278 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2020
  2. Feb 2020
    1. But we don’t just want people to read our work. We want people to spread our work — to be so moved by what we wrote or said that they log on to Facebook and share it with their friends or head over to Reddit and try to tell the world. That’s how you get those dots to multiply. But people don’t share quiet voices. They share loud voices. They share work that moves them, that helps them express to their friends who they are and how they feel. Social platforms are about curating and expressing a public-facing identity. They’re about saying, “I’m a person who cares about this, likes that, and loathes this other thing.” They are about signaling the groups you belong to and, just as important, the groups you don’t belong to.
  3. Jan 2020
  4. Dec 2019
    1. I’m convinced that white people also need to better understand white racial identity to engage anti-racism.

      What does "white racial identity" even mean? I am white, so I fit this category. I am also a woman, which means there are other biases I am faced with that my male colleagues do not experience.

      I grew up in a small town among a citizenry that was typically middle class, yet I was several rungs below most of them on the socio-economic ladder. How does my "whiteness" in that experience compare to that of my white peers? What about my experience in a small town vs those who grew up in urban environments?

      Identity is a very complex construct and involves so many facets that I find it too simplistic to lump it into "white" vs "people of color." The experience and identity of someone from India is different from that of one from Mexico or Nigeria, yet we can (and often do) call all of those "people of color."

      Are we asking the right questions?

  5. Nov 2019
    1. React guarantees that setState function identity is stable and won’t change on re-renders. This is why it’s safe to omit from the useEffect or useCallback dependency list.
  6. Sep 2019
  7. Aug 2019



  8. Jul 2019
    1. The components of identity assurance detailed in these guidelines are as follows: IAL refers to the identity proofing process. AAL refers to the authentication process. FAL refers to the strength of an assertion in a federated environment, used to communicate authentication and attribute information (if applicable) to a relying party (RP).

      Definition for identity assurance

  9. Jun 2019
  10. May 2019
  11. www.saltboxbrewingcompany.ca www.saltboxbrewingcompany.ca
    1. first independent brewer to set forth on a quest to create the most desired beer this jewel of a region has ever seen. 
    1. phonetic signs, introduced to transcribe the name of individuals, marked the turning point when writing started emulating spoken language

      Interesting connection to identity and self-representation there.

    1. In fact, I’d argue this blog has been largely a collection of writings concentrated on me working through the thoughts of my own digital identity and the tools that help shape it. The whole bit is highly meta.
  12. Apr 2019
    2. Think of this essay as a series of strongly held hypotheses; without access to the types of data which i’m not even sure exists, it’s difficult to be definitive. As ever, my wise readers will add or push back as they always do.

      Push back, sure, but where? Where would we find this push back? The comments section only has a few tidbits. Perhaps the rest is on Twitter, Facebook, or some other social silo where the conversation is fraught-fully fragmented. Your own social capital is thus spread out and not easily compiled or compounded. As a result I wonder who may or may not have read this piece...

    1. Instead of encouraging more “data-sharing”, the focus should be the cultivation of “data infrastructure”,¹⁴ maintained for the public good by institutions with clear responsibilities and lines of accountability.

    1. Collecting followers and likes authenticates and quantifies our existence without the need for deconstruction. We will not move any closer to the horizon of self if our sense of identity is based on validation through acknowledgement rather than engaging in dialogue and deconstruction.

      I'd love to explore this more. I think my reaction is that all "likes" are not equal (and therefore the search for them as goods in their own right is fruitless). But acknowledgement by other members (or potential members) of a genuine community is sustaining to dialogue. So the "right" likes and followers do help us make communal progress toward self, even as the "wrong" acknowledgements can frustrate it.

      (See next paragraph for a good caveat about identity work - or the lack thereof - in static homogenous groups.)

    2. As with justice and the law what becomes crucial within this conception of self and identity is the willingness to deconstruct or interpet. Damaging essentialization based on shoring-up (sure-ing up?) well worn binaries such as real/virtual, authentic/fake falls away as the ‘work’ of identity becomes interpretation, questioning and negotiation.

      Thinking of identity as contextual, interpretive, work-in-process, instead of as a static output, seems really positive and potentially integrative.

