2023 (#170) : Montessori , Emerson , Malaguzzi , Nietzsche , Vivian Paley , Eric Neumann , Wallace Stevens , Bereshit , Gospel of Luke , Tehillim , Rumi , Roland Barthes

The child is endowed with an unknown power and
this unknown power guides us towards a more luminous
future.

—- Montessori

I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.

—- Emerson

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

—- Malaguzzi

one returns newborn, having shed one’s
skin, with a more delicate taste for
joy, with a tenderer tongue for all good things, with merrier
senses, with a second dangerous innocence in joy, more childlike and yet a hundred times subtler than one has ever been
before.

—- Nietzsche

We do more than tell our stories; we also act them out. The formal storytelling and acting that often arise out of and run parallel to the children’s fantasy play have become a central feature of our day. 

—- Vivian Paley

The primordial flood as cow, or the cow as the first living creature rising from the primordial flood, is an authentic symbol of world-creat- ing motherhood

—- Eric Neumann

The beams of the huge night
Converged upon its image,
Until the wind blew.

—- Wallace Stevens

And Elohim said, Let there be light: and there was light

—- Bereshit/Genesis 

וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֖ים יְהִ֣י א֑וֹר וַֽיְהִי־אֽוֹ

the heavens opened

—- Luke

the heavenly cow goddess who waters the earth with her rain-milk and car- ries the sun god on her back

—- Eric Neumann

As the night conceives the sea-sound in silence,
And out of the droning sibilants makes
A serenade.

—- Wallace Stevens

you created my inmost being

—- Tehillim/Psalms

The Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove

—- Luke

Our wind whereby we are moved and our being are of thy gift;
our whole existence is from thy bringing into being

— Rumi

it is language which speaks, not the author: to write is to
reach, through a preexisting impersonality — never to be
confused with the castrating objectivity of the realistic novelist
— that point where language alone acts, “performs,” and not
“oneself”

—- Roland Barthes

2023 (#169) : Heidegger , Vivian Paley , Emerson , Nietzsche , Book of Ezekiel , Gospel of Luke , Eric Neumann , Daniel Goleman , Gospel of John , Rumi , Wallace Stevens , Roland Barthes

Teaching is more difficult than learning because
what teaching calls for is this: to let learn. The real teacher,
in fact, lets nothing else be learned than-learning.

—- Heidegger

We do more than tell our stories; we also act them out. The formal storytelling
and acting that often arise out of and run parallel to the children’s fantasy play
have become a central feature of our day. 

—- Vivian Paley

if we will not interfere with our thought , but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we know the particular thing and everything and every man> for the maker of all things and all persons stands behind us and casts his omniscience through us over things.

—- Emerson

the voluptuousness of a triumphant gratitude that
eventually still has to inscribe itself in cosmic letters on the
heaven of concepts

—- Nietzsche

Speak to the birds of every sort and to all beasts of the field

—- Ezekiel

led by the Spirit in the wilderness

— Luke

The great Egyptian cow goddess is “the watery abyss of heaven”; Mehurt, one of her variants, gives birth to the sun god.

—- Eric Neumann

The spontaneous pleasure, grace, and effectiveness that characterize
flow are incompatible with emotional hijackings, in which limbic
surges capture the rest of the brain. The quality of attention in flow is
relaxed yet highly focused.

—- Daniel Goleman

streams of living water will flow from within him

—- John 

Their onward rush is visible, and the wind is unseen:
may that which is unseen not fail from us!

—- Rumi

a great sacrificial feast upon the mountains

—- Ezekiel

sometimes represented as a “pregnant woman with protruding breasts”-

— Eric Neumann

and sleep with one eye watching the stars fall
Beyond Key West.

— Wallace Stevens

  in primitive societies, narrative is never undertaken by a person, but by a mediator, shaman or speaker

—- Roland Barthes  

2023 (#168) : Howard Gardner , Emerson , Prashna Upanishad , Book of Ezekiel , Gospel of Luke , Eric Neumann , Nietzsche , Lella Gandini , Roland Barthes

We should use kids’ positive states to draw them into learning in the
domains where they can develop competencies

— Howard Gardner

Through the transparent darkness the stars
pour their almost spiritual rays. And under them seems a young
child, and his huge globe a toy. The cool night bathes the world
as with a river, and prepares his eyes again for the crimson dawn. The mystery of nature was never displayed more happily.

