A magazine's back cover c.1945
Today is my 67th year here on earth. The picture is a magazine’s back cover of me, at a lake in Arizona, in my birthday suit(1). From then until today, fate has been fortunate; I should have bitten the dust quite a few times by now. (I wrote about the first time in the blog Suicide Just Doesn’t Work.) As to my health, wealth and family, I couldn’t ask for more. Indeed, there are so many things to be happy for on this birthday, and every day. Don’t worry though, I’ll find a problem somewhere it that. Hmm, let me see… Continue reading ‘Keeping Birthday Happy’
NotTheConstant Name and I have been knocking about in ‘what is the tao‘ a little, which is always great fun. I woke up following a pleasant Saturday afternoon siesta reflecting on the best ‘way’ (road, principle, speak, think) to approach life.
Why this endless debate over the best way to approach life – what to do, and how to do it? The first thing I notice is how it draws those of like-mind together and pushes those of unlike-mind apart. It seems we are driven to project our own preferences and inclinations onto others. This keeps the social pot stirred, so to speak. No doubt our social-tribal instinct is pulling off this bio-hoodwink(1) Continue reading ‘The best tao? (road, way, principle, speak, think)’
Life evolved to perceive its surroundings in a way that promotes survival in a competitive environment. In animals with a nervous system, neurons fire, on and off. It is little wonder that we therefore see reality in an on-off light. This simple on-off process underpins our perception of what we call good-evil, yin-yang, life-death, active-passive, go-stop, hot-cold, up-down, before-after, hard-soft, heaven-hell, male-female, and what have you. Continue reading ‘Yin Yang, Nature’s Hoodwink’
Enlightenment may be more illusion than real. Not that it isn’t ‘real’, mind you. After all just as Something and Nothing produce each other, so do ignorance and enlightenment. So, what does enlightenment correlate to anyway, ‘Something’ or ‘Nothing’?
If you see it as ‘Something’, then it correlates to obvious, bright, light, life, full, sudden, special, etc. If you see enlightenment as ‘Nothing’, then it correlates to mystery upon mystery, darkly visible, death, stillness, emptiness, perpetuity, impartiality, the constant, and such. Thus, by expecting enlightenment to be ‘Something’, you will miss it… if it is indeed ‘Nothing‘.
Continue reading ‘Is Enlightenment Something or ???’
Hecate, the ancient Greek goddess of magic
I am always amazed at how magical magic is. The slight of hand a good magician employs is amazing. How does he do it? Distraction they say, but it is hard to believe a person (me) can be so easily hoodwinked. Nevertheless, I am.
An ‘untrained’ observer’s eye will follow where the magician’s hand leads it, subconsciously and involuntarily. Now then, how is this any different from the innate hoodwink biology pulls on us throughout life? It’s not I say!
That said, I’ve found there is a way to deal with this. Just as an initially untrained observer (like a newbie magician) can learn to see how the hoodwink works, each person can learn to see how their biology hoodwinks them. Of course, it takes some perseverance in examining life’s promises to see on which ones it actually delivers. The difficulty here is that we often prefer to bask in the glow of the promise rather than face a more indistinct and shadowy reality.
We are born with a bio-illusion(1) which goes like this: Through hunting, “I” can gather fillers to satiate (fill) the hole. Primal emotions of need (e.g., desire, lust, want, wish, crave, etc.) and fear (e.g., insecurity, anxiety, doubt, apprehension) drive this illusion forward. This illusion originates in the hunter gatherer instinct to find food to fill the empty belly. The illusion lies in the fact that it promises happy-ever-after contentment once the hole is filled. Alas, that promise is broken the moment the next need arises, which is often literally within the next few moments. Continue reading ‘Peeking in on Nature’s Hoodwink’
Blind monks examining an elephant
I am constantly amazed by how easily our biology hoodwinks us into believing that human perception depicts reality. In other words, we evolved to sense ‘the world out there’ in a way that served survival. There is no reason to assume this coincides with sensing how ‘the world out there’ truly is any more than a bat’s ultrasonic hearing informs it about the true nature of ‘out there’. Continue reading ‘Biology’s Blinders: WYSIWYG’
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