  13. Mar 2019
    1. “Imagery in public space is a reflection of who has the power to tell the story of what happened and what should be remembered,” Bleiberg said. “We are witnessing the empowerment of many groups of people with different opinions of what the proper narrative is.” Perhaps we can learn from the pharaohs; how we choose to rewrite our national stories might just take a few acts of iconoclasm.
    2. The prevalent practice of damaging images of the human form—and the anxiety surrounding the desecration—dates to the beginnings of Egyptian history. Intentionally damaged mummies from the prehistoric period, for example, speak to a “very basic cultural belief that damaging the image damages the person represented,” Bleiberg said. Likewise, how-to hieroglyphics provided instructions for warriors about to enter battle: Make a wax effigy of the enemy, then destroy it. Series of texts describe the anxiety of your own image becoming damaged, and pharaohs regularly issued decrees with terrible punishments for anyone who would dare threaten their likeness.
  14. Feb 2019
    1. Less than a third of the apps that collect identifiers take only the Advertising ID, as recommended by Google's best practices for developers.

      33% apps violate Google Advertising ID policy

  15. Jan 2019
    1. The machine-beings that emerge from these couplings thus demon-strate a different form of identity, on

      Since these machine-beings have some kind of identity, do these beings still feel the obligation to perform their constructed identities? Again brings me back to Goffman.

    2. hybrids
    3. require a different kind of response.

      Perhaps this is akin to asking "which one?" instead of "what is?"

    1. Indeed, much of this historyindicates that it is never simply a question of choosing, for instance, the openingof alterity over the crisis of identity

      Muckelbauer is suggesting that there will never be a concrete definition of rhetoric. The ideas of identity and alterity go hand in hand with each other and it can not simply be one or the other.

  16. Nov 2018
  17. Oct 2018


  18. Sep 2018


    2. Maybe that's being a tad corny

      Nah, it's fine. Some people are still in the dark about what their political affiliation is. When putting it this way, it makes it more desirable to get people involved.

    1. It is amazing what calling someone by their name can do for a community and a feeling of belonging.

      I've been impressed in the past by faculty members who use this as a way to get to real class discussion and past serial dialogue between the professor an individual students in a Q&A. Saying "what she said" simply isn't acceptable; when you refer to another person's comment, you use their name,



  19. Aug 2018
    1. I can't help but wonder what Jonah Goldberg's review of this book will be given his prior effort earlier this year?

      I'm also reminded here of Mark Granovetter's ideas that getting a job is more closely tied to who you know. One's job is often very closely tied to their identity, and even more so when the link that got them their job was through a friend or acquaintance.


      Some importatnt questions here. They give me some ideas...






  20. Jul 2018
    1. as a force which connects us to the universe, and as a force which allows our body to make meaning from this connection. What we can understand from such a connection includes the distinction between our self and other selves, or our self and the rest of the world, but also, importantly, our relationship to the world, to other bodies in the world

      embodiment as Identity formation:


      This is one of the major problems in how so many approach this whole issue weather as a topic or in deciding a course of action for their own child. Furthermore the possibility of that happiness now rests on either on secrecy and passing or as is more often the case today it rests on the cooperation and orchestration of a comprehensive enough segment of the total people with whom your child is interacting to support this transition. What if we did that for gay kids. How much different would things be if tital 9 applied to all gender nonconforming kids even those who identified as gay? What if 12 states didn't have laws against speaking positively about gay as an identity in schools. What if parents where expected to do the work to insure that a self identified gay student was provided a social network for similarly identified adults and young people. And for just about any teen how might life be different emotionally speaking if we had been chemically castrated during our teen years. What if gay kids had the same wealth of support materials - public discourse etc. The reaason they don't is because we can not deal with their difference and we can not deal with it being about their sexual desire because we are unnerved by a the fact that children can identify and feel and act on sexual interests at a very young age. Gay kids know this and that is a big hurdle to comming out. I wished so much to have a boyfirend then I felt I could come out because it wouldn't mean telling my parents that I think about boys in a sexual way but I love this boy and won't deny him to anyone. No sad to say as was noted when oposition was initially raised amoung APA members over the introduction of GID to the DSM when they stated that it may just be that gay is a normal healthy worthy course of human development that as part of that process involves being in some way emotionally maimed by which they meant that there are certain painfull encounters with being different than ones own parents and most people in your community that gay people by dfinitioon must edure and untill society changes being gay is known to be a bad undesirable thing by children at a tremendously young age. So to be and develop as a person who is homosexual is not going to happen without certain paiuns and obsticles that others can easily avoid and mostly do.