—- Emerson

‘Everything is fixed in life, as are spokes in the hub of a wheel

— Prashna Upanishad 

It was beautiful in its greatness,
    in the length of its branches;
for its roots went down
    to abundant waters

—- Ezekiel 

a light for revelation

—- Luke

the primordial water, spatial infinity, the dark- ness before the creation of the heavenly bodies, and impenetrable mystery

—- Eric Neumann

Flow is an internal state that signifies a kid is engaged in a task
that’s right.

—- Howard Gardner

Always at home.- One day we reach our goal, and now
point with pride to the long travels we undertook to reach it.
In fact, we were not even aware of traveling. But we got so far
because we fancied at every point that we were at home.

—- Nietzsche

‘Life, Lord of Creation, moving in the womb, there bringing yourself to birth, master of the five streams! All things offer you their tribute.

—- Prashna Upanishad 

Come from the four winds, O breath

—- Ezekiel 

thoughts from many hearts may be revealed

—- Luke

The primordial ocean is a uroboric snake encompassing the earth that is born of it

—- Eric Neumann

You have to find something you like and stick to it. It’s
when kids get bored in school that they fight and act up, and when
they’re overwhelmed by a challenge that they get anxious about their
schoolwork. 

—- Howard Gardner

‘Life! Creator, Protector, Destroyer! Sun in heavenly circuit! Master of stars!

—- Prashna Upanishad

“Son of man, take a stick and write on it”

—- Ezekiel 

the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom 

—- Luke

And I shall destroy everything I created. The earth will again appear as primordial ocean

—- Eric Neumann

You learn at your best when you have something you
care about and you can get pleasure from being engaged in.

—- Howard Gardner

‘Pour down the rain, let all things find their food, thrive, rejoice.

—- Prashna Upanishad

 I will show my greatness and my holiness and make myself known in the eyes

—- Ezekiel

sitting among the teachers

—- Luke

A case in point is the birth of the sun from the cosmic egg laid by the Nile goose

—- Eric Neumann

As we know, Malaguzzi never saw the developing child as an ideally autonomous learner, but rather saw education as a necessarily communal activity and symphony of subjectivities involving children and adults.

—- Lella Gandini

‘Life itself! Purity itself! Fire itself, Eater, Master! All the world your food, Father in Heaven!

—– Prashna Upanishad 

on the day that I show my glory

—- Ezekiel 

increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor

—- Luke

the layer of the cosmic egg, from which the sun-chick emerged

—- Eric Neumann

Malaguzzi saw long-term and meaningful relationships between and among children, teachers, and parents as the necessary precondition for the flowering of communication, co-action, and reciprocity.

—- Lella Gandini

‘May your body be in our speech, hearing, sight, mind

—- Prashna Upanishad

 they will make their search

—- Ezekiel

Thus the cosmic personification of the primordial water

—- Eric Neumann

Probably this has always been the case: once an action is recounted, for intransitive ends, and no longer in order to act directly upon reality — that is, finally external to any function but the very exercise of the symbol — this disjunction occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters his own death, writing begins.

—- Roland Barthes

2023 (#167) : Malaguzzi , Montessori , Emerson , Nietzsche , Book of Ezekiel , Gospel of Luke , Rumi , Faulkner , Gospel of John , Derrida , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , Maurice Frydman

Life has to be somewhat agitated and upset, a bit
restless, somewhat unknown. As life flows with the
thoughts of the children, we need to be open, we
need to change our ideas; we need to be comfortable
with the restless nature of life.

—– Malaguzzi

So we found that education is not what the teacher
gives : education is a natural process spontaneously
carried out by the human individual. It is acquired not
by listening to words, but by experiences upon the environ-
ment. 

—- Montessori

All good is eternally reproductive. The beauty of
nature re-forms itself in the mind, and not for barren contempla tion, but for new creation.

—- Emerson

For it is only now that the
idea of a personal providence confronts us with the most penetrating force, and the best advocate, the evidence of our eyes, speaks for it-now that we can see how palpably always everything that happens to us turns out for the best. Every day and every hour, life seems to have no other wish than to prove this proposition again and again. 

