i was watching an eckhart tolle lecture on dvd about the flowering of human consciousness, wherein he says at one point that the limitation of our consciousness begins with our name, which conditions us to think of ourselves as both isolated from the rest of the world and defined by language. later on he jokes that we can still keep our name, though, even after we figure out that the self as we normally conceive of it is a delusion and language and thoughts are only a part of our consciousness. “when someone asks you your name,” he says, “you don’t have to say ‘i am beyond names and labels’… which is basically saying ‘i am more important than you’ and not answering the question.”

maybe it was just that all the jokes before that had been subtle faces and eyebrow raises and so the humorometer for the lecture as a whole had a pretty low baseline, but ‘i am beyond names and labels’ in his calm german accent was freaking hilarious and i laughed for like a minute and a half.

it was also a very good point.

then just now i was reading a lifehacker post that says:

The EPA has a nifty tool to help us all figure out just how much of an impact our homes are having on the environment with the (somewhat unfortunately named) Personal Emissions Calculator.

i read that parenthetical twice before it sunk in and then i just couldn’t contain myself.

i had just been thinking that i hadn’t blogged in a few days, so it seemed fitting to share some of the diversity of my day with you.

i also started season 3 of 24, wrote some email, bought some groceries, ate some indian takeout, took a shower, did some of my cross stitch, tasted the rogue chipotle ale, and watched everything is illuminated.

meanwhile, in outer portland, it rained off and on and was generally cool.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 21st, 2007 at 9:00 pm and is filed under fluff, things i do. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.