    1. In fact, these platforms have become inseparable from their data: we use “Facebook” to refer to both the application and the data that drives that application. The result is that nearly every Web app today tries to ask you for more and more data again and again, leading to dangling data on duplicate and inconsistent profiles we can no longer manage. And of course, this comes with significant privacy concerns.
  21. Jun 2018
    1. In Visitor mode individuals do not leave any social trace online.

      Well, that's an unfortunate assertion in the age of GDPR and Cambridge Analytica. The difference between an intentional "social trace" and an "unintentional data tracking trace" is getting more important.

  22. May 2018
    1. Editors == Registered users Approver == Manager (approver approves (possibly creates) Editors. Also assigns roles to those individuals. Administrator == Boss person w/right to reject approved records

  23. Apr 2018



      Janie's self-reflection and searching beneath the veneer she had erected and maintained for so many years that has unearthed (recall she viewed herself as earth that absorbed urine and perfume with equal heedlessness) a precious commodity.

    1. Theweddingringhastobeputonthethirdfingerofthelefthand',shesaid,likeachildcautiouslyrepeatingitslesson,'forittobeofanyuseatall.

      I find it interesting how something so little like a ring, could symbolize a whole concept such as marriage. Even so that without it, one feels that they have no proof that they're married..like Orlando. This relates to a theme of identity/gender. For a woman to be classified as "married" she needs proof, and for a ring, a female accessory to symbolize so is an example of how "the clothes wear us, we don't wear them" saying--goes back to the question of whether gender determines identity or the other way around.

    1. broke from the historical script of those who pursue and succeed in science.

      This is a heartening story, but runs along the lines of another script, the nurturing woman. Perhaps this space is available to these young women because the dominant population have turned it down?

    1. Her words reveal the conflict between allegiance to hercultural background and her adopted culture.













  24. Mar 2018



  25. Nov 2017


  26. Oct 2017
    1. Addressing implicit and explicit cultural biases in data is going to be a huge challenge for everyone who is trying to build a system dependent on data classified by or about humans.

      bias in data

    1. The American and the girl with him

      In establishing the setting, we are now introduced to the two main characters: The American and the girl.

      For the author chooses to deliberately separate the two characters with their respective specificity, referring to the male character as "The American" and the female as "the girl". The male character being bestowed a title of nationality, and the girl existing as a relatively unknown figure, Hemingway shows us that the male figure exists in a more concrete manner. In meaning, he exists with more identity and thus is of more importance. "and the girl with him" establishes that the girl is a companion to The American, suggesting that the leader in this couple is the male character. Perhaps the author may be suggesting to the reader an influence of patriarchy.

  27. Sep 2017
    1. This is the story of 16th century Europe, and the political earthquake that was protestantism. The overarching historical narrative unfolds around the lives of fictional characters who might have lived in this historic period.

      Follett's literary reenactment explores the intricacies of the Protestant Reformation through a cast of strategically diverse characters, whose stories span across multiple continents, nations, and cities. Each character is an important harbinger of larger historical trends. Within the masterfully established geo-political reality, each of their decisions serve to gradually reveal their distinct personalities and temperaments, belief systems and ideologies, and cultural identities.

  28. Jul 2017


    1. It’s just not how I expected my life would be,'" he says.

      Analyze and relate to theme

    2. In the realm of narrative psychology, a person’s life story is not a Wikipedia biography of the facts and events of a life, but rather the way a person integrates those facts and events internally

      narrative on narrative writing

    1. LetterPile»Writing»Creative Writing Very Short Stories for High School & Middle SchoolUpdated on May 12, 2017 <img src="https://usercontent2.hubstatic.com/8625837_100.jpg" alt="Howard Allen profile image" title="Howard Allen profile image"/>Howard Allen more <img src="https://usercontent1.hubstatic.com/8703622_f496.jpg" data-ratio="1.4555808656036" alt=""/> If your students are

      another possible set of sources for short story unit

  29. Jun 2017
    1. Koromanti was a term commonly used to describe enslaved people from the Akan ethnic group from West Africa, one of the largest group among the enslaved in Jamaica at the time.

      Kromanti is perhaps the most laden term in African Diaspora history in a Jamaican or Anglophone context and, as I've written elsewhere (my Slavery and Abolition article from 2014), I think that parsing Kromanti -- or really any of these terms -- as primarily geographic misses so much of what they connoted.