—- Nietzsche

The waters nourished it,
    the deep made it grow tall,
making its rivers flow[c]
    round the place of its planting,
sending forth its streams
    to all the trees of the forest

—- Ezekiel

he came in the Spirit

—- Luke

We and our existences are really non-existence;
thou art the absolute Being which manifests the perishable.

—- Rumi

The years are sand the wind plays with

—- William Faulkner

Whatever it is, bad weather or good. the loss of a friend, sickness, slander, the failure of some letter to arrive, the spraining of an ankle, a glance into a shop. a counter-argument, the opening of a book, a dream, a fraud-either immediately or very soon after it proves to be something that “must not be missing”; it has a profound significance and use precisely for us.

—- Nietzsche

So it towered high
    above all the trees of the forest;
its boughs grew large
    and its branches long,
    from abundant water in its shoots.
 All the birds of the air
    made their nests in its boughs

—- Ezekiel

For I did not speak on my own, but God who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken. I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what God has told me to say.

—- John

We all are lions, but lions on a banner:
because of the wind they are rushing onward from moment to moment.

—- Rumi

Below the starry apple bough

—- William Faulkner 

The truth is that every man himself is a piece of fate; when he thinks he is stirring against fate in the way described, fate is being realized here, too; the struggle is imaginary, but so is resignation to fate — all these imaginary ideas are included in fate… In you the whole future of the human world is predetermined.

—– Nietzsche

Thus, you cannot think the name or names of Friedrich Nietzsche, you cannot hear them before the reaffirmation of the hymen, before the alliance or wedding ring of the eternal return. You will not understand anything of his life, nor of his life and works. until you hear the thought of the “yes, yes” given to this shadowless gift at the ripening high noon, beneath that division whose borders are inundated by sunlight: the overflowing cup of the sun.

—- Derrida

By being with yourself, the ‘I am’; by watching yourself in your daily life with alert interest, with the intention to understand rather than to judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge, because it is there, you encourage the deep to come to the surface and enrich your life and consciousness with its captive energies. This is the great work of awareness; it removes obstacles and releases energies by understanding the nature of life and mind. Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.

—- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj / Maurice Frydman

2023 (#166) : Malaguzzi , Gospel of Mark , Montessori , Book of Job , William Blake , Gospel of Luke , Emerson , Bereshit , Mandaka Upanishad , Nietzsche , Book of Job , John Ashbery , Rumi , Eric Neumann , Roland Barthes

What we have to do now is draw out the image of the
child, draw the child out of the desperate situations
that many children find themselves in. If we redeem
the child from these difficult situations, we redeem
ourselves.

—- Malaguzzi

Love your neighbor as yourself

—- Mark

A vital force is active in the individual and
leads it towards its own evolution. This force has been
called Horme.

—-Montessori

But ask the animals — they will teach you —

—- Job

Jesus is surrounded by Beams of Glory in which are seen all around him Infants emanating from him

—– William Blake

To show the mercy promised

—- Luke

The ancient Greeks called the world KOOl-l0;’, beauty_ Such is
the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the
human eye, that the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain,
the tree, the animal, give us a delight in and for themselves; a
pleasure arising from outline, color, motion, and grouping. This
seems partly owing to the eye itself.

—- Emerson

he was in the wilderness

—- Luke

the birds, however, he did not cut in half.

—- Genesis/Bereshit

‘He knows all, knows every particular. His glory prevails on earth, in heaven, in His own seat, the holy city of the heart.

—Mundaka Upanishad Book 2

He fancies that he is a spectator and listener who has been placed before the great visual and acoustic spectacle that is life

—- Nietzsche

and the birds in the air — they will tell you

—- Job

Stretching invisibly into the future so as to reappear In our present. Its flexing is its account

—- John Ashbery

see this thing that has happened

—- Luke

 he calls his own nature contemplative and overlooks that
he himself is really the poet who keeps creating this life.

—- Nietzsche

they went away peacefully.

—- Bereshit

The eye  is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end. 

—- Emerson

pondering them in her heart

—- Luke

The law dissolves the fact and holds it fluid. 

— – Emerson

Of course. he is different from the actor of this drama. the so called active type; but he is even less like a mere spectator and festive guest in front of the stage.

