The human observer has a specific neural architecture (brain) which is instantiated in a specific perceptual system (body). Allowing for neural a-typicality, which happens, all human observers are having an approximately similar experience – language-based, tribal, biased, et cetera. Thus, the world that you see and think about is not vastly different than the worldContinue reading “Spiritual Teachers, Spiritual Parents”
Author Archives: Sean
Observation and Description of Phenomena
In a way, the so-called spiritual process is akin to noticing – and then sustaining in awareness – the distinction between what is happening and an observer’s description of what is happening. The description is not the thing. Say that I am sad. You say, “Sean is sad. I can tell by the tears flowingContinue reading “Observation and Description of Phenomena”
Spiritual Poverty and the Mystery of Subjectivity
The wind blows where it will, and thou hearest its sound but dost not know where it comes from or where it goes. ~ John 3:8 Yet the utterly subjective nature of our experience as human observers must be entered as into a mystery, its apparent infinities and eternities robustly explored. The interior is allContinue reading “Spiritual Poverty and the Mystery of Subjectivity”
Being Homo Amans: Happiness as a Spiritual Practice
I say sometimes to my students: “take what you learn and act in the world with it. Do something.” And when they ask what they should do, I tell them to help somebody in a way that makes both parties happier than they were before the encounter started. Related to this – especially when itContinue reading “Being Homo Amans: Happiness as a Spiritual Practice”
Against Conclusions, Spiritual and Otherwise
Experience is a continous whole that functions as a perspective. Experience provides an observer with a lot of phenomena – mental, emotional, physical – to observe. It owns the curious apparent paradox that it consists entirely of change and yet itself never changes. There are ways to experience this change-that-never-changes. You might consider experience asContinue reading “Against Conclusions, Spiritual and Otherwise”
Oneness Functions as Perspective
Part of what I am saying is that a human observer is essentially a perspective, A way of seeing rather than THE way of seeing. If I am sitting by the river I am not mucking the horse pasture. I am weeding the strawberries I am not writing poetry under the apple tree. If IContinue reading “Oneness Functions as Perspective”