2022 (#206) : Malaguzzi , Montessori , Heidegger , Daniel Goleman , Isaiah , Mark , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , Emerson , Luke , 1 Chronicles , Revelation , Derrida

We need to know how to recognize a new presence,
how to wait for the child.

• Malaguzzi

Instead of the instinct of possession, on this higher level we see three things : to know, to love and to serve.

• Montessori

Man speaks in that he responds to language. This responding is hearing. It hears because it listens to the command of stillness.

• Heidegger

• From the most primitive root, the brainstem, emerged the emotional centers. Millions of years later in evolution, from these emotional areas evolved the thinking brain or “neocortex,” the great bulb of convoluted tissues that make up the top layers. The fact that the thinking brain grew from the emotional reveals much about the relationship of thought to feeling; there was an emotional brain longbefore there was a rational one.

• Daniel Goleman

Sing to Adonai a new song!
Let his praise be sung from the ends of the earth
by those sailing the sea and by everything in it,
by the coastlands and those living there.

• Isaiah/Yesha’yahu 

“I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” ⁴²

• Mark

When you have understood that all existence, in separation and limitation, is painful, and when
you are willing and able to live integrally, in oneness with all life, as pure being, you have gone
beyond all need of help. You can help another by precept and example and, above all, by your
being. You cannot give what you do not have and you don’t have what you are not. You can only
give what you are — and of that you can give limitlessly.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

In ascending
to this primary and aboriginal sentiment we have come from
our remote station on the circumference instantaneously to the
centre of the world, where, as in the closet of God, we see causes,
and anticipate the universe, which is but a slow effect.

• Emerson

the kingdom of God is within you.

• Luke 17:20

The most ancient root of our emotional life is in the sense of smell, or, more precisely, in the olfactory lobe, the cells that take in and analyze smell. Every living entity, be it nutritious, poisonous, sexual partner, predator or prey, has a distinctive molecular signature that can be carried in the wind. In those primitive times smell commended itself as a paramount sense for survival.

• Daniel Goleman

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad

• 1 Chronicles

See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. 

• Revelation

There is no need of a way out! Don’t you see that a way out is also a part of the dream? All you have to do is to see the dream as dream.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

this faith without dogma which makes its way
through the risks of absolute night, cannot be contained in any traditional opposition,
for example that between reason and mysticism.

• Derrida

2022 (#205) : Malaguzzi , Daniel Goleman , Tao Te Ching , Mark , Ruth , Shankara , Derrida

The supportive atmosphere of the school in principle is open and democratic, inviting exchange of ideas and suppressing distance between people; thus, in all circumstances, the school maintains its effectiveness and a welcoming feelng to all concerned.

• Malaguzzi

Love, tender feelings, and sexual satisfaction entail parasympathetic arousal—the physiological opposite of the “fight-orflight” mobilization shared by fear and anger. The parasympathetic pattern, dubbed the “relaxation response,” is a bodywide set of reactions that generates a general state of calm and contentment, facilitating cooperation.

• Daniel Goleman

All things are born from it
It nourishes infinite worlds,
yet it doesn’t hold on to them

• Tao Te Ching

“Come, follow me,” Jesus said

• Mark

• “Come over here, my friend, and sit down.” 
• Ruth

The lifting of the eyebrows in surprise allows the taking in of a larger visual sweep and also permits more light to strike the retina. This offers more information about the unexpected event, making it easier to figure out exactly what is going on and concoct the best plan for action.

• Daniel Goleman

 “He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.”

• Ruth

The fever left her and she began to wait on them.

• Mark

Without form, without figure, without resemblance am I;
Vitality of all senses, in everything I am;
Neither attached, nor released am I —

• Shankara

If words and concepts receive meaning only in sequences of differences, one can Justify one’s language, and one’s choice of terms, only within a topic [an orientation in space] and an historical strategy. The justification can therefore never be absolute and definitive. It corresponds to a condition of forces and translates an historical calculation.

• Derrida

2022 (#204) : Malaguzzi , Montessori , 2 Kings , Revelation , Daniel Goleman , Sri Ramana Maharshi , Mark , John Ashbery , Tao Te Ching , Ruth , Heidegger , Emerson

Our goal ia to make an amiable school – that is, a school that is active, inventive, liveable, documentable and communicative. Our goal is to make a school that is a place of research, learning, revisitng, reconsideration, and reflecion. We strive to make an amiable school where children, teachers and families feel a sense of well being.