—- Nietzsche

 or speak to the earth — it will teach you —

—- Job

We and our existences are really non-existence;
thou art the absolute Being which manifests the perishable

—- Rumi

a pair of turtle doves, or two young pigeons 

—- Luke 

the goddess as the Great Round of the beginning has not only as- sumed human form, but reveals, side by side with archaic elements, transformative and spiritual forms of the Feminine that become distinct only in later stages of development

—- Eric Neumann

 As a poet, he certainly has
vis contemplativa and the ability to look back upon his work_
but at the same time also and above all vis creativa.

—- Nietzsche

and the fish in the sea will inform you

—– Job

the Holy Spirit was upon him

— Luke

a continual ascent as on stairs and at
the same time a sense of resting on clouds

—- Nietzsche

  all writing is itself this special voice, consisting of several indiscernible voices, and that literature is precisely the invention of this voice, to which we cannot assign a specific origin: literature is that neuter, that composite, that oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes.

—- Roland Barthes  

2023 (#165) : Montessori , Nietzsche , Rumi , Gospel of John , Book of Ezekiel , Eric Neumann , Book of Mashal , Gospel of Luke , Wilhelm Reich

We have realised that the child is endowed with great creative
powers, that these great powers are delicate in their
nature and can be thwarted if obstacles are placed in their path.

—- Montessori 

Owing to the nature of animal consciousness.
the world of which we can become conscious is only a surface and sign-world, a world that is made common and meaner

—- Nietzsche

We are as the flute, and the music in us is from thee;
we are as the mountain and the echo in us is from thee.

—- Rumi

 By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.

— John

Your borders are in the heart of the seas

—- Ezekiel

The development of the word meaning from “yawn” to “desire or demand is easily understood with reference to the hungrily yawning gullet of the wolf

— Eric Neumann

From the fruit of their lips people enjoy good things

—Proverbs/Mashal

The sounds of your greeting

—- Luke

The greater and steeper the “drop” of the excitation, the more intense the pleasure

—- Wilhelm Reich  

your builders made perfect your beauty

—- Ezekiel

whatever becomes conscious becomes by the same token shal-
low, thin, relatively stupid, general, sign, herd signal

—- Nietzsche

We shall have more to say of the yawning depths from which the magic incantation rises up, and of the twilight state of consciousness. For now it will suffice to mention the connection between the fertility of the womb, death, sexuality, and magic in the numinous image

—- Eric Neumann

  they made your oars

—- Ezekiel

to show the mercy promised

—- Luke

Instead of a systematic presentation, I want to describe the theory of the orgasm in the way in which it developed. This will enable the reader to grasp more easily its inner logic. It will be seen that no human brain could have in­ vented these relationships.

—- Wilhelm Reich

all the ships of the sea with their mariners were in you

—- Ezekiel

all becoming conscious involves a great and thorough corruption,
falsification, reduction to superficialities. and generalization. 

—- Nietzsche

to give light to those who sit in darkness

—- Luke

Today this god of light plays an important role, but it is only in relatively recent years that he has achieved his present significance.

—- Eric Neumann

they made your deck of pines
    from the coasts of Cyprus,
    inlaid with ivory

— Ezekiel

Until 1923 , the year the orgasm theory was born, only ejaculative and erective potency were known to sexology and psychoanalysis. Without the inclusion of the functional, economic, and experiential components, the concept of sexual potency has no meaning

.—- Wilhelm Reich

blue and purple from the coasts

—- Ezekiel

Ultimately, the growth of consciousness becomes a danger; and
anyone who lives among the most conscious Europeans even
knows that it is a disease.

—- Nietzsche

its uroboric bisexuality

—- Eric Neumann

the sunrise shall visit us

—- Luke

Erective and ejaculative potency are merely indispensable preconditions for orgastic potency.

— Wilhelm Reich

    they were your pilots

— Ezekiel

to guide our feet into the way of peace

—- Luke

You will guess that it is not the opposition of subject and
object that concerns me here: This distinction I leave to the epistemologists who have become entangled in the snares of
grammar (the metaphysics of the people). 

