere the oxygen that we need to breathe.  So plants are animate.

But then again, blown glass is animated by the breath we breathe into it too!

And the beauty of gems and crystals and stones are only revealed to the human eye by the spectrum of light that interacts with air borne medium.

Perhaps all objects are animate when subjugated in the proper lens of perception…

Food for thought - it nourishes the mind.

Here is one of the great paradoxes of life:  “The more we accept incompleteness, the more complete we actually are.”  This is a vitally enriching truth that I struggle to accept each waking day.  And yet, I find encouragement and compassion amidst this struggle when I re-all-ise that the struggle is itself the first step to consciously living in bliss, in a state of surrendered action.  The first experiences of a return to bliss often occur in moments of involuntary surrender, as a means of pure necessity.

I have known this type of experience several times in the 20 something years of my conscious memory. They are gifts, invaluable anchors to those truest experiences of peace and liberation that we all search for.  A sight of sunrise, of hope set forth; a panoramic of sunset, of purpose full-filled. They are windows into the heart of life. The view is surely something to beheld, & no words known could ever behold it.

Then eventually, we return to the matter of things, to the matter of the sea. And again we see that all things are in motion, and nothing is stationary.  If someone clings to a window in hopes of a second glimpse of that precious moment, they will undoubtedly be disappointed. For a window is nothing more than a portal, a framework for the experience.  What we remember are photographs, multi-sensory images of a beautiful experience.  A moment - frozen, crystallized in the fluid of consciously perceived time. 

If we each are gardeners, are cultivators of love and living in balance, then it is our role to cultivate bliss, the serenity amidst the motions of living. It seems to be the fundamental practice we are designed to build ourselves around. The practice of being complete within the incompleteness.  Being at peace as piece.

When one dwells in this state, something beautiful occurs: they become that window, that portal for someone else. It is a gift to receive love. It is an even greater gift to give it.  To give love requires active balance in the stream of its flow.  When we are in balance in the now, the flow of love is not turbulent and unsettling; its movements are as a tranquil river.  Soothing to the skin and to the soul.

So as we each move forward to day, do not contemplate night, for the cycles of night and day move with their own timing.  Our role is not to control these innumerable cycles, but to be centered within — by being in balance of self awareness.

“May I remember to balance in Love, looking no further than the beauty it reveals within the moment I am placed.”  Remember friends, remember family; remember self, remember well: Love is a tranquil river. May we find piece in its peace.

ardose:

GRAFFITI CAFE STUDIOMODE

Life in context, content in its context.  Sometimes the patterns are beneath the surface, some times they are the sur face.

cosascool:

Peter Koler

If the world of string theory and electromagnetism were graphed all around us!  This would be a window into it. (or corridor, to be more accurate :)