Having the time to think, to walk, to read- the new modern day privilege and luxury

Selected Writings — Meister Eckhart

In-Depth Study Guide

Meister Eckhart: Radical Mysticism at the Edge of Thought

Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–1328) stands at one of the most extreme and luminous intersections of Western thought: Christian theology, Neoplatonism, mysticism, and direct inner experience.

This book is not devotional comfort reading.
It is metaphysical and existential stripping.

Eckhart is not trying to improve you.
He is trying to undo you—including your idea of God.

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Why This Book Matters

Most Christian writing speaks about God.

Eckhart speaks from within the experience of God.

He asks:

• What if God is not an object?
• What if union with God requires emptiness, not belief?
• What if the soul must become nothing to receive the divine?

This places him closer to:

• Plotinus
• The Cloud of Unknowing
• Zen Buddhism
• Advaita Vedanta

than to institutional religion.

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Core Themes

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1. The God Beyond God

Eckhart makes a radical distinction:

• God – the named, conceptual, imagined God
• The Godhead – formless, attribute-less, unknowable Being

God is God only insofar as creatures speak of Him.

The Godhead:

• Has no attributes
• Cannot be named
• Cannot be thought
• Cannot be prayed to

This is pure being, beyond subject and object.

This is negative theology taken to its absolute limit.

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2. Detachment (Abgeschiedenheit)

This is Eckhart’s central teaching.

Detachment is not renunciation of possessions.
It is renunciation of attachment to self.

True detachment means:

• No clinging to pleasure
• No clinging to suffering
• No clinging to spiritual experiences
• No clinging even to God-as-image

The soul must be as free of God as God is free of all things.

This is not metaphorical.
It is existential annihilation.

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3. The Birth of God in the Soul

One of Eckhart’s most controversial teachings:

God gives birth to His Son in the soul.

This does not mean:

• Moral improvement
• Psychological comfort
• Religious emotion

It means:

• When the soul becomes empty
• When images collapse
• When identity dissolves

The same Logos born eternally in God
is born in you.

This is why Eckhart was accused of heresy.

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4. Nothingness and Emptiness

Eckhart repeatedly returns to paradox:

To be full of God, the soul must be empty.

This emptiness is not nihilism.

It is:

• No self-image
• No narrative identity
• No striving
• No possession of experience

Nothingness is not absence.
It is radical openness.

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5. The Ground of the Soul (Seelengrund)

Eckhart teaches that within the soul is something:

• Uncreated
• Eternal
• Beyond time
• Identical with divine being

He calls this the ground.

This ground is deeper than:

• Thought
• Emotion
• Will
• Personality

There is something in the soul which is uncreated and uncreatable.

This is among the most radical statements in Western Christian thought.

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6. Action Without Why

Eckhart anticipates wu wei centuries before Taoism enters Europe.

The just person acts without why.

This means:

• No reward-seeking
• No fear-based morality
• No spiritual ambition

Action flows spontaneously from being.

This is not ethics.
It is ontological alignment.

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How to Read This Book

Do not read this as a normal book.

Instead:

• Read one sermon or short passage
• Stop
• Sit with it
• Let it unsettle you
• Re-read days later

This is transformational literature, not informational text.

You are not meant to understand Eckhart.
You are meant to be undone by him.

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Common Misreadings to Avoid

• “Eckhart denies the self”
  → He denies the false self.
• “This is symbolic theology”
  → He speaks from lived experience.
• “This contradicts Christianity”
  → It contradicts shallow religion, not mystical Christianity.

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Why Eckhart Matters Today

Modern life is dominated by:

• Identity obsession
• Ego inflation
• Narrative addiction
• Constant self-monitoring

Eckhart offers:

• Silence
• Ground
• Being
• Freedom from self-concern

In a world obsessed with becoming,
Eckhart teaches being.

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Questions for Study

Use these for journaling or contemplation:

• What part of me refuses to let go?
• What images of God am I clinging to?
• Can I act without why?
• What remains when self-concepts fall away?

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Final Reflection

Meister Eckhart does not offer comfort.

