All posts tagged: Reality

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 […]

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 […]

Ideas About the Principles of Life

September 12, 2016
by Michael
comments 30
Reflections / Science

One of the things I think is that the world we see is an afterimage, or representation, of an invisible one. I don’t really know the details such that I could draw them out, but I do think this. And even though there may be no objective merit to my thinking like this, it is the conception of the universe that resonates most truly with me. There are several of ways to conceive of what I’ve […]

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 Sensation of Miracles

January 10, 2016
by Michael
comments 56
Christ / Course Ideas / Creative

The other day there was a miracle, but I was looking the other way when it happened and it blew past me like a round of silent artillery.  So does it count if I figured it out a week later?  If I pieced it all together?  And if it does count, do I just make a notch on a piece of wood or something?  Once I get ten, can I trade ’em in for something […]

Our Quantum Heart

January 10, 2015
by Michael
comments 36
Course Ideas / Poetry

What we are… is invisible, alive, dancing— an incandescence of possibilities whirling through the dark, flickering— always one step ahead of the pin— from one instant to the next, traversing chasms between worlds, discarding moments that flutter softly to the ground like feathers pinched in the closing doors of our fractured timelines. What we are… is immobile but forever growing, forever reaching out, fruit-bearing and branched, a tree whose upper-and-lower, inner-and-outer limbs snake through the […]

What I Like To Call It

September 10, 2014
by Michael
comments 20
Poetry

They look at me funny when I tell them I’m a cosmic stunt man, like I have a condition because I can’t stop coming to Jesus about the elaborate nature of this phenomenal ruse. Like indifference is a rational response to having undergone such a prompt step into existence, to having donned that stretchy, knowledge-retardant suit and climbed down the business end of a circus artillery piece, only to fall asleep just prior to the moment […]

Intersection

August 17, 2014
by Michael
comments 37
Christ / Poetry

Illusion is a grid of two-way streets, an endless network of choices. Asphalt riddled with diesels, sirens, and street lamps. Buildings with decisions stacked up to the sky like trays of factory-laid eggs waiting for chicks. Dropped ceiling meanings.  Angled views. Helo pads on top.  A strange silence up there. What if the engine fails? Parachute racks, lightning rods and hose reels. Tightropes strung from peak to peak. Wind socks for safety and guidance. The heavy […]