The social qualities present during our ancestral hunter-gatherer era (1) just happen to parallel the core spiritual qualities that the world’s religions promote. That’s no coincidence. Indeed, those innate qualities of harmony we now seek are the very ones we lost when we left the old way for the alluring material benefits and security civilization […]
Continue reading…worry
What Climate Catastrophy?
In the mid 1980’s science was pointing to a looming climate catastrophe. I stressed over this for a few years, but finally felt “Que Sera, Sera”. Now, 30+ years later, it is happening just as the science predicted. The scientist’s main concern was for how the destabilizing effects of the ensuing climate extremes would influence […]
Continue reading…Fear & Need Born in Nothing
Fear and need are the primal life forces underlying many of my observations. I know this basis often raises more questions than it answers, so clarification is in order. Not that I haven’t tried before… see Fear is the Bottom Line, p.139 and What are the roots of thought? p.602. Well, third time’s a charm, […]
Continue reading…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 fear—the 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…Cultivating Ego
Google [Rats Experience Feelings of Regret] for research discovering that when a rat realizes it made a mistake, its body and brain show signs of regret (1). Research like this challenges the beliefs of human exceptionalism that we’ve been cultivating to support humanity’s “illusion of self” collective ego. Sure, we are different from rats, but […]
Continue reading…Of Mountains, Molehills and the Supernatural
I’ve noticed how we humans appear to have a nearly universal sense of the supernatural. Now, I know devotees of science and atheists might dispute that, at least as far as universal applies to them. They’ll claim they don’t believe in the supernatural. Fair enough, so let me rephrase this… The supernatural sense is essentially […]
Continue reading…Stupidly Intelligent
The Science News review, Our Final Invention, about the impending dangers of Artificial Intelligence caught my eye. (Google [Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era].) Consider this quote, “Computer systems advanced enough to act with human-level intelligence will likely be unpredictable and inscrutable all of the time.” He is worried that, “we could […]
Continue reading…Feeding the Worry Gene
Have you noticed how there is always something wrong? No matter how ideal circumstances are, something will go awry shortly. All this may be obvious, I suppose. What is less obvious is how the perception and experience of good fortune and misfortune are complimentary. As chapter 58 puts it, Misfortune, yet of good fortune its […]
Continue reading…Breathe Into It
It helps me to regard language as the smoke that arises out of emotion’s fire. You could say words are the cognitive reflections of human emotions. As such, they’re more fantasy than reality. For example, you can understand a volcano with words metaphorically, symbolically, abstractly, but you cannot truly know it through words. You can […]
Continue reading…Placebo Effect
Google [Treating Depression: Is there a placebo effect? – CBS News] for an interview with Irving Kirsch, a scientist at the Placebo Studies Program at Harvard Medical School. Kirsch, who’s been studying placebos for 36 years, says “sugar pills” can work miracles. He has found that the drugs used to treat depression for most people […]
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