      Before 1688, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, only 7% of the Africans arriving in Jamaica came from the Gold Coast, and most of these between 1676-1680. So there's no real demographic reason for this centrality of Kromanti identity, if we assume Kromanti is a gloss for people of Gold Coast origins.

      Even for those who were placed in chains on slave ships from ports in the Gold Coast, there is no reason to believe that most were Akan speakers, and in fact Apter's work would convey how deeply those on the coast associated enslavement with people from the north, who certainly did not speak Akan, even to the extent that Akan was a meaningful linguistic category in the seventeenth century.

      More importantly, however, why "Kromanti"? Kromanti is a tiny fishing village. I argue that it gained a particular kind of salience after 1717, when the Asantehene (the king of Asante) was betrayed and murdered there, and his body could not be recovered popularly memorialized. In the wake of this, the people of Asante developed an oath, Memenada Akromanti, and that oath was used by maroons and revolutionaries in seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and even nineteenth-century Jamaica of diverse origins, from Madagascar to Kongo to Biafra.

      This, of course, is early for that, and so begs the question: why Kromanti?

      Was Kromanti important earlier, as Agorsah's archeological work suggests, because of iron working? Could that reputation have resonated with ideologies about blacksmithing and political legitimacy from the Kongo?

      The plurality of musical forms here, however, if nothing else, should push us beyond thinking of Kromanti as a simple or straightforward gloss for a region cum ethnicity cum linguistic group, and try to think, again, of what these terms meant for those using them in the seventeenth century.





  30. Apr 2017
    1. Similarly, the collective of internet users acting as digital environmentalists advocate for the health of the digital environment.

      Dual identity seems to be a common theme in race and postcolonial studies. DuBois has double consciousness, the condition of African Americans viewing themselves as American but being viewed by white America as black and as a problem. Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth describes the split subjectivity of the colonized. Nervous Conditions is a novel by Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga which extends Fanon's split subjectivity to describe how her two protagonists are split between their desire for a Western education, independence and feminism and their Rhodesian culture.

    1.  Because that I am more than common tall, FTLN 0583 That I did suit me all points like a man?

      like a man: a stereotypical description

    2. Scene 1 Enter Duke Senior, Amiens, and two or three Lords, like foresters.

      or outlaws...escapism

      issues of man's identity

    3.  I think he be transformed into a beast, FTLN 0960 For I can nowhere find him like a man

      beastliness issues of identity

  31. Mar 2017
    1. orego one identity for a startling new one


    1. I was loving teaching as never before. I was experiencing less and less frustration doing what I loved.

      Identity Self-directed learning. Emotion

    2. Meeting new colleagues with whom I could have fun teaching was high up on my 'would love to' list.

      Network colleagues

    1. I am an outsider who thought that perhaps I could lay a set of parallel sidetracks next to the well-worn ones of System B, an underground railway designed to lift up, carry forward, and sustain those fleeing the plight of System B.



    2. the crank and the zealot. Whatever. I am an iconoclast in a job that values lockstep


    3. Outsiders in Academe

      feeling of being outsider? made to feel an outsider?

      I was born an outsider come to think of it.

      Youngest/unbeliever/middle class/outsider at schools/foreign/not careerist/etc

    4. a gadfly


    5. My idea of the consummate outsider is architect

      If he is an architect he is not really an outsider but he can be an outsider within a group - a possible point of connection to other groups....

    1. Pulling here, pulling there and giving a broad grin to a band of fellow urchins.

      seeing the absurdity

    2. "We shall miss Simon's way of... er making his position...er his disagreement...clear."

      identity values

    3. Artful...as in Dodger


    1. I responded to the invitation with confusion and then refound the voice which comes from somewhere. A blog post wrote itself, a familiar voice helped me find my feet. Dodger, my alter-ego helped me through the crisis of trust.

      identity values trust

    1. Today as a teacher I am working with the UK, Poland, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Japan, the USA, Brazil, Cameroun. 5 years ago, I was only concerned with a room of twenty five students at one moment, today I am concerned with perhaps something over a 1000 or more students and teachers who are all over the place.

      Changing role of teacher

    2. I am now perhaps half French.

      Ever more French....

    3. a writer...(now, I come to think of it, I could say that now, I had never assumed that costume before)


      Blogger at least.

    4. The Spaceman Episode

      Childhood identification with multiple roles.


      Credit recognition identity


      connections attachment identification


      mentorship leaders community

      Herein lies the problem of confidence - that feeling of being an imposter (imposter syndrome) others have the possibility to connect - photos of people smiling in exotic places.


