Google [Seeking Help For Hoarding] for a brief yet telling report on hoarding. Here is a brief excerpt: At some point I got a lot of stuff,â said Joanne Garland. âI kept too much paper. I kept too many books. I kept too many clothes.â Too much of everything! Garlandâs Greenfield, Mass., home is packed […]
Continue reading…freewill
Cultivating Character
I find some people in Taoist circles have passionate ideals about cultivating character. Seen from a symptoms point of view, passion arises from fearâthe mother of need. The visceral fear arising from feeling one has little control over life drives a need to do something⌠like cultivate character. Chapter 54 has the only reference relating […]
Continue reading…Necessity is the Mother
If youâre unfamiliar with the neuroscience behind the illusion of free will, YouTube [Sam Harris on âFree Willâ]. He does a good job of addressing the idea of free will, and points out enough compelling evidence to prove that free will is an illusion. Next, please YouTube [Sam Harris on His Debate with Daniel Dennett […]
Continue reading…Civilized Insanity
Cults akin to ISIS and Nazism help define true human insanity. Nonetheless, the tribal instinct driving such insanity is curiously both sane and universal. This ironic blend inhabits everyone to a degree. So, what drives the ISIS or Nazi fanatic to become so obsessed? How can we remedy this? First, calling acts of insanity evil […]
Continue reading…Where does the fault lie?
âThe fault lies not in the stars but in ourselvesâ. That bit of Shakespeare speaks to our modern paradigm. By modern, I mean the epoch beginning with the Renaissance (14th century) that followed the fall of Rome, i.e., the so-called Dark Ages. Notice how these labels bias the view of cultural progress right away in […]
Continue reading…Loss Aversion Management
Recent research reveals how we canât help but shoot ourselves in the foot. When I look around, I see our aversion to loss influencing just about everything we do, albeit often in very subtle ways. The innate emotional aversion to loss, when reinforced by thought, traps us even more. Iâm going to explore this issue […]
Continue reading…BRAIN
President Obamaâs BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) seeks to decipher how the brainâs circuitry produces thought and behavior. The Science News Brain Shot reports on this initiative. This is an excerpt. Ambitious goals: While the BRAIN Initiativeâs objectives are hard to express in concrete terms, the project is full of visionary promise. […]
Continue reading…Born Again Taoist
How many of us realize the role that instinct plays in our lives? Long ago, our ancestors dreamed up elitist myths that elevated our species from other living things. We are told, âDonât be an animalâ and that Mankind was created in Godâs image. One way or another, every culture has a spiritual superiority story. […]
Continue reading…Free Willers Anonymous
Members of Alcoholics Anonymous and similar addiction management programs begin recovery by first acknowledging their addiction and powerlessness over it. Clearly recognizing a problem is an indispensable prerequisite for finding a solution. Such Right Comprehension is the first step on Buddhaâs Eight-Fold Path. Until then, life is always a dog chasing its tail. Primal instinct […]
Continue reading…Instinctive Free Will
We easily acknowledge that animals and young children donât choose their nature; they are born with it. Consequently, society doesnât regard them as being responsible. With the onset of adulthood, that suddenly changes, and society then holds us responsible for our actions. As adults, we somehow miraculously acquire the power to choose ârightâ from âwrongâ […]
Continue reading…The Proof is in the Pudding
Buddha felt that we needed to rely on our personal experience to verify his Four Noble Truths, and presumably any other alleged truth. Thereâs no âtake my word for itâ hoodwinking here. Nowadays, modern science is steadily helping us discern fact from myth. Still, personal experience must always be the final arbiter. Keep this in […]
Continue reading…Natural Happiness
âTo like what I do rather than do what I likeâ is a straightforward path to happiness. This motto helps prevent my expectations from dictating my lifeâs direction. No doubt, scripture (Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Biblical, etc.) first got me considering life this way, and life experience has since verified its truth (1). The previous post, […]
Continue reading…I Look, But Do I See?
In Matthew 7:7-8, Jesus says, âAsk, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be openedâ. While true, I suspect this may often misinterpreted. For example, […]
Continue reading…Ponder Between the Lines
First, google this short video, [ABCâs George Stephanopoulos interviewing NBA star Dennis Rodman] about Rodmanâs visit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. As you can see, George and Dennis exemplify two profoundly different ways of seeing the world. Each is representing an extreme, which helps highlight polar archetypes⌠yin vs. yang, as it were. […]
Continue reading…Will-to-Live, Free or Otherwise
The drive to survive is shared by all living things from viruses on up. In some, if not all, forms of life, this plays out as a fear vs. need mediated survival instinct. Certainly, the survival instinct is a fundamental emotional drive in any animal I think of as having emotion. Naturally, there are those […]
Continue reading…Dumbfounding
The Science News Science Stats left me dumbfounded, so I read it again⌠Iâm still dumbfounded. Does it really say, â⌠calorie intake may be the bigger contributor to Western obesityâ? What are they thinking? What else causes obesity? I have noticed over the years, a growing effort to find genetic causes for why some […]
Continue reading…Of Free Will, I Am
Free will and I have had a life-long journey together. For the first forty years, I âknewâ I had free will. I could do anything I set my mind to. Such certainty is particularly strong in youth, and naturally so! Around age forty, I began to look for biological evidence of free will. Any clear […]
Continue reading…Discomfort and Pain
The Science Newsâ article Hurt Blocker got me thinking about pain and the ways we deal with it. While this research is really about physical pain, the principle applies to all pain. How we deal with discomfort and pain results in many unintended consequences. We could avoid these consequences if we knew at what point […]
Continue reading…Undecided? You bet!
Up until today, I have remained undecided whom to vote for President. Searching for a photo to accompany this post, I came across this one. It highlights the chorus of ridicule Iâve heard aimed lately at the undecided âwishywashersâ among us. Slinging ridicule back is tempting; however examining this from a symptomatic point of view […]
Continue reading…Upping the Ante
Have you noticed the ever-present urge to continue to up the ante? Not only that, but isnât the sky often the limit? We canât help but aim for the next step up, and when we reach it, that level becomes our new bottom line. Most of us are content for a while, but then we […]
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