All posts tagged: Knowledge

Choice and Consequence Part 6: Knowing What You Know

April 17, 2022
by Michael
comments 15
Course Ideas / Reflections

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 […]

Choice and Consequence Part 4: Benevolence

January 29, 2022
by Michael
comments 16
Course Ideas / Reflections

Part 3 of the series is here. Last time I wrote about the distinction between unity and separation—the two possible cornerstones of our individual thought systems. Each of these serves as the organizing factor for all that follows in our perceptual navigation of experience. In describing the transition from the state of perfect communication within the primordial state of being—which is unity—to the condition of separation, I noted that “the experience of being separate was granted, […]

Choice and Consequence Part 3: Reality vs Image

January 18, 2022
by Michael
comments 30
Course Ideas / Reflections

Part 2 of the series is here. When I was a child my parents had a painting that fascinated me. It depicted a dinner table with countless guests on either side that tapered to a point and disappeared into infinity. My parents were Roman Catholic at the time and I believe it was a metaphorical image of heaven. I remember asking, “How far does it go?” and being told, “Forever.” Which is all well and […]

Choice and Consequence Part 2: Prelude to a Story

January 12, 2022
by Michael
comments 34
Course Ideas / Reflections

Part 1 of this series is here. I think I was a twinge unclear last time, so let me begin with a slight reset. We are each absolutely and without doubt unique. The network of capabilities, talents, inclinations, perspectives, beliefs, desires and experiences that make each of us who we are exist in no one else but us. This is so. What I’d hoped to convey is not that the possibilities for individual expression are […]

Choice and Consequence Part 1: An Introduction

January 9, 2022
by Michael
comments 15
Course Ideas / Reflections

Each of us occupies a construct of memory, belief, identity and meaning that not only generates the sense of self we require to meaningfully function as individuals, but generates our picture of the external world as well. I often call this construct a worldview. It is an active perceptual process within each of us that works continuously to sustain, protect and strengthen the idea at its root. And while it may seem there are a […]

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 […]

What I Believe and Why, Part 3

July 30, 2017
by Michael
comments 34
Reflections

[Part 1] [Part 2] When I went to college I entered a time of considerable personal flux. Psychological pressures I’d held at bay by focusing on specific goals came to the fore as the goals themselves began to dissolve. There was a gnawing uneasiness in me that I felt had to be settled before I could state what kind of person I wanted to be, or determine what I wanted to do with my life. […]

On Wholeness, Life and Awe

February 24, 2017
by Michael
comments 33
Science

I like ideas that change the room completely and clap me numb as a board, and I have found that in both scientific and spiritual domains—in all encounters with genuine discovery—moments arise producing a sense of awe. This awe is like a resonance of my heart. I think conventional knowledge would suggest that the heart’s ways of knowing and intellectual ways of coming to understanding are unrelated, but I have to confess I don’t see […]

On the Great Marriage

June 5, 2016
by Michael
comments 47
Christ / Course Ideas / Reflections

The description I love best is that each of us is an intersection of matter and spirit, the above and below, the eternal and the present, of knowledge and mystery.  I am tired of materialism—so very tired of its laborious absurdities, the dead ends it tries to pretty-over, the delicate faculties of the human being it would all but silence.  Even so, I would not discard logic or rational thought.  I would simply hold them […]

The Engines of Experience

April 3, 2016
by Michael
comments 36
Course Ideas / Reflections

I believe a lot of interesting things, things I’ve collected along the way.  I have pages and pages of notes.  Scribblings.  Arrows and half-thoughts running up and down the margins.  Ellipses and question marks.  Coffee stains.  My life is a draft copy full of edits.  I’m always circling back– leaping from one passage to another, sifting through my notes, strengthening the narrative, discovering what was and might have been. We are revealed in the living of […]