—- Nietzsche

the child grew and became strong in spirit

— Luke

They are matriarchal ancestors

— Eric Neumann

orgastic potency is the capacity to surrender to the flow of biological energy, free of any inhibitions; the capacity to discharge completely the damned-up sexual excitation through involuntary pleasurable convulsions of the body.

— Wilhelm Reich

2023 (#164) : Vygotsky, Nietzsche , Book of Ezekiel , Eric Neumann , Gospel of Luke , Wilhelm Reich , Gospel of Mark , Tao Te Ching , Mandookya Upanishad , Derrida

The root of situational constraints upon a child lies in a central fact
of consciousness characteristic of early childhood: the union of motives
and perception. At this age perception is generally not an independent
but rather an integrated feature of a motor reaction.

—- Vygotsky

My idea is, as you see, that consciousness does not really
belong to man’s individual existence but rather to his social or
herd nature; that, as follows from this, it has developed subtlety only insofar as this is required by social or herd utility.

—- Nietzsche

Set on the pot; set it on;
    pour in water also;
 put in it the pieces,
    all the good pieces, the thigh and the shoulder;
    fill it with choice cuts

—- Ezekiel

Here the profoundest experience of life combines with human anxiety to form an archetypal unity

— Eric Neumann

The Holy Spirit will come upon you

—- Luke

Your conscious action is only a drop on the surface of a sea of unconscious processes, of which you can know nothing-about which, indeed, you are afraid to know.

—- Wilhelm Reich

 Consequently, given the best will in the world to understand ourselves
as individually as possible, “to know ourselves,” each of us will
always succeed in becoming conscious only of what is not individual but “‘average.”

—- Nietzsche

Take the choicest one of the flock;
    pile the logs under it;
boil its pieces;
    seethe also its bones in it

—- Ezekiel

A male immature in his development, who experiences himself only as male and phallic, perceives the feminine as a castrator, a murderer of the phallus.

—- Eric Neumann

The power of the Most High will overshadow you

—- Luke

  In short, you are ruled by processes which you do not control, do not know, are afraid of, and erroneously interpret. There is a psychic reality which extends far beyond your conscious mind.  

—- Wilhelm Reich

 Our thoughts themselves are continually
governed by the character of consciousness-by the “genius of
the species”· that commands it–and translated back into the
perspective of the herd. 

—– Nietzsche

Heap up the logs; kindle the fire;
    boil the meat well; boil down the broth

—- Ezekiel

The projection of his own masculine desire and, on a still deeper level, of his own trend toward uroboric incest, toward voluptuous self-dissolution in the primordial Feminine and Motherly, intensifies the terrible character of the Feminine. Thus the Terrible Goddess rules over desire

—- Eric Neumann

nothing will be impossible with God

—- Luke

Parts of the ego sensations which are localized in the outer world are absorbed into the ego. In the same way, parts of the environment which are pleasurable (e.g., the mother’s nipple) are recognized as belonging to the outer world.

—- Wilhelm Reich

Fundamentally, all our actions are altogether incomparably personal, unique. and infinitely individual;
there is no doubt of that. But as soon as we translate them into
consciousness they no longer seem to be.

—– Nietzsche

So I spoke to the people in the morning

—- Ezekiel

In the fertility ritual sexuality and nourishment are related; the sexual act, which induces fertility, guarantees the fertility of the earth and hence man’s nourishment, and linguistically the two spheres are also connected. Hunger and satiety, desire and satisfaction, thirst and its slaking, are symbolic concepts that are equally valid for both of them.

—- Eric Neumann

the sound of your greeting came to my ears

—- Luke

   I knew that the inhibitions represented resistances against the uncovering of unconscious contents; also that I had to eliminate them. But how? That was the crucial question.  

—- Wilhelm Reich

While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard.

—- Mark

this is called “inner radiance.”

add to it, it is never full;

take from it, it is never depleted

who can tell where it comes from?

it is the inexhaustible treasury.

—-Tao Te Ching

She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

—-Mark

The only proof of His existence is union with Him. The world disappears in Him. He is the peaceful, the good, the one without a second.

—-Mandookya Upanishad

It provokes both the analytic and dialectic to infinity

—- Derrida

2023 (#163) : Malaguzzi , Montessori , Emerson , Nietzsche , Book of Ezekiel , Eric Neumann , Gospel of Luke , Wilhelm Reich , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , Maurice Frydman , Sri Ramana Maharshi , Heidegger , Diamond Sutra , Dogen

Creativity becomes more visible when adults try to be more attentive to the cognitive processes of children than to the results they achieve in various fields of doing and understanding.

