Let your mind wander in simplicity
Let your mind wander in simplicity, blend your spirit with the vastness. (circa 300 BC) Keep your situational awareness high, trim the plane. (2017)
Zen
Changing not the world
This is what great pilots share with artists, and monks and mystics. The heightened perception, the fascination with flight, eventually turns into an aeronautical superpower. The great pilot sees things and corrects before the average pilot ever knows anything is amiss. The desire of monks and mystics is not unlike that of artists: to perceive the extraordinary within the ordinary by changing not the world but the eyes that look. Within a summoned and hybrid awareness, the inner reaches out to transform the outer, and the outer reaches back to transform the one who sees. Catherine of Sienna wrote in … Continue reading Changing not the world
Happy dog
There’s lots of reasons I tell myself why I like being a pilot. But it might just be the joy of a dog in a car, sticking his head out the window. Oh, and if you’re not fully focused on only landing when landing — you’re doing it wrong!
Happy Sunday!
See you in the sky . . .
Meditating military helicopter pilots
A peer-reviewed scientific study published this year shows the positive impact of meditation on personnel in two Norwegian Air Force helicopter squadrons. This was not new-age wishful thinking, or sloppy science self-reporting that some people felt good. No, this was university and Air Force doctors and scientists taking chemical measurements of salivary cortisol, testing performance on computer-based cognitive tasks, and comparing the results to a control group. The subjects were all high-performance airmen during a prolonged period of high-demand work. This is real-world stuff. The results: From a mixed between–within analysis revealed that the [mindfulness training] participants compared to the control group had … Continue reading Meditating military helicopter pilots