      Feeling of being part of something...but a part of what?

      Problem of recognition.

      Problem of being disheartened.

      Problem of barriers..

      Also that feeling of not wanting to be disconnected from local reality - not wanting to be a satellite.in heaven.

      Feeling of others being a cosy clique.

      Not wanting to play career games in academia.


      The importance of connecting with others like us...

  32. Feb 2017
  33. Nov 2016
    1. 16, he killed a man who had raped his younger sister. Little record exists of the next four or five years of his life, during which time he changed his name to Francisco

      Poncho villa changed his name to Francisco from age 16-20

  34. Oct 2016
    1. why encourage posting before you’ve even read the thing? Because, at least my hope is, it’ll prevent posting a link from becoming an endorsement for the content at the other end of that link. There’s a natural tendency to curate what we associate with our online profiles and I think that’s, in large part, because we’ve spent a lot of time equating a user’s profile page with a user’s identity and, consequently, their beliefs. But I consume a wealth of content that I don’t necessarily agree with, and that helps to inform me, to shape my opinions, as much as the content that I agree with wholeheartedly.
  35. Sep 2016
  36. Aug 2016
    1. the response is always, "What is the LGBT community going to do about this?" But the LGBT community doesn't run the schools where queer kids are being bullied, raped, and abused. The LGBT community can't shut down those "houses of worship" where LGBT kids are abused spiritually and their straight peers are given license to abuse them physically. The LGBT community doesn't parent the vast majority of LGBT kids. So the question shouldn't be, "What is the LGBT community going to do about this?", but rather, "What is the straight community going to do about this?"
  37. Jul 2016
    1. and the significance of choices among language uses.

      I'm reminded of something Shondel said in our Ed Linguistics seminar: choosing a register or dialect of speech is not like choosing a color of a car. There are serious identity-psychological implications of these choices.



  38. Apr 2016
    1. THE IMPERSONAL LIFEJoseph S. BennerI AMTo you who read, I speak.To you, who, through long years and much running to and fro, have been eagerly seeking, inbooks and teachings, in philosophy and religion, for you know not what ---Truth, Happiness,Freedom, God;To you whose Soul is weary and discouraged and almost destitute of hope;To you, who many times have obtained a glimpse of that "Truth" only to find, when youfollowed and tried to reach it, that it disappeared in the beyond, and was but the mirage of thedesert;To you, who thought you had found it in some great teacher, who was perhaps the acknowledgedhead of some Society, Fraternity or Religion, and who appeared to you to be a "Master", somarvelous was the wisdom he taught and the works he performed; -- only to awaken later to therealization that that "Master" was but a human personality, with faults and weaknesses, andsecret sins, the same as you, even though that personality may have been a channel throughwhich were voiced many beautiful teachings, which seemed to you the highest "Truth;"And here you are, Soul aweary and enhungered, and not knowing where to turn ---To you, I AM come.Likewise to you, who have begun to feel the presence of that "Truth" within your Soul, and seekthe confirmation of that which of late has been vaguely struggling for living expression within;Yes, to all you who hunger for the true "Bread of Life," I AM come.Are you ready to partake?If so, then arouse yourself. Sit up. Still your human mind and follow closely My Word hereinspoken. Or you will turn away disappointed once more, with the aching hunger still in yourheart

      The message clearly points out that it is speaking to me! And asks me to still my mind and listen.

  39. Mar 2016

      This will have to be even more precisely specified, documented, tracked, communicated, developed, ...

  40. Feb 2016
    1. Because even if you don’t have a conscious one, you’ve been living one.”

      Sometimes it's hard to see a narrative for our lives. A good place to start is "themes". Start becoming conscious about what common ideas or threads keep popping up in your life. From there, figure out what's common about the common, give the disparate themes some coherence and/or direction, and you've got not only a narrative of your past, but a direction for your future, perhaps even a mission for your future, and if you're really lucky, in this process you might find out which "character" you are/want to play too!

    1. ShowTix4U.com.

      Danger! Be sure to use https: if you buy tickets here. You can use the whole site via http: and then you are not safe. Check for security incidents online before you use this site.

  41. Jan 2016
    1. One of the drawbacks of anonymity on the Web is romance scams. Scammers set up fake personas on social media. They often use photos stolen from a real person's accounts

      When the same person has their photos stolen repeatedly, Facebook could prevent this easily. But they don't.

