As Karl Jaspers wrote: “The human being is an open possibility, incomplete and incompletable. Hence it is always more and other than what he has brought to realisation in himself.” Nevertheless, it is our responsibility to try imagining what that human being could be at the next stage of its history.

p.234 – The Evolving Self, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Beyond Self-Actualization is of course Transcendence, which is easiest to conceptualize as the light outside of the self into which the self dissolves… Symbols are unsatisfactory at this point, suffice it to say that the non-dual awareness of the unity in the cosmos which one may or may not attempt to reach or enter into is ____________________. < Just indescribable > What we can say is that for those unique souls that can and often do make a habit of self-actualizing – it is to you that Transcendence is most accessible and Enlightenment most tantalizingly close! … And we do hope that you stick around and help brighten up the place here a bit before you depart. : )

This just-found quote points at the reason why we must be careful, why even this blogger must be careful, to live the life and experience the world (wu-wei) and to just sample (and sometimes observe) the advance of technology (extropy) — for what technology (name one!) can more easily improve our lives than our own determination to, let’s say, just walk for an hour every day and breathe in the natural air? Henry David Thoreau said it best…

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys,
which distract our attention from serious things.
They are but improved means
to an unimproved end.

It is not the appearance that binds you,
it’s the attachment to appearance that binds you.

“When you are content to be simply
yourself and don’t compare or compete,
everybody will respect you.”
- Lao Tzu

“Don’t impede the flow, or the flow will impede you.”

Just a little thought that I seem to cycle back to…

“A person who seeks knowledge knows more and more. A person who seeks enlightenment knows less and less until things are just what they are.”
– Lao Tzu