My Expression

In my writing and artwork I attempt to blend the deep philosophical mindset with the artistic mindset, to express each simultaneously and together as a rich observation of experiential reality.

The artistic process is a living flowing creation of no end. It extends far beyond the medium and physical completion, and is never finished. The new life is then beyond its physical existence and takes on the duties of the metaphysical. The absorption of artistry is a continuation of the process. It's the heart beating, like a birth not being the end, but a beginning of a life that will grow and breathe. The completion of the artist's creation is the beginning of the art's life, therefore making the observer the heartbeat of the art, without whom a creation is only stillborn. The artist fades into irrelevance as the expression takes its journey, like a bird flying away from its nest to find its own life. In this case to find it's own life in the interpretations of the minds of multiple experiencers.

My writing can be found here...

www.larengreyumphlett.com

My artwork can be found here...

www.artbreak.com/larengreyumphlett 

Progress

"Progress is staggered, never linear. There are no straight lines in nature."

- Laren Grey Umphlett -The Poetic Realities, The Poetic Fantasies (coming soon)

Get Your Copy of "The Power of Perception"

Get your copy of "The Power of Perception" on Amazon in print paperback or Kindle format.

PRINT PAPERBACK

KINDLE

A Course in Consciousness

I highly recommend this course from The University of Virginia.

http://faculty.virginia.edu/consciousness/

Enjoy!

Useful Websites For Life!

We live in an extended mind beyond our immediate senses. Our world has expanded into an ever shrinking world. Tools are helpful for forging a mind and life in this modern world. Here are some useful sites.

1. Khan Academy. I'm big on autodidaction. I feel that study should be lifelong and beyond the boundaries of degree requirements and job prerequisites. Education should be about building a person, not just getting a job.

2. Quora. You thought your mom and dad had all the answers? Nope, but what if they did? Enter Quora. Ask anything!

3. Spreeder. I'm a firm believer that words should be consumed like a fine food. I often read at the narrative pace of David Attenborough or Morgan Freeman, but there is sometimes a need for hogging down information like a ravenous beast devours a fresh kill. In this case Spreeder teaches how to read  with speed and efficiency.

4.  Information is Beautiful. For the visually minded it can be important to season bland food with some visual spices. This site offers information in the form of beauty, making it easier to digest.

5. Marc and Angel Hack Life. Hack hack hack away, gently and softly. Learn ways to take the path of least resistance and enjoy the scenic route.

6. How Stuff Works. Know how it works and how it can work for you!

7. OneLook. A dictionary search that becomes an online superdictionary.

8. The World Factbook. Information about anything you need to know. I'm obsessed with knowing whatever enters my senses. Way back in the day as a kid I had to walk two miles up hill in the snow to get to the library to look up things I was curious about. Now it is at our fingertips and equals 1,000,000X the information of an old school local library. The CIA will be watching, so make sure it's all innocent stuff.

9. Topsy. Find out what is trending or being discussed in your subject of curiosity.

10. Skype. We should have had video phones by the year 1999. Now that we do have them they are severely underused. People would rather pay for a phone than use a free video phone. Where's the
logic?

11. wikiHow. Expert Village. YouTube. It used to be that we had to find a teacher to teach us something. Now we can find teachers for anything. We can now be an apprentice to thing we could never have learned before.

12. The obvious. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn for keeping in contact with friends and connections. This makes life simpler by gathering everyone in one place and keeping everyone informed about what you are doing and your interests, as well as keeping up with the interests and doings of friends. Many people live far away. Social media brings them home. Hootsuite is a dashboard for managing them and scheduling tweets and posts.

13. Goodreads. It should be called "Greatreads". Everyone should read more. You can find the right books here.

14. wikiQuotes. Great quotes to inspire and induce good thoughts.

Laren Grey Umphlett is a meditation enthusiast, connoisseur of anything interesting and the artistic process, extreme fitness trainer, and author of "The Power of Perception"
website: www.larengreyumphlett.com
blog: www.larengreyumphlett.blogspot.com
twitter: www.twitter.com/LarenUmphlett

Expanded Consciousness: 10 Thing That Will Make You Happier, Backed By Sci...

Expanded Consciousness: 10 Thing That Will Make You Happier, Backed By Sci...: Written by Belle Beth Cooper I would love to be happier, as I’m sure most people would, so I thought it would be interesting to fin...

GUEST BLOGGING!

I am looking for guest blogs for this blog site.
I will include contact info to promote your site, blog, or business.
The subject matter can cover meditation, yoga, philosophy, psychology, mind, nature, the esoteric, mysticism, art, science, motivation, life hacks, and related subjects.
Please contact me at umphlett@gmail.com with the subject "guest blog".

I am also interested in writing guest blogs or articles for your blog or website.

Thanks.

Austin Fitness Training | Sensible Being Fitness: Wisdom of the Transcendentalists

Austin Fitness Training | Sensible Being Fitness: Wisdom of the Transcendentalists: “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Evolution Factoids

http://io9.com/8-incredible-facts-you-may-not-know-about-human-evoluti-1465273693?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook&utm_source=io9_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Enjoy!

Affirmations Are The Journey

Affirmations in life are our self designed guideposts of our journey. Without intention we can not create our reality. It is left up to the crashing courses of others. This is wholly unavoidable, like getting wet in a river, but learning to swim will be a part of the experience. That can keep one safe and maximize living.
Without the intention of affirmations we become painters without a medium. Our expressions externally into a world we know is necessary becomes limited. An adaptable blueprint and foundational mind are part of designing and building a monumental life, but the design is free of form. Affirmations are a journey of the experience of life. As we should well know, the journey is as much or more of a part of the experience of life than the destination. It could be understood that a destination is never actually reached and therefore the entire process of living is only an experience. Creation/destruction ensures a constantly flowing and fresh source of experience. This is why "letting go" is such an important part of experience.
Our goals will be blocked and hindered often by invisible hands, both our own and those crafty and sometimes nefarious hands of others. This is where the skill of bobbing and weaving can come into play instead of just taking the blows. Life will beat you down if you don't move towards experience and the artistic process of living.
Our attachments to systems, structures, styles, and beliefs are the cages that inhibit flight. You belong to nothing except that to which you are tricked into believing. There is a world beyond what you know, and it is an amazing world that wants to be touched.
Affirmations, plans, goals, dreams, and intentions should be adaptable in their journeys. Without the various means of trial and error, and discovery, no spaceship can be built that will reach the stars. Similarly, the experience of  nature can not be found in a book or in a chair. One must affirm to themself a desire for the experience and then act upon such intentions by seeking out the experience of  the journey, which all destinations are. The process itself, artistically, mathematically, scientifically, psychologically, will be the destination, and a less frantic pace will be kept. In the true moment of experience we can not trip over our own feet, but in the frantic clamoring for absolute destination we will constantly struggle and fall. Just as the race between the tortoise and the hare, we will reach our experiences with intention and action as long as we enjoy the journey.

The Consciousness of Animals

Consciousness creates reality, as some of us know, and as science and mysticism/metaphysics understands. Evolution creates varying levels of intelligence and consciousness in the minds of various beings on Earth. Humans are understood to be of the highest conscious order, but many are psychologically blocked from elevated mentality by being chronically trapped in thought process.
It is important to remember that humans are animals and only one step in an evolutionary process.

Here is a great article about the view of consciousness in animals from many in the science community...

http://altering-perspectives.com/2013/11/scientists-sign-declaration-animals-conscious-awareness-just-like-humans.html

Buckminster Fuller on Synergy

One of the greatest minds....

"Walden"

Some books go beyond simply being read. Some are read for a lifetime and for the rest of human existence. For me, I can pick up "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau and read any part of the book. I've been doing so for over twenty years and I will do so for twenty more. "Walden" is my bible. Every sentence is quotable. It is perfection and the greatest book ever written in my opinion.

"Walden" is a rich analysis of life and living written by transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau. It's an account of two years of simple living by Walden Pond near Concord in the mid 1800s.

Pick it up, turn to any page, and you will find a new way of seeing the world, comparable and relevant to any of the great books of history.

FREE Kindle version  of "Walden"

FREE PDF version of "Walden"

About Henry David Thoreau

"A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting."