—- Malaguzzi

When we understand that
these powers belong to an unconscious mind which must
become conscious by work and experience carried out
in the environment, when we realise that the child’s
mind is different from ours, that we cannot reach it and
teach him things, that we cannot directly intervene in
this process of passing from the unconscious to the
conscious and of constructing the human faculties

—- Montessori

Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is of an infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with the celestial air until it eclipses the sun and moon. Let us seek one peace by fidelity. Let me heed my duties. 

—– Emerson

what we call conscious·
ness constitutes only one state of our spiritual and psychic world
(perhaps a pathological state) and not by any means the whole
of it. The profundity of this idea has not been exhausted to this
day.

— Nietzsche

A great eagle with great wings and long pinions,
    rich in plumage of many colors

— Ezekiel

the gate of death, the engulfing entrance to the underworld.

—- Eric Neumann

I was sent to speak to you and bring you the good news

—- Luke

The patient was urged to “free assocciate.” He was not supposed to suppress anything that came to mind. He was supposed to say everything-but do nothing.

—- Wilhelm Reich

No thing in existence has a particular cause; the entire universe contributes to the existence of even the smallest thing; nothing could be as it is without the universe being what it is.

—-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj / Maurice Frydman

for five months she kept herself hidden

—- Luke

 The false ‘I’ will disappear and the real ‘I’ will be realized.

—- Sri Ramana Maharshi

Gate, door, gully, ravine, abyss are the .symbols of the feminine earth-womb; they are the numinous places that mark the road into the mythical darkness of the underworld

—- Eric Neumann

He took the top of the cedar,
     broke off its topmost shoot

— Ezekiel

Dreams were analyzed fragment by fragment, one after the other in succession. The patient was supposed to produce associations to every fragment.

—- Wilhelm Reich

Then he took a seedling from the land,
    placed it in fertile soil

—- Ezekiel

The flowers, the
animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as
much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.

—- Emerson

So it became a vine;
    it brought forth branches,
    put forth foliage.

—- Ezekiel

 The more original the thinking, the richer will be what is unthought in it. The unthought is the greatest gift that thinking can bestow.

—- Heidegger

she is the gaping abyss that untiringly swallows up mortal men

.—- Eric Neumann

It had been transplanted
    to good soil by abundant waters,
so that it might produce branches
    and bear fruit
    and become a noble vine

— Ezekiel

My later theory of character, on the other hand, maintained that there cannot be a neurotic symptom without a disturbance of the char ­acter as a whole.

—- Wilhelm Reich

… such men will not fall back to cherishing the idea of an ego entity, a personality, a being, or a separated individuality. they will neither fall back to cherishing the idea of things as having intrinsic qualities, nor even of things as devoid of intrinsic qualities.

—- Diamond Sutra

The yawning, avid character of the gullet and the cleft represents in mythological apperception the unity of the Feminine, which as avid womb attracts the male and kills the phallus within itself in order to achieve satisfaction and fecundation

—- Eric Neumann

a virgin betrothed to a man

—- Luke

Your mother was like a vine in a vineyard[b]
    transplanted by the water,
fruitful and full of branches
    from abundant water

—- Ezekiel

Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!

—- Luke

Freud spoke rapidly, objectively, and animatedly. The movements of his hands were natural. There was a hint of irony in everything he said. I had been apprehensive in going to him-I went away cheerful and happy.

— Wilhelm Reich

Treading along in this dreamlike, illusory realm,

Without looking for the traces I may have left;

A cuckoo’s song beckons me to return home;

Hearing this, I tilt my head to see

Who has told me to turn back;

But do not ask me where I am going,

As I travel in this limitless world,

Where every step I take is my home.-

—- Dogen

2023 (#162) : Montessori , Emerson , John Ashbery , Nietzsche , Gospel of Mark , Sri Ramana Maharshi , Taittireeya-Upanishad , Eric Neumann , Bereshit , Gospel of Luke , Jung , Derrida , Gospel of John

 The child
undergoes a transformation. The impressions not only
penetrate the mind of the child, but form it. They become
incarnate. The child makes its own * mental flesh ‘ by
using the things that are in his environment. We have
called his type of mind * Absorbent Mind.

