Category Archives: Coherence

What would a maple tree do? I don’t see it quite so often anymore, but for a time folks would pose this question: what would Jesus do? I think it’s a poor question on several counts, though I understand the folks asking it had good intentions, and certainly in some instances, asking and answering thatContinue reading “Maple Trees in Place of Jesus”

We might say that practical answers are important according to context. For example, I want to bake bread and make soup for dinner. It helps that there are bread and soup recipes. It helps there is a coop nearby that sells vegetables, flour, herbs and spices. It helps that I have homemade bags in whichContinue reading “Rational Thinking With Respect to Spiritual Mysteries”

In a sense, the work is simply to not wish that life be other than it is, at this moment. That sounds easy but it is actually very hard. If we look closely, we will see that we are in a state of apparently perpetual resistance to life. We compare it to past iterations andContinue reading “Accepting Life As Is”

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”

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”

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”