• Malaguzzi

It is a question of co-operation with a command of nature,
with one of her laws which decrees that development
should take place by means of experiences upon the
environment. With his first step the child enters a higher
level of experiences.

• Montessori

the carpenters, the builders and the masons.

• 2 Kings

 His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters.

• Revelation

Each emotion offers a distinctive readiness to act; each points us in a direction that has worked well to handle the recurring challenges of human life. As these eternal situations were repeated and repeated over our evolutionary history, the survival value of our emotional repertoire was attested to by its becoming imprinted in our nerves as innate, automatic tendencies of the human heart.

• Daniel Goleman

“Because your heart was responsive”

• 2 Kings

 the individual ‘I’ falls down abashed as soon as one reaches the Heart and immediately Reality manifests itself spontaneously as ‘I-I’. Although it reveals itself as ‘I’, it is not the ego but Perfect Being, God.

• Sri Ramana Maharshi

At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness

• Mark

All emotions are, in essence, impulses to act, the instant plans for handling life that evolution has instilled in us. The very root of the word emotion is motere, the Latin verb “to move,” plus the prefix “e-” to connote “move away,” suggesting that a tendency to act is implicit in every emotion. That emotions lead to actions is most obvious in watching animals or children; it is only in “civilized” adults we so often find the great anomaly in the animal kingdom, emotions—root impulses to act—divorced from obvious reaction.

• Daniel Goleman

 His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.

• Revelation

Stitching the white of lilacs together with lightning

• John Ashbery

He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.

• Mark

 trusts his inner vision.

He allows things to come and go.

His heart is open as the sky.

• Tao Te Ching

 providing food for them,

• Ruth

“eat from the tree of life”

• Revelation

 This responding is hearing. It hears because it listens to the command of stillness.

• Heidegger

dedicated to the sun

• 2 Kings

Among the main biological changes in happiness is an increased activity in a brain center that inhibits negative feelings and fosters an increase in available energy, and a quieting of those that generate worrisome thought. But there is no particular shift in physiology save a quiescence, which makes the body recover more quickly from the biological arousal of upsetting emotions. This configuration offers the body a general rest, as well as readiness and enthusiasm for whatever task is at hand and for striving toward a great variety of goals.

• Daniel Goleman

 which is in the paradise of God

• Revelation

Let man then learn revelation of all nature and all thought to his heart; this; namely; that the highest dwells with him; that the sources of nature are in his own mind, if the sentiment of duty is there.

• Emerson

2022 (#203) : Malaguzzi , Peter Moss , Karen Horney , Bhagavad Gita , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , Revelation , 2 Kings , Emerson , Heidegger , Mark , John Ashbery

It is necessary to give an immediate response to a child. Children need to know that we are their friends, that they can depend on us for the things they desire, that we can support them in the things that they have, but also in the things that they dream about, that they desire.

• Malaguzzi

Rather than a longing for predictability and regularity, Malaguzzi valued uncertainty, desired wonder and amazement, loved to marvel at the totally unexpected.

• Peter Moss

Self-knowledge, then, is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous growth.

• Karen Horney

He is beyond all, and yet he supports all. He is beyond the world of matter, and yet he has joy in this world.

• Bhagavad Gita

He who is beyond time – is the un-nameable. A glowing ember moved round and round quickly enough appears as a glowing circle. When the movement ceases, the ember remains.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Look, he is coming with the clouds,”

• Revelation

 like plants in the field,
    like tender green shoots,
like grass sprouting on the roof,

• 2 Kings

For the soul is true to itself. and ,
the man in whom it is shed abroad cannot wander from the
present, which is infinite, to a future which would be finite.

• Emerson

the silver, the gold, the spices and the fine olive oil

• 2 Kings

 I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet

• Revelation

In it’s essence, language is neither expression nor an activity of man. Language speaks. Accordingly, what we seek lies in the poetry of the spoken word.

• Heidegger

Write on a scroll what you see

• Revelation

buried in his palace garden

• 2 Kings

I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands

• Revelation

a voice of one calling in the wilderness

• Mark

Language speaks as the peal of stillness by carrying out, the bearing and enduring, of world and things in their presence… The peal of stillness is not anything human. But on the contrary, the human is indeed in its nature to speech… 

• Heidegger

He will baptize you with^[f] the Holy Spirit.