—- Montessori

The good soul nourishes me, and unlocks new magazines of power and enjoyment to me every day.

—- Emerson

Destiny guides the water-pilot, and it is destiny.

—- John Ashbery

Being new, nameless, hard to understand,
we premature births of an as yet unproven future need for a
new goal also a new means-namely, a new health, stronger,
more seasoned, tougher, more audacious, and gayer than any
previous health.

—- Nietzsche

“Sit here while I pray.”

—- Mark

You have known that the ‘I’-thought springs forth. Hold the ‘I’-thought and find its source.

—- Sri Ramana Maharshi

God lives in the hollow of the heart, filling it with immortality, light, intelligence.

— Taittireeya-Upanishad

Whoever has a soul that craves to have experienced the whole range of values and desiderata to date, and to have sailed around all the coasts of this ideal mediterranean,

—- Nietzsche

the uroboric snake woman, the woman with the phallus, the unity of child- bearing and begetting, of life and death.

—– Eric Neumann

The Lord formed me from the beginning, before he created anything else

—- Bereshit

you will have joy and gladness

—- Luke

whoever wants to know from the adventures of his own most authentic experience how a discoverer and conqueror of the ideal feels. 

—- Nietzsche

Her principal animal is the dog, the howler by night, the finder of tracks, which in Egypt, as in Greece or Mexico, is the companion of the dead

—- Eric Neumann

I was there when he set the clouds above, when he
established springs deep in the earth

—- Bereshit

many will rejoice at his birth

—- Luke

and also an artist, a saint, a legislator. a sage, a scholar. a pious man, a soothsayer and one who stands divinely apart in the old style-

—- Nietzsche

As mistress of the way down and of the lower way, she has for symbol the key, the phallic opening power of the male, the emblem of the Goddess, who is mistress of birth and conception.

—- Eric Neumann

And when he marked off the
earth’s foundations, I was the architect at his side.

—- Bereshit

filled with the holy spirit, even from his mother’s womb

—- Luke

 the great health-that one does not merely have but also acquires continually, and must acquire because one gives it up.again and again, and must give it up.

— Nietzsche

As Good Mother, she is mistress of the East Gate

—- Eric Neumann

I was his constant
delight, rejoicing always in his presence.

—- Bereshit

to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children 

—- Luke

This seed is as it were
awakened by Jesus, purified and made capable of ascension

—- Jung

By virtue of this inevitable nature, private will is overpowered, and maugre our efforts or our imperfections, your genius will speak from you, and mine from me. That which we are, we shall teach, not voluntarily but involuntarily. Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never voluntarily opened. Character teaches over our head.

—-Emerson

This already puts us on the path to be followed. Not a particular
path leading here or there, but on the path, on the Weg or Bewegen
(path, to move along a path, to cut a path), which, leading nowhere,
marks the step

— Derrida

streams of living water will flow from within him

—- John 

There is no beginning and no end. You are yourself in the beginning and the end. 

—- Sri Ramana Maharshi

2023 (#161) : Malaguzzi , Montessori , Emerson , Eric Neumann , Jung , Gospel of Mark , Book of Numbers , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , Maurice Frydman , Nietzsche , Yeats , Gospel of Luke , Wilhelm Reich , Vygotsky , Bettelheim

All of this is a great forest. Inside the forest is the child. The forest is beautiful, fascinating, green, and full of hopes; there are no paths

—- Malaguzzi 

he will reveal himself
as the greatest marvel of nature. We shall be confronted
by a child not as he was considered before a powerless
being an empty vessel that must be filled with our
wisdom.

—- Montessori

Vigor is contagious, and whatever makes us either think or feel strongly, adds to our power, and enlarges our field of action

—- Emerson

The positive femininity of the womb appears as a mouth; that is why “lips” are attributed to the female genitals, and on the basis of this positive symbolic equation the mouth, as “upper womb,” is the birth- place of the breath and the word, the Logos.

—- Eric Neumann

Let us now turn back to the theme of Christ as the fish. The symbolism shows Christ and those who believe in him as fishes, fish as the food eaten at the Agape, baptism as immersion in a fish-pond, etc.