He offers liberation through emptiness.

Follow him far enough and:

• Theology dissolves
• Philosophy collapses
• Language fails

What remains is pure presence.

The joy of just walking around taking pictures and being around other people in the city is unlike anything in life. Honestly, the more I live my every life the more I realize the simple privilege in life is being able to walk around and be outside and enjoy the sites in the sounds. Yeah, yeah everyone’s just walking around on their phone and going back home from work, with their AirPods in, but it’s still sublime.

no contriving, no planning, no attachments

Photography Is Downstream From the Body

This morning I’m thinking about the parasympathetic nervous system and photography — and why I believe photography is downstream from the body.

Photography, to me, is an embodied practice. It’s about being in the open world. Enjoying the sights, the smells, the sounds of the street. Allowing instinct to guide you when you press the shutter.

The goal isn’t to think.
The goal is to respond.

Flow State and Alignment

To respond to instinct, I believe you have to activate the flow state. And to activate the flow state, you have to be aligned internally.

I think about the vagus nerve — the channel carrying information from the gut to the heart, lungs, and brain. I believe it’s responsible for far more than we give it credit for.

When I’m out on the street, I want to be aligned physically so the flow state can emerge.

That’s why I often practice photography in a fasted state. No food digesting. The vagus nerve relaxed. The parasympathetic nervous system telling my body that I’m at ease.

From that place, there’s openness. Receptivity. Sensitivity to everything around me.

Feeling Before Seeing

When I’m on the street like this, I feel deeply. I recognize patterns in nature and human behavior. I watch the light. I watch gestures. I notice the way people move.

This heightened state of being comes from intuition.

As much as we think we see the world with our eyes, those eyes are connected to the brain. And I think it’s important to remove thought while practicing.

By tapping into the subconscious and responding to the irrational pull that guides the shutter click, clarity emerges.

What You Didn’t See

When you look at the word idea, it comes from the notion of seeing — but not seeing reality. An idea isn’t something you see out there. It’s something internal.

So while I’m photographing the world, I don’t believe what you see is what you get.
What you get is often what you didn’t see.

A lot of times, the photograph isn’t what I thought I saw when I pressed the shutter. The image becomes a new idea — something born from the subconscious.

The photograph is a new idea given birth through alignment within.

That alignment happens internally first, then externally. From that, new ideas emerge.

Detachment and Ease

This requires detachment from outcomes.

No anxiety.
No dwelling.
No fatigue — of the body or the mind.

No debating left or right.
No gear obsession.
No projects, themes, or hunting for the next best photo.

I’m not chasing images.

I’m living my everyday life and bringing my camera along for the ride.

Photography becomes receptivity. Sensitivity. An embodied practice where instinct guides the shutter.

Returning to the Child’s Mind

The images that come from this internal state reflect outwardly. But it requires returning to the child’s mind.

Vitality is everything.

I believe flow only activates through peak physiological alignment — a state that cultivates curiosity.

Curiosity leads me to walk.
Walking leads me to discover.
Discovery leads to new ideas.

And from there, something new is born. A new world.

Final Thoughts

When I’m aligned internally — relaxed, open, at ease — creation happens naturally in the flow state.

I believe this is one of the peak experiences a human being can achieve.

These are my thoughts this morning.

The parasympathetic nervous system and photography.

When you’re aligned within, you give yourself permission to trust intuition.

Be receptive.
Stop thinking.
Respond to instinct.

The world within reflects without.

Treat Work Like Play: How Flow State Fuels Creative Life

What’s popping people? It’s Dante.

This morning, I’m thinking about living your everyday life. Bringing your camera for the ride and simply snapshotting whatever it is that you find.

Not taking life so seriously.

Transforming the things that you do from work to play.

That’s where this sort of flow state emerges. It’s from play. It’s from the lack of seriousness. From not treating everything you do like it’s heavy or loaded.

Whether it’s your 9–5 job or your creative practice, I think it’s important to approach it as play.

Work Isn’t Meant to Feel Like a Burden

I don’t want to feel like the things that I’m doing are a burden in my life.