• Mark

One of us advances on the bridge
as on a carpet. Life — it’s marvelous —

• John Ashbery

2022 (#202) : Malaguzzi , Karen Horney , 2 Kings , Revelation , Derrida , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , Luke , Sri Ramana Maharshi , Milton , Mundaka Upanishad

Each one of us needs to be able to play with the
things that are coming out of the world of children.

• Malaguzzi

 by his very nature and of his own accord, strives toward self-realization, and that his set of values evolves from such striving.

• Karen Horney

the aqueduct of the Upper Pool

• 2 Kings

the firstborn from the dead

• Revelation

Without either showing or hiding herself. This is what took place. She had already taken her place “docilely,” without initiating the slightest activity,
according to the most gentle passivity, and she neither shows nor hides herself. The possibility of this impossibility derails and shatters all unity, and this is love; it disorganizes all studied discourses, all theoretical systems and philosophies. They must decide between presence and absence, here and there, what reveals and what conceals itself.

• Derrida

It is enough to know what you are not. You need not know what you are. For as long as knowledge means description in terms of what is already known, perceptual, or conceptual, there
can be no such thing as self-knowledge, for what you are cannot be described, except as total negation. All you can say is: ‘I am not this, I am not that’.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

… a presence both perceived and not perceived, at once image and model, and hence image without model, neither image nor model, a medium (medium in the sense of middle, neither/nor, what is between extremes, and medium in the sense of element, either, matrix, means). When we have rounded a certain corner in our reading we will place ourselves on that side of the lustre where the “medium” is shining.

• Derrida

“Everything is all right,” 

• 2 Kings

You have found favor with God.

• Luke

You are nothing perceivable, or imaginable. Yet, without
you there can be neither perception nor imagination.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

 When she reached the man of God at the mountain, she took hold of his feet. 

• 2 Kings

“The Holy Spirit will come on you”

• Luke

Spacing as writing is the becoming-absent and the becoming-unconscious of the subject.

• Derrida

Memory creates the illusion of continuity. In reality each experience has its own experiencer and the sense of identity is due to the common factor at the root of all experiencerexperience relations. Identity and continuity are not the same.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes.

• 2 Kings

The mind clogs you up with images and ideas, which leave scars in memory. You take remembering to be knowledge. True knowledge is ever fresh, new, unexpected. It wells up from within. When you know what you are, you also are what you know. Between knowing and being there is no gap.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

olive groves and vineyards

• 2 Kings

 to inhere in one’s own Being, where the ‘I’, or ego, is dead, is the perfect State.

• Sri Ramana Maharshi

In the first place, a phoenix motif. Once again, the destruction
of life is only an appearance: it is the destruction of the appearance of life. One buries or burns what is already dead so that life, the living feminine, will be reborn and regenerated from these ashes.

• Derrida

 take this flask of olive oil with you 

• 2 Kings

The rising world of waters dark and deep
Won from the void and formless infinite

• John Milton

 take the flask and pour the oil on his head

• 2 Kings

As rivers flowing into the ocean find their final peace and their name and form disappear even so the wise become free from name and form and enter into the radiance of the Supreme Spirit who is greater than all greatness. In truth who knows God becomes God.

• Mundaka Upanishad

poured out his drink offering

• 2 Kings

2022 (#201) : Malaguzzi , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , 2 Kings , Mathew , Emerson , Derrida , Luke , Sri Ramana Maharshi

Many
things that happen cannot be known ahead of time.
Something will start to grow inside the child and
suddenly what is happening in the school will move
in that direction. Sometimes what happens starts
inside the adults. School can never be always
predictable. We need to be open to what takes place
and able to change our plans and go with what
might grow at that very moment both inside the
child and inside ourselves.

• Malaguzzi

The teacher tells the watcher you are not this; there is nothing yours in this, except the point of ‘I am’, which is the bridge between the watcher and his dream. ‘I am this’, ‘I am that’ is a dream

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

she stood in the doorway. 

• 2 Kings

I am with you always

• Mathew

When you realize that the distinction between inner and outer is in the mind only, you are no longer afraid.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Let’s make a small room on the roof and put in it a bed and a table, a chair and a lamp for him. Then he can stay there whenever he comes to us.”

• 2 Kings

The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger
circles, and that without end.

