Living with Open Hands (4.0) (Resonant Voices)

  David Whyte The Conversational Nature of Reality One of the things the Irish say is that “The thing about the past is, it’s not the past.” [ laughs ] It’s right here, in this room, in this conversation. Of course, my work as a poet and philosopher has matured into working with what I call “the conversational nature of reality,” which is the fact that we don’t get to choose so often between things we hope we can choose between. Yes, I went back into poetry because I felt like scientific language wasn’t precise enough to describe the experiences that I had in Galapagos. Science, rightly, is always trying to remove the “I.” But I was really interested in the way that the “I” deepened the more you paid attention. I began to realize that my identity depended not upon any beliefs I had, inherited beliefs or manufactured beliefs, but my identity actually depended on how much attention I was paying to things that were other than myself — and that as you deepen this intentionality and thi...

  Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality The Great Human Dilemma  “This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression - and with all this yet to die.” (Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death) Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality OUR HUMAN PREDICAMENT “Human beings find themselves in quite a predicament. We have the mental capacity to ponder the infinite, seemingly capable of anything; yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping, decaying body. We are godly yet creaturely.” This Mortal Coil The fear of death drives many evils, from addiction to prejudice and war. Can it also be harnessed as a force for good? Many people think consciously about their mortality only once in a blue moon. Maybe if an odd mole appears. Or after a close call in the car. Or when they read about the death of a celebrity their age. Maybe it’s in the middle of the night, wh...

  Coping with Existential Chaos How do we  hold on to meaning and purpose when the possibility of death is constantly in view? How can we believe in a just world when the world is patently unjust? How can we grasp the truth when the nature of truth itself is in doubt? Religious and philosophical thinkers have obsessed over  these  questions  for millennia; existentialists have made them a primary  concern  over the past two centuries. In his seminal work  Existential Psychotherapy  (1980), the American psychiatrist Irvin Yalom categorised our existential problems into four ultimate concerns: death, freedom, existential isolation, and meaninglessness. We want to live, but we know we will eventually die. We have the freedom to make choices, but there is no absolute truth to ground these choices. We want to feel connection, but we feel alone in our subjective experience. We want our lives to be meaningful, but there appears to be no inherent me...