Being – Embracing Forever

All posts tagged: Being

Choice and Consequence Part 6: Knowing What You Know

April 17, 2022

by Michael

Part 5 of the series is here. I’ve suggested in this series that experience follows from the fundamental orientation of our perceptual apparatus. We each occupy a thought system through which meaning and identity emerge, and while we are each unique, there are but two possibilities for the cornerstone of such a system: what I’ve described as unity (reality) and what I’ve described as separation (image). I’ve also suggested this distinction is one that profoundly […]

Resounding

April 20, 2021

by Michael

comments 9

Reflections

The mind can be a buzzing midge, or a reckless bull, but it is always susceptible to ambush. You’ve been devoured, I’m sure. The midge enters the flame with a spark. Likewise, when the bull glimpses mountains beyond the rustle of the cape, the ruse is up. He rests on his belly like a puppy. There is no going back. Heart, mind and body, all together, are inexplicable. Try to list the possible states and […]

On Knowing, Dialogue and Mysticism (Part Two)

February 21, 2021

by Michael

comments 21

Reflections / Science

Last time I expressed my dissatisfaction with the attempts Julia Galef made to understand the “other” in our lives, in this case Richard Feynman’s artist friend, who felt that scientific descriptions of things, to put words in the artist’s mouth, ruin them. What Richard reported his friend actually said, speaking about the beauty of a flower, is that “you, as a scientist, you take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing.” Richard at […]

On Knowing, Dialogue and Mysticism (Part One)

February 14, 2021

by Michael

comments 29

Reflections

Recently, through a series of clicks, I found myself watching a YouTube video of Julia Galef decrying the habit many of us have, in discussions with or about people who are different from us, of saying, “I just don’t understand how anyone could… [think, say, or do whatever it is the unfathomable ones in our lives think, say, or do…]” In her video she used the example of Richard Feynman, who once recounted a discussion […]

What It’s Like

May 19, 2018

by Michael

comments 14

Poetry

Once I asked Hafiz what it was like to be God and Hafiz told me one night when he should have been sleeping he asked himself the very same question and when he imagined what it was like to be God he discovered God was imagining what it was like to be Hafiz. A psychic tremor occurred in the air of his breath like when you know your mother is calling right before the phone […]

Imagine That You Are Loved

February 19, 2018

by Michael

comments 35

Poetry

We’re going to perform a thought experiment, Hafiz announces. What wonders to behold, I answer. (Why does he always assume that just because he wants to do experiments, I do as well?) (What irks me most is that I do, of course.) Hafiz bounces a rubber ball off of the wall and catches it with the same hand, without really even being aware that he’s done so, then holds it over his mouth like an […]

Entering the Dialogue, Part 1

January 28, 2018

by Michael

comments 21

Course Ideas

The desire to write manifests as follows: a warmth in my chest accompanied by the sense of possibility, and the awareness something wants to be said, though I don’t know what it is. Last night I discovered and read an e-mail exchange between Sam Harris and Noam Chomsky that was published a few years ago. I’d been listening to some of Sam’s podcasts lately, and discovered the two men’s correspondence. I’m not expert on either […]

The Same, Only Different

June 11, 2017

by Michael

comments 33

Course Ideas / Creative / Flash Fiction

What do you think the future will be like, Hafiz? I was thinking about fusion-powered hovercrafts and molecular sequencing technologies that could produce cheeseburgers from a teaspoon of good dirt. Redrawn political borders, bullet trains that crossed the ocean, and ways to download skills and information directly into your brain. I was thinking about teleportation and glass condominiums floating in the clouds. Something you drank that allowed your body to look whatever age you desired. […]

Grappling With the New

September 3, 2016

by Michael

comments 57

Reflections

I’ve been in a different space most of this year– different than before I mean. Don’t ask before what: I don’t know. Maybe the stars pulled a fast one on me. Maybe my memories got together with my dreams and staged an intervention. Maybe something fell away I don’t need anymore and it made room for something new. What I know is I’ve got this bug I want to be a writer, which I know […]

On a Scale of One to Ten

July 26, 2016

by Michael

comments 35

Poetry

We’ll never know what it’s like to exist forever in a condition of perpetually transforming joy and goose-bump inducing discovery if we don’t consider it a very real and inevitable possibility. It does sound pretty out there, but so don’t NASCAR races to German Shepherds. If we don’t consider it a very real and inevitable possibility, we’ll likely take something perfect and beautiful just as it is, something like space exploration or boat building or […]