All posts tagged: Choice

Choice and Consequence Part 5: Free Will, Learning and Determinism

February 13, 2022
by Michael
comments 30
Course Ideas / Reflections

Part 4 of the series is here. I listened to a YouTube video this week in which physicist Sean Carroll gave a talk entitled “God Is Not a Good Theory.” In his presentation, Dr. Carroll used Bayesian probabilities to compare the likelihood of God’s existence to the likelihood that we live in a multiverse—(multiverses being one naturalistic way of explaining the appearance of a statistically unlikely universe such as our own). The Bayesian procedure involves […]

The Power of Choice

November 21, 2021
by Michael
comments 12
Course Ideas / Reflections

Sometimes I really enjoy discussing quantum physics, cosmology, or the nature of human consciousness, but these are largely pursuits of pleasure for my intellect, the way a great novel can be a pursuit of pleasure for the soul. There are fascinating adventures to be had. And while it’s good clean fun to wonder how what is observed fits into what I think deep down about how things work, at the end of the day . […]

A Discussion on Karma

May 1, 2016
by Michael
comments 48
Dialogues

During the month of April, Hariod and I had a back-and-forth discussion on the idea of karma– what it is and isn’t and how its effects may play out in our lives.  It turned into a somewhat lengthy discussion by blogging standards, but we didn’t think it made sense to serialize it, so are offering it here as a PDF file.  It should read easily in a web browser, an e-book reader, and/or be easily […]

Transcending Choice

October 4, 2014
by Michael
comments 15
Course Ideas

One of the core concepts of A Course of Love is contained in the statement, “There is no loss, only gain.”  While there are a number of contexts in which this sentiment offers an opportunity for a deepening understanding of what is meant by the term unity within the Course, recent events in my own life as well as events observed in the lives of those around me have led me to reflect upon its […]

Evidence

June 3, 2014
by Michael
comments 7
Christ / Poetry

Sometimes me and the boys like to go on jaunts. Get outta’ the office. Fact-finding missions what we call ’em. Get a handful of shirt, press crumpled cotton fists towards unsuspecting chins and make eyes into accusatory coals. Speak calmly while turning the place upside down to shake it for loose evidence. This will only take a moment, sir. See what coins fall out and jangle to rest on the pavement like glaring statements of […]

Point of No Return

May 12, 2014
by Michael
comments 35
Christ / Course Ideas

There are so many amazing things a person could choose to learn about in this world, enough to fill whole lifetimes– like the way photons make decisions when faced with the conundrum of a diffraction grating, or the way high-speed traders manipulate the flow of money on time scales that make the pace of human thought seem like canyon-making, or how the fashion industry unraveled the mystery of the neons.  There was a time when […]

Idea Power

April 14, 2014
by Michael
comments 11
Course Ideas

I don’t believe there is any greater power than that of an idea, deeply held, and slowly it is becoming clear to me that all we behold is the product of these generative seeds.  In the three books of A Course of Love, Jesus speaks frequently about ideas, and in a passage that I love he says, “Giving ideas life is the role of creatorship.”  This statement comes in a section of the Dialogues– the […]

States of Stress and Their Undoings

March 27, 2014
by Michael
comments 15
Christ / Course Ideas

When I stepped out of the building in which I work this evening, my head seemed to have been pressed into a perfect, steaming cube– a polished alloy ingot of ordered rectilinear thoughts.  You could have bounced a laser off it.  My normally fluid mind had been sintered by the heat of prolonged concentration into a dazed ceramic.  Even my cells had conformed to the geometric demands of the day’s efforts, having tugged their cytoskeletons […]

Temptation

March 17, 2014
by Michael
comments 17
Course Ideas / Poetry

Some would say that faith is like a padded suit you put on because you’re too scared to face the obvious reality that your life is a swift, knee-scuffing blood-curdling tumble down a steep and rock-strewn escarpment towards the waiting gaping dark, ugly and hungry empty irreversible vacuum-powered inescapable abyss of non-existence. You’re afraid to die, they say. Some of those same ones would say there’s a real sweetness to the glimpses of wild flowers […]