groggy from napping

rainy yet warm Texas dusk

feeling out of place

The weather has been out of sorts in Denton lately. Tomorrow is Halloween and we have yet to have a real cold snap. The weather has been humid and hovering around 75˚. It could be in the 80s next week.

This morning I walked in the sprinkling rain, remembering my father & brother. When I got back from walking meditation, I stopped by Shift Coffee for a little while until time to take Chris some breakfast.

“For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path
that may have heart, and the only worthwhile challenge
is to traverse its full length–
and there I travel looking, looking breathlessly.”

Carlos Castaneda,
The Teachings of Don Juan:  A Yaqui Way of Knowledge

In class, Trish Glazebrook lectured on the two definitions of love that Diotima provides to Socrates:

1. Love is the pursuit of happiness
2. Love is the desire to possess the Good forever

A wanting for what does not end, for what always obtains, for what already is complete that we may be complete. may obtain, may not-end.

Seek to give birth to ideas so that the thought–if not your own self–will find immortality.

Love as the Ascent to the Encompassing Good (reworking Trish Glazebrook’s class notes 10/30/2013)…

1. Seek after love with  somebody (another person) and beget beautiful ideas with him/her.
2. Come to recognize that the beauty of all bodies is one-and-the-same, become a true lover of all beautiful bodies.
3. Envision the beauty of people’s souls as their most valuable aspect to see past the body’s surface in order to become a lover of creative activities and beneficent customs
4. Move throughout the various kinds of knowledge in order to become a lover-of-wisdom (philosopher).

Related articles

• The Making of a Shaman (shamanism.knowledge-pool.com)
• Alcibiades’ Symposium Speech: Plastered Party Crasher & Plato’s Mouthpiece (vhellinghausen.wordpress.com)
• Mounting the Spiral and Eradicating the Barriers to Self-Knowledge (illuminations2012.wordpress.com)
• The Womanly Art of Socratic Love (benguido.wordpress.com)