Category: Consciousness
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A Hand Shake across Thousands of Years
When caves are mentioned, some of us may still imagine unwashed, unshaven, grunting brutes lumbering about, dragging women behind them by the hair. These hand prints from the Cave of El Castillo, made at least 37 centuries ago, tell a different story. Let’s think about how movingly astounding they are. Early humans worshipped the Earth…
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Baba Yaga – The Fascination of Folklore
A Russian person, seeing this 18th century Norwegian house, would recall Baba Yaga, who lived in a house on chicken legs. Baba Yaga was an ogress with raggedy clothing, crooked teeth, a hunched back, and a long nose that touched the ceiling when she lay on her bed. Her house on legs could turn itself…
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Let There Be Light !
The Greek philosopher Thales had an idea that was right and wrong. He thought there must be one thing from which all others were made, and decided this was water. It’s one thing, yet it can be solid, liquid or gas, and it’s essential for life – dead things dry up. That was a reasonable…
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Heart on (heretical) Sleeve
After sharing some thoughts with a friend, I want to try to put into words what ‘religion’ means to me. It’ll make sense to some, though not perhaps to all. Joseph Campbell describes the “game of belief” that leads to a “divine seizure”, his use of the word ‘game’ (as in Wittgenstein’s philosophy) not meaning…
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Jonah – A Good-Fