What Is Astonishment? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#13569362
Astonishment is not an emotion that's created. It's an existing state that is revealed. The magician's role is not that of con man or of novelty entertainer or mr. ego. The centre of magic has always been the therapeutic experience of our natural state of mind which spectators and magicians call astonishment or amazement. But that primal experience is so powerful and the taboo of "losing" our mind is so great that we water down the experience with jokes, excuses and "hey! It's just a trick!"

When the experience of astonishment starts to be recognized as a highly valued destination, the win/lose magician vs spectator game starts to dissolve. Suddenly both magician and spectator are on the same team, equally responsible for getting the most of the moment. Tricks are tools and our natural state of mind, astonishment, is real. Magical illusions dissolve cultural illusions in order to reveal truth and a moment of something real.
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By Suska
#13569420
Nice. Interesting observation.
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By Maxim Litvinov
#13569439
It's from the Greek Ass+tonish.

A tonish was a measure of rock salt equal to about 200 grams. Ass has passed into English unchanged. When the former was inserted into the latter, a person tended to become "ass-tonished". It was certainly real and not just a state of mind.
By InterestedInPolitics
#13569481
Suska wrote:Nice. Interesting observation.


Thanks Suska. Here is an interesting article I found on mindfulness:

CNN wrote:Mindfulness therapy is gaining headway in many areas of psychology, and now there's more evidence to back up its effectiveness.

A new study published the Archives of General Psychiatry finds that depression patients in remission who underwent mindfulness therapy did as well as those who took an antidepressant, and better than those who took a placebo. That means that mindfulness therapy was as effective as antidepressants in protecting against a relapse of depression.

Mindfulness generally refers to the concept of being present and in the moment, and comes from the Buddhist meditation tradition. In the context of this study, mindfulness therapy incorporates meditation and focuses on helping patients watch their feelings and thoughts in a way that lets them work with them differently, said Zindel Segal of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, in Toronto, Ontario.


http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010 ... ys/?hpt=T2
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By Suska
#13570581
One drawback with mindfulness is that it can be a struggle to find time for it

I lol'd. American psychologists are funny. One step forward, still confused. There's nothing that mindfulness practice cannot apply to. Judging by the comments on that page there's still a lot of work to do, but its promising, actually, that Christians seem capable of accepting meditation as something other than a hippie-druggie waste of time.

:hippy:

color my ass tonished.
By InterestedInPolitics
#13573208
I agree Suska. Mindfulness can be applied to anything. I like to apply sometimes when peforming or practicing the art of magic. The clear, open mind, where we don't fit things into boxes is our natural state of mind. Tricks like meditation or magic tricks are just tools to help us accomplish astonishment, our natural state of mind.

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