• Emerson

the contradictions (atopical:madness, extravagance, in Greek: atopos) of which we are speaking produces or registers the autodeconstruction in every concept, in the concept of concept: not only because hospitality undoes, should undo, the grip, the seizure, the capture, the force or the violence of the taking as comprehending, hospitality is, must be, owes itself to be, inconceivable and incomprehensible …

• Derrida

She saddled the donkey

• 2 Kings

He will be a joy and delight to you

• Luke

From our perception of the world there follows acceptance of a unique First Principle possessing various powers. Pictures of name and form, the person who sees, the screen on which he sees, and the light by which he sees: he himself is all of these.

• Sri Ramana Maharshi

2022 (#200) : Montessori , Karen Horney , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , Derrida , 1 Kings , Mathew

Noble ideas, great sentiments have always existed and have always
been transmitted, but wars have never ceased. And if education were to be conceived along the old lines of transmitting knowledge, the problem would remain without solution for ever. Indeed, there would be no hope for the world. It is not transmission of knowledge that is required, the consideration of the human personality alone can lead us to salvation. And we hold in front of our eyes a psychic entity, a social personality, immense in multitude of individuals, a world power that must be taken into consideration. If salvation and help are to come, it is through the child ; for the child is the constructor of man.

• Montessori

He needs an atmosphere of warmth to give him both a feeling of inner security and the inner freedom enabling him to have his own feelings and thoughts and to express himself. He needs the good will of others, not only to help him in his many needs but to guide and encourage him to become a mature and fulfilled individual. He also needs healthy friction with the wishes and wills of others. If he can thus grow with others, in love and in friction, he will also grow in accordance with his real self.

• Karen Horney

So long as one imagines oneself as a separate entity, a person, one cannot see the total picture
of the impersonal reality. And the idea of a separate personality is due to the illusion of space and
time, which by themselves have no independent existence for they are only instruments, mere media
to make manifestation cognizable.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

it also tells of the need for figuration, for myth, for tropes, for twists and turns, for translation inadequate to supply that which multiplicity denies us. In this sense, it would be the myth of the origin of myth, the metaphor of metaphor, the narrative of narrative, the translation of translation.

• Derrida

After the fire came a gentle whisper.

• 1 Kings

His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow.

• Mathew

I am’ itself is God. What is it that you love most? Is it not this ‘I am’, the conscious
presence which you want to preserve at any cost? The seeking itself is God. In seeking you discover
that ‘you’ are apart from this body-mind complex. If you were not conscious, would the world exist
for you? Would there be any idea of a God? And, the consciousness in you and the consciousness in
me — are they different? Are they not separate only as concepts, seeking unity unconceived, and is
that not love?

a small jar of olive oil.

• 2 Kings

and this openness opens the unity, renders it possible, and forbids it totality. Its openness allows receiving and giving.

• Derrida

2022 (#199) : Montessori , Peter Moss , Derrida , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , William Blake , Mathew , 1 Kings , Tao Te Ching

The adult and the child must come together ; the adult must be
humble and learn from the child to be great. It is curious
that among all the miracles which humanity has per-
formed, there is only one miracle that he has not taken
into consideration : the miracle that God has sent from
the beginning : the Child.

• Montessori

Malaguzzi appreciated and took from psychology the methods of observation. These, he believed, were capable of lifting from anonymity children whose identity had been devalued as incomplete and lacking because viewed and evaluated with an adult yardstick; and of discovering and presenting the dynamic processes of their
maturation. But always taking a critical attitude to the core concept of developmental stages.

• Peter Moss

Each situation demands the creation
of a suitable mode of exposition, the invention of a law of the singular event, take into account the
recipient, imagined or desired.

• Derrida

The light is there, the darkness is there, but what is the background?
The space. The space is there which is neither the light nor the dark, but
the space is. You have to transcend light and darkness to abide in space.
Similarly, one has to transcend the knowingness and no-knowingness –
the aspects of bodily consciousness. If you have reached that state you are watching consciousness and no-consciousness.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

ask the tender

cloud,

And it shall tell thee why it glitters in the morning sky,

And why it scatters its bright beauty thro’ the humid air.

Descend, O little Cloud, & hover before the eyes 

• William Blake

coming on the clouds of heaven.

• Mathew

When you are
only being, without words, you are powerful. Give up the powers, don’t
possess them.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

 “Go outside, and stand on the mountain before Adonai”

• 1 Kings

The Master gives himself up

 to whatever the moment brings.