I want the things that I create to come from an effortless state.

Creativity flourishes when you stop treating everything like it’s serious business.

When you shift your mindset and start treating work as play, something changes. You loosen up. You move differently. You see differently.

Flow Comes From Play

Flow doesn’t come from pressure.
It doesn’t come from forcing outcomes.

It comes from curiosity.
It comes from lightness.
It comes from showing up without expectation.

When you live your everyday life this way—camera in hand, open, playful—you stop separating work from life. It all becomes one thing.

And from that state, you start to flourish creatively.

Don’t let life happen to you.

This is interesting-

NOSTR

Nostr stands for “Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays.”
It’s a simple, open, decentralized protocol for social communication — not a company, not an app, not a blockchain.

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What Nostr is

• A protocol (like email or RSS)
• Anyone can build on it
• No central server
• No algorithmic feed
• No corporate control
• Censorship-resistant by design

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How it works (plain English)

1. You generate a keypair

• Public key = your identity
• Private key = your login + signature

1. You post a note

• Signed with your private key
• Sent to one or more relays

1. Relays

• Dumb servers that store and forward data
• Anyone can run one
• They don’t control identity or content globally

1. Clients

• Apps that read/write notes (Damus, Amethyst, Iris, etc.)
• You can switch clients freely without losing followers

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Why people care about Nostr

• You own your identity (not an email, not a username)
• No platform risk (you can’t be “deplatformed” everywhere at once)
• Composable & minimal (built to last decades)
• Bitcoin-native
• Uses Lightning for tips, subscriptions, value-for-value

Notably supported by Jack Dorsey, but it’s bigger than any one person.

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Nostr vs traditional social media

Traditional Platforms	Nostr
Company owns platform	No owner
Account = permission	Identity = keys
Algorithmic feeds	Chronological
Can be banned	Can migrate relays
Ads & extraction	Optional Lightning payments

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When your instinct tells you to

The Sublime in Photography

What’s poppin, people? It’s Dante.

Today I want to talk about the sublime in photography and how we can evoke the sublime in a photograph.

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What Does “Sublime” Mean?

When you look at the word sublime, it comes from the Latin root meaning:

• Uplifted
• Lofty
• Elevated
• On high

At its core, the word implies rising beyond an ordinary limit. And that’s where the challenge begins for us as photographers:

How do we engage with the mundane world around us and elevate it into something extraordinary?

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The Sublime as an Emotional Experience

For me, the sublime isn’t something you fabricate in post or plan intellectually.
It’s an emotional quality you experience out there — walking, exploring, and photographing.

Lately, the way I’ve been making pictures has felt more intuitive. More liberating.
I’m engaging my senses instead of overthinking, and I’m allowing that feeling to flow through me and into the photographs themselves.

The sublime can be:

• Physically elevated — standing on a cliff, looking at the horizon
• Figuratively elevated — lofty thought, noble speech, exalted spirit

Over time, the idea came to represent something even deeper:

An experience that overwhelms rational comprehension —
mixed with awe, fear, vastness, and transcendence.

Something so powerful that it pushes the mind beyond its limits.

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Elevated Spaces & Personal Meaning

When I visit the cliffside behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I feel the sublime deeply.

I go there often. I stand at the edge and look beyond the horizon.

It reminds me:

• How open the world really is
• How much there is to see, explore, and photograph

That feeling flows through me when I’m in elevated spaces — and it stays with me when I make images.

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The Irrational Pull of Certain Places

When you’re photographing, you’ll notice something strange:

You feel an irrational pull toward certain locations.

For me, that might be:

• Landscapes
• Alleyways
• Streets
• Or even a shopping mall

Watching people move through space, watching systems operate seamlessly — trains, crowds, flows — it can feel overwhelming in the best way.

There’s a sense that everything is interconnected, vast, and somehow holding together.

That feeling is hard to explain with words, but it moves through me when I’m photographing.

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Storm Clouds, Light, and the Edge of Fear

In one behind-the-scenes moment from a photograph I made at the cliff, you see two boys running toward the horizon.