-Henry David Thoreau

Facebook

Link up with me on Facebook...

www.facebook.com/LGreyUmphlett

Expanded Consciousness: 11 Easy Ways To Meditate (Even If It Seems Impossi...

Expanded Consciousness: 11 Easy Ways To Meditate (Even If It Seems Impossi...: By  Kristen Hedges via MindBodyGreen When I recommend meditation to my stressed-out clients, they often open their eyes wide and scrun...

Nature Mind

The effects of nature on the mind.
Fractal Enlightenment article.

Expanded Consciousness: 15 Reasons to Start Following Your Dream Today

Expanded Consciousness: 15 Reasons to Start Following Your Dream Today: By Izmael Arkin via Tiny Buddha   “One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.” ~Unknown Do y...

Surprising Book Facts

THE POWER OF PERCEPTION

"Books, not which affords us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institutions—such I call good books."

-Henry David Thoreau

Brainwaves of The Mind

Here is a great article about mental brainwaves.

http://fractalenlightenment.com/14794/spirituality/understanding-braiwaves-to-expand-our-consciousness

Book Reviews

I have been getting great book reviews and feedback about "The Power of Perception".

I need at least 20 reviews on Amazon, and I know that way more than 20 people have read it.

If anyone has read my book please leave a review on Amazon.

If you have not read my book,

why not?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Perception-open-mindedness-experiential/dp/1492816051/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1383429180&sr=8-2 

Thank you.

The Next Level

Surface level new thought spirituality is popular in America these days (Eckhart Tolle, Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, etc),

but if you really want to get to the deeper levels of mind (other than meditation or drugs) then I recommend a serious study of the following writers...

Buckminster Fuller

Henry David Thoreau

Robert Anton Wilson

Jiddu Krishnamurti

The Buddha

Ken Wilber

Swami Vivekananda

Carl Jung

Bertrand Russell

Joseph Campbell

Aldous Huxley

George Gurdjieff

Terrence McKenna

Lao Tzu

Alfred Korzybski

and the writings of The Vedas

and any deep science (geometry, natural sciences, astrophysics, quantum mechanics, physics, evolution, psychology, metaphysics, paganism, naturalism, parapsychology, tribal understandings, etc)

These recommendations are like supplementary study aids.

Everyone should be increasing their mind daily and practicing meditation.

Video...

Please share it!

Vedic Evolution

It's hard to understand how ancient vedic wisdom understood advanced concepts such as quantum physics principles, astronomy, and evolution long before our modern times. Perhaps higher minds of the times could comprehend higher ideas.

HERE is a short article about the agreement between Hinduism and evolution.

It's interesting that eastern mindsets have very little problem with conceptualizing and aligning with science, but the western Aristotelian religious mindsets have a hard time allowing these understandings into their rigid view of reality. Times are changing though, and minds are expanding!

It does seem that the west has been lost for a long time, in psychology, medicine, philosophy, nature, and religion. Luckily science, eastern philosophies, and new ways of thought are finding their way into the western religious mindset and loosening up some of that limiting rigidity. We need a more open world. We need deeper understandings that stretch into the mystical and embrace the scientific at the same time.

It seems that many ancient philosophies such as Native American naturalism, Vedic sciences, Paganism, Shintoism, Buddhism, and others did not stray so far from the path as the western world did. But like the cycle of everything that builds up or breaks down, it also cyclically strays away and reconvenes. What's old is new and what's new is old.

My Cause

I'm sort of a lobbyist for the artistic process. I want to convince everyone that, next to air, water, food, shelter, and mental and physical fitness, art is the most important aspect of our experience of the world.

Acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, photography, film making, culinary arts, music, dance, performance art, storytelling, personality, expression, design, comedy, magic, oratory, and imagination are always more important and effective on an individual and societal level than your crosses, bombs, and dollar signs. In a void of art, with the structure of crosses, bombs, and dollar signs all that would be left of society would be a laboring ant colony.

Each of us and all of us are more relevant than drones and workers.

My Facebook and Twitter Pages

Please "like" them. Thank you.

My Facebook page: www.facebook.com/LGreyUmphlett

The Power of Perception Facebook page: www.facebook.com/ThePowerOfPerception

My Twitter page: www.twitter.com/LarenUmphlett