• Tao Te Ching

Then he went out to the gateway

• Mathew

Don’t look at the world as something outside of yourself. See the person you imagine yourself to be as a part of the world—really a dream-world— which you perceive as an appearance in your
consciousness, and look at the whole show from the outside.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

2022 (#198) : Malaguzzi , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , 1 Kings , John Ashbery , Emerson , Mathew

The interaction of children in small groups provides opportunities for negotiation and more frequent, dynamic, communications with other children … Children’s self-learning and co-learning (construction of knowledge by self and co-construction of knowledge with others), supported by interactive experiences constructed with the help of adults, determine the selection and organization of processes and strategies that are part of and coherent with the over all goals of early childhood education.

• Malaguzzi

In the early morning when the waking state happens, that kiss of
beingness appears, vibrant in the entire universe, and vibrating in
myself.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

“A cloud as small as a man’s hand is rising from the sea.”

• 1 Kings

the longest way is the most efficient way,

The one that looped among islands, and

You always seemed to be traveling in a circle.

• John Ashbery

You need not get at it, for you are it. It will get at you, if you give it a chance.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

He lay down under the bush and fell asleep.

• 1 Kings

 And this because the heart in thee is the heart in all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly an endless circulation through all men as water of the globe is all one sea and, truly seen, its tide is one.

• Emerson

So long as there is receptivity, a deep desire to understand it, there is
nothing to be done. The knowledge itself will result in whatever is to
result. It is not mental or intellectual caliber that is required, but an
intuitive sense of discrimination.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

⁶ He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. 

• 1 Kings

Ultimately nothing is mine or yours — everything is ours. Just be one with yourself and you will be one with all, at home in the entire universe.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Do what you came for, friend.”

• Mathew

Everything is spontaneous, automatic, natural, it is only the
concept of me and mine that is the bondage.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

He ate and drank and then lay down again.

• 1 Kings

– He believes that he cannot escape from his good. The things that are really for thee gravitate for thee. 

• Emerson

In the immensity of consciousness a light appears, a tiny point that moves rapidly and traces shapes, thoughts and feelings, concepts and ideas, like a pen writing on paper. And the ink that leaves a trace is memory. You are that tiny point and by your movement the world is ever re-created. Stop moving and there will be no world. Look within and you will find that the point of light is the reflection of the immensity of light in the body as the sense ‘I am’. There is only light.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

2022 (#197) : Montessori , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , William Blake , 1 Kings , Mathew , Derrida , Isaa Upanishad

The treasure then is to be found not merely near
those who study poetry and religion, but within every
human being. This miracle is sent to all ; the represen-
tative of this tremendous force is to be found everywhere.
Man makes a desert of strife and God continues to send
this rain. So it is easy to understand that all the
creations of adults, great achievements as they are,
without love lead nowhere, to nothing. But if this love
present in the child is taken among us, if its values and
potentialities are realized and developed, our achieve-
ments, already great, will be tremendous.

• Montessori

You must have observed daily that situations are constantly changing. This is the quality or expression of your identity with the body-mind. It is the consciousness that is playing about, and in that manifest
consciousness all these various faces and bodies are playing about. You
are not these faces and bodies, you are the consciousness out of which the words are now flowing.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The Lilly of the valley, breathing in the humble grass

• William Blake

“Fill four large jars with water”

• 1 Kings

Without making demands we see the dream. Why do we see the
dream? Because in deep sleep the consciousness wakes up, spontaneously, and because it woke up, it manifests itself in certain visions.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

• Mathew

I am not talking to you for my advantage, nor are you listening for
your advantage – all this language is sprouting spontaneously in a
dreamlike state.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Nothing but the many-faceted multiplicity of a lustre which itself is nothing beyond its own fragmented light. Nothing but the idea which is nothing.

• Derrida

Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you.

• Mathew

With the experience of so-called birth you are caught up in the cycle
like the picture on the TV screen. All this life-happening is something
like a cinema.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

• Mathew

Ultimately nothing is mine or yours — everything is ours. Just be one with yourself and you will be one with all, at home in the entire universe.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

 licked up the water in the trench

• 1 Kings

It stirs and it stirs not; it is far, and likewise near. It is inside of all this, and it is outside of all this.

• Isaa Upanishad