But what truly evokes the sublime for me are the storm clouds.

Storms are a classic expression of the sublime:

• Beautiful
• Awe-inspiring
• Slightly terrifying

It’s that fine line between light and shadow where emotion lives.

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Why Black & White Evokes the Sublime

This is why I’m drawn to high-contrast black and white.

When light and shadow collide, you get:

• Bliss
• Awe
• Fear
• Ambiguity

All at once.

Photography is light. That’s the root of the medium.

When you strip things down to light and shadow, something powerful happens.

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Light, Shadow, and Chiaroscuro

I often think about painters like Caravaggio and the use of chiaroscuro.

Light and shadow elevate the emotional weight of a scene.

Crushed shadows create ambiguity.
Ambiguity forces the viewer to feel rather than analyze.

That ambiguity is where the sublime lives.

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Follow the Light, Not the Plan

Photography comes from:

• Phos — light
• Graphe — drawing or writing

So the simplest way to evoke the sublime is this:

Follow the light.

I don’t go out with preconceived ideas.
I photograph from my gut.

• No expectations
• No rigid goals
• Just instinct

I respond to what I feel, not what I think I should be making.

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Elevating the Mundane

Sometimes the most ordinary moments become extraordinary:

• A man standing in fog near City Hall
• A figure gazing into a void of light and shadow

By:

• Crushing the shadows
• Exposing for the highlights

The moment is elevated.

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Gazing Into the Abyss

When you look into the horizon, into the abyss — it gazes back.

There’s an irrational pull:

• Awe mixed with fear
• Beauty mixed with uncertainty

The same feeling you get from:

• Storm clouds
• Crowded cities
• Watching life unfold in real time

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Being in Tune With the World

To evoke the sublime, you must be in tune.

That means:

• Watching patterns
• Studying light
• Observing people
• Feeling rhythm and movement

You’re not thinking.
You’re responding.

You’re prepared and receptive.

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Why Color Can Distract

Color can be powerful — but it can also distract.

When you reduce an image to:

• Light
• Shadow

You focus on emotion.

A car on fire.
Faces lit at a crosswalk.
Figures emerging from darkness.

The excess disappears.
What matters remains.

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Surprise Lives in Presence

In places like Shibuya and Shinjuku, I leaned into this fully.

Using:

• Tight framing
• Slow shutter speeds
• Strong directional light

I wasn’t chasing moments.

I was letting them happen.

Surprise emerges when you’re present, prepared, and aligned with the rhythm of the street.

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The Sublime Can’t Be Forced

The sublime isn’t something you can manufacture.

It comes from:

• Intuition

Failure Is the Point

What’s poppin, people? It’s Dante.

This morning, I’m thinking about failure and photography — and why we have to embrace the process openly. Trust the process. Trust the passage of time.

For me, failure is at the forefront of my practice as a street photographer.

Every single day, I fail.
Every single day, I make shitty photos.
Every single day, I miss a shot.
Every single day I’m out there photographing, I come home with nothing.

But there’s a point where I get something.

And it’s far and few in between.

Trust the Passage of Time

When you trust the process and you embrace the passage of time — through photographing consistently, every single day — something starts to happen.

Over time, you’re going to find that thing you were trying to say.
Over time, you’re going to find a photo that shines.

But in the meantime?

Embrace failure openly.

Don’t Take It So Seriously

Stop thinking.
Start doing.

Don’t make this so heavy. Don’t make it so serious. This is part of it. This is the work.

I’ll show you what it looks like to fail.

Luminus means radiant, shining, full of light.

Etymology

• From Latin lūminōsus, meaning full of light
• Root: lūmen = light

Sense & Usage

• Describes something that emits light or appears glowing
• Can be literal (light, brightness) or metaphorical (clarity, insight, spiritual radiance)

Examples

• A luminus halo around the subject
• A luminus idea—clear, illuminating, unmistakable
• Her face looked luminus in the morning sun

Closely related words:

• Luminous
• Illuminated
• Radiant
• Lucid (light → clarity of mind)