Cycling through the Great Brain

What is it then that the thinker experiences  when this journey is completed? Whatever the starting point of the dialectic exercise, the philosopher finally beholds the real being which has been manifest through the truth which has been questioned. This 'beholding' is contemplation. It is the natural and unforced rest which is the result of our previous activity: for this reason the student who uses the dialectic exercise as the basis for formal or informal meditation would be wise to allow a moment of stillness to follow each meditation in order to invite the contemplative fruit of his labours to arise from the depths of his or her being. The keynote of contemplation is receptivity, while that of meditation is direction.

Tim Addey, The Unfolding Wings

I once read somewhere that the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier (the raven) died of a heart-attack whilst he was in the Mediterranean 'swimming into the sun'. I thought at the time that there could be worse ways to go, I still do: A sort of double-decker nirvana, the light inside the light...

But all physical death aside, swimming (or indeed cycling or walking) into the sun can be a real clarifying experience. Take yesterday's cycle around 'Saturn' (Dechmont Hill) just behind Cambuslang: no wind, full sun, cold temps.

Once you get the body going, the mind can start wandering into that spacious territory called 'Soul'. This is the beauty of any sort of locomotion and the galvanizing of the body-mind-cosmos system: anchoring the body through movement so the mind can float off, and behold a wide-ranging discourse with Itself. It is nirvana with a remainder as they say, dead whilst still alive, the dead part referring to the artificial ego, the 'decorated self' that has been fashioned by a wayward society. It is this 'deadwood' that is shook off whilst locomoting solitarily in (semi) wild places.  Insofar as this is concerned the journey-pilgrimage outwards is always the journey-pilgrimage inwards.

Cycling with a companion I have found invites a different set of behaviour, and a different type of exploration, one which is not as conducive to 'spacing out' and cosmic contemplations. Though there may be plenty of other benefits from cycling together, I find that companionship in this way hampers rather than expands Mind.

Contemplation, moreso than meditation, is an activity that is more effective when alone. The fruits and flowers of this contemplation often manifest themselves through being itself, but occasionally overflow into words or images, or great silences. I suppose then that all my work is a function of this meditating (cycling) and contemplating (resting). The interplay of remaining and stravaiging...

 The view from the Platform at Newton looking south towards Dechmont Hill.

Car-based man is actually a cyclical-based man, but he will not know it until he wakes up and starts moving under his own steam...

 Swanning in the sun... Coffee with a swan can be a real interesting experience...

 Last year at Glasgowbad...