All posts tagged: Perception

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 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 […]

Taking It Lightly

December 31, 2021
by Michael
comments 20
Course Ideas / Reflections / Science

Over time I’ve come to respect the fact that linking my wonder at scientific discoveries to the knowledge of my heart is risky business. It’s tantalizing, for instance, to imagine that some marvel of the natural world is related to, or evidence for, a proposition about the ultimate nature of being—but taken seriously it never quite works. To “take it seriously” is to imagine that some stunning natural phenomena is the (ultimate) reality described in […]

On New Life

December 30, 2020
by Michael
comments 17
Course Ideas

I have, for most of my life, been curious about the creation of a better world. When I think about what this world could be, it comes with feelings of wonder and happiness that are quite the opposite of the guilt and grief that attend the world as we have known it. I think these feelings are related to the sensation of things working out. Or perhaps more accurately, of things having already worked out. […]

Continued Reflections on Perception

August 16, 2018
by Michael
comments 11
Course Ideas / Reflections / Science

I wrote last week about the idea that bias is inescapable because the world that we experience is not a fixed reality, but the product somehow of our perceptions. A related idea is that we each experience the world differently because we each have a unique relationship with it. I think that gives an insight the previous statement does not. In any case the word “world” is a difficult study, and here I mean it […]

The Need For Better Questions

August 8, 2018
by Michael
comments 23
Course Ideas / Reflections

Lately I’ve been listening to a few more podcasts and reading a few more op ed pieces in the media than I ever have before, and one really interesting observation has become clear to me. We are (all of us) biased in ways I think would surprise us were they actually understood. While it may seem obvious, nevertheless this had the feel of real discovery to me. And I think there is a reason for […]

Entering the Dialogue, Part 3

February 10, 2018
by Michael
comments 22
Course Ideas

I started this series of posts because I came to a realization: I was not being who I know myself to be in some way. It’s like watching yourself when you’re just coming under the influence, observing that what you’re doing is strangely inconsistent, and a little unexpected. It’s called dissembling. For me this came across in my attraction to discussions that in some sense were futile. We do this sometimes because we care. Because […]

Forgetting So Fast

September 28, 2017
by Michael
comments 31
Poetry

Hafiz and I were up on the widow’s walk beneath a flaming sky prancing to and fro, lunging, parrying, regaling the light with our imagined swordplay when his foot slipped unexpectedly on a pebble some bird had set there as a gift and my blade plunged into his belly and he gasped, staggered, and tumbled off the edge of the roof. I found him draped over the hedge with his leg cocked behind his back […]

What I Believe and Why, Part 6

September 4, 2017
by Michael
comments 34
Christ / Course Ideas

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] I want to close this series by stating that I believe Love, and expressions of Love, are all that truly exist. When I say that expressions of Love truly exist, I mean that they endure, they are timeless in a sense, they add unto the eternal fabric of being, they open pathways to new modes of being, and they enrich all aspects of being simultaneously. […]

What I Believe and Why, Part 4

August 6, 2017
by Michael
comments 36
Course Ideas / Reflections

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] I realize I’ve been slow in getting to the point. About what I believe. You’ll want a point to all this, I know. Three, four, five parts. At least. You’d be crazy to read it all. It’s clearly a little self-indulgent, but on the other hand I don’t think the what matters so much as the how or why, maybe. The process. The route. I probably can’t actually tell […]