Say that we are climbing a mountain and the trail becomes hard to follow. We come to a post with twenty signs nailed to it. Nineteen are marked with lines and squiggles that mean nothing to us. One reads “trail to summit marked with orange circles.” We follow its directive and, lo and behold, arriveContinue reading “On Avoiding Conceptual Dead Ends”
Category Archives: Coherence
Letting Up The Stranglehold On “Our” Reality
It is helpful to see that the apparently unified world we perceive – and in which we do all our living and loving – conforms to the observer that we are. It does not include what we cannot perceive or cognize; what we perceive and cognize is constrained by the organism we are. These constraintsContinue reading “Letting Up The Stranglehold On “Our” Reality”
Consciousness: Evidence and Experts
One of things that’s hard about these questions of consciousness is that we are ostensibly very close to the evidence. We are conscious. We are having the experience of consciousness. Why should we listen to anybody else? What could they tell us that we don’t already know by virtue of our very experience? If I amContinue reading “Consciousness: Evidence and Experts”
On Apes, Bees, Consciousness and Prayer
Why work through a study of consciousness – reading James, Sperry, Edelman, Parfit, Chalmers et al. – when you can just say “it’s God.” Or “Theta.” Or “everything is just an appearance in infinite consciousness.” Faced with a choice between a time and energy-consuming curriculum (it takes years to finish Consciousness 101, especially if you haveContinue reading “On Apes, Bees, Consciousness and Prayer”
On Happiness, Seeking, and Justice
The so-called spiritual search is circular in nature. It begins with a self winding its way through the world and it ends there, too. Whatever the way, it always delivers us to where we began: this. This this right here. When most of us begin the search, we are unhappy. Life is confusing and unfair.Continue reading “On Happiness, Seeking, and Justice”
On Spiritual Story-telling: Our Stories Matter
As languaging self-reflexive primates, we like to explain things. More to the point, we like stories that explain things – why the sun appears in the east and disappears in the west, why the North Star appears so consistently still in the sky, how people came to exist, why they have to die, what happensContinue reading “On Spiritual Story-telling: Our Stories Matter”