    1. It is not pleasant to sacrifice your illusions. And again, this is why it is imperative for you to connect with me frequently, if not absolutely constantly, so as to have the opportunity to stand in the presence of your Sanity, your unflawed experience of what is Really going on, because you will be able to catch the feel of Joy which will further illuminate You to you as Who You truly Are, and thus promote greater willingness to release, without reason or thought, the fantasy you.
  42. christmind.info christmind.info
    1. The thinking which the fantasy partner or false sense of self has engaged in will be replaced with the Knowing which has been constituted of the direct experience of your Self. When it has seemed as though you were talking with me and drawing upon the infinite Knowing, you have been connected to You, and it has constituted the substance of You, even though as long as you were identifying with the fantasy sense of yourself it has seemed as though you were not connected with yourself and who you were was becoming less and less significant.

      The more I let go of my illusions my sense of self "will be replaced with the Knowing which has been constituted of the direct experience of your Self."

    2. Now, it is important for you and I to speak regularly, as we are doing, because just as meditating reminds you of the experience of centeredness, our conversing reminds you of the nature of the experience of Knowing, which provides you with the clear perspective of the pleasure of It, the Integrity of It, the naturalness of It, and the fact that in the experience of It there is no loss of any experience of Self, including, as I said, identity and identification—what might be called mind and body. The experience of It does not convey or substantiate the sidekick, the sidekick’s judgments, or the sidekick’s sense of separation. You must be reminded of this because it helps to substantiate to you the desirability of not being fragmented, the desirability of not experiencing fear, the desirability of not being “bumbling,” the desirability of not experiencing incompetence, the desirability of releasing the sidekick.

      Raj speak about the importance of being reminded of what is real.

    3. Absolutely everything, all form, is simply the expression of the movement of Knowing, the movement of Self. Abide with the Knowing, and be from the Knowing, and all form will identify Being, because there will be no misidentification of Self to cause a preoccupation with form. I mention this because you must be very clear that in shifting from thinking to Knowing, you will not become unconscious of Self, and you will not become unconscious of body. It is just that Self and Body will not be identified with body! Again, it is just that Self and Body will not be identified with body. The simple fact is that self-consciousness and body-consciousness become secondary, and ultimately nonexistent in the Act of Knowing. And yet, consciousness, with full identity and identification will be experienced—another key point!






    1. The experience of personality is, indeed, the effective block to the experience of Individuality, of Identity. Again—and this is imperative now—if you are not “channeling” me, then be in touch with me constantly. I will not be imposed upon by your constantly dialoguing with me, even in the midst of your relating to others and engaging in daily activities.

      In this I hear of the importance of listening to our true Self, our Being..

    2. What is significant here, and what has been significant about the past nine years is that you have engaged in Listening. You have not engaged in as much dialoguing as would have been helpful, but by virtue of your willingness to allow me to address others, you have put yourself in the position of relating to “the Real world,” to Reality. You are now able to consider looking at the fact that Reality is where you Are, and that you are different from the perceptions you have held so dear about yourself called the ego, the sidekick, “bumbling Paul,”—a personal, private sense of self that has very little to do with Reality. You are able to embrace that concept, which is actually the Fact, without significant fear—reluctance maybe, resistance, yes, but with little fear, and now with some active curiosity.

      A personal, private sense of self has very little to do with Reality.

    3. It is the experience of being Who you Are that I am promoting, and not an “intellectual knowledge.” Indeed, to quote Susan, if I were to sit here and say “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” and you did not miss one moment of the “blahs,” but were attentive to them, the essential dynamics of Awakening would be present, because you could not hear the “blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” from within your defenses. Thus the experience of being in your right Mind, even though it would not be complete, would be Actual, and that is the way the weight gets shifted from the unreal sidekick that seems real to the real Friend that seems unreal, and the real You that has seemed nonexistent.

      It feels as though Raj is sharing here about the 'journey', beginning to hear guidance and this is Actual, Real even though still taking the journey....

    4. Remember—and this is the key of our conversation today—it is the act of being in dialogue, it is the event of being connected, and not what happens during the connection, which constitutes the bridge that allows you to move from the ego sense of self to the Conscious experience of Who You Are. Indeed, you can ask me to simply say, “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” when you are afraid of the content of what you might hear, because it isn’t the content but the connection that constitutes the bridge.


      ? Real dialogue is not about what is said?