— Jung

 It was nine in the morning when they crucified him. 

—- Mark

The skull is a symbol not only of death but also of the dead sun, which during its life was endowed with the hair rays of power; while when the hero, the night sun, is swallowed up in the belly of the whale

—- Eric Neumann

 When the ram has been boiled, the cohen is to take its shoulder

—- Numbers

Do what you feel like doing. Don’t bully yourself. Violence will make you hard and rigid. Don’t fight with what you take to be obstacles on your way. Just be interested in them, watch them, observe, enquire. Let anything happen — good or bad. But don’t let yourself be submerged by what happens.

—- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj / Maurice Frydman

  feelings about values are always behind the times; they express conditions of preservation and growth that belong to times long gone by; they resist new conditions of existence with which they cannot cope and which they necessarily misunderstand: thus they inhibit and arouse suspicion against what is new  

—- Nietzsche

A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.

— Mark

His dignity will arise in its fullness in front of
our eyes as he reveals himself as the constructor of our
intelligence, as the being who, guided by the inner
teacher, in joy and happiness works indefatigably

—- Montessori

He that sings a lasting song 

Thinks in a marrow-bone  

—- Yeats

The soul is. Under all this running sea of
circumstance, whose waters ebb and flow with perfect balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of real Being. Essence, or God, is not a relation or a part, but the whole.

—- Emerson

  Leave nothing but the nothings that belong 

  To this bare soul   

— Yeats

his “hair falls out.” The relation between death, bald head, sacrifice, and castration is characteristic for the initiates of the Great Mother

—- Eric Neumann

  Under the Great Comedian’s tomb the crowd.

—- Yeats  

Being is the vast affirmative, excluding negation, self-balanced, and swallowing up all relations, parts and times within itself. Nature, truth, virtue, are the influx from thence.

—- Emerson

  Brightness remains; a brighter star shoots down  

— Yeats

from the shaven priests of Isis down to the tonsured Catholic monies. The snake hair of the Terrible Goddess corresponds on the other hand to a “negative radiation.”

—- Eric Neumann

What is this sacrifice? Can someone there Recall the Cretan barb that pierced a star?

— Yeats

‘Y’varekh’kha Adonai v’yishmerekha.
[May Adonai bless you and keep you.]

—- Numbers

he was chosen by lot to enter the temple

— Luke 

  Naked to naked goes  

—- Yeats

  Actually, every major growth is accompanied by a tremendous crumbling and passing away: suffering, the symptoms of decline belong in the times of tremendous advances; every fruitful and powerful movement of humanity has also created at the same time a nihilistic movement. It could be the sign of a crucial and most essential growth, of the transition to new conditions of existence, that the most extreme form of pessimism, genuine nihilism, would come into the world.  

—- Nietzsche

praying outside at the hour of incense

—- Luke

 And give his own and take his own

 And rule in his own right  

—- Yeats

We have to find each other in the forest and begin to discuss what the education of the child actually means.

—- Malaguzzi

   It was entirely without conscious premeditatfon that I used the simile of electricity and its energy. I had no idea that sixteen years later I would have the good fortune of demonstrating the identity between bioelectric and sexual energy.  

—- Wilhelm Reich

And he had a wife from the sisters of Aaron

—- Luke

In Greece the Gorgon as Artemis-Hecate is also the mistress of the night road, of fate, and of the world of the dead.—-

Eric Neumann

her name was Elizabeth

—- Luke

  He investigated the phenomena of sexual excitation, spoke of an “organ libido,” and ascribed to each cell that strange “something” which influences our life to such a large extent. I was later able to experimentally confirm these intimations on Freud’s part.  

—- Wilhelm Reich

We may say that we become ourselves through others and that this rule applies not only to the personality as a whole, but also to the history of every individual function.

—- Vygotsky

In childhood, more than in any other age, all is becoming. As long as we have not achieved considerable security within ourselves, we cannot engage in difficult psychological struggles unless a positive outcome seems certain to us, whatever the chances for this may be in reality. The fairy tale offers fantasy materials which suggest to the child in symbolic form what the battle to achieve self-realisation is all about, and guarantees a happy ending.

—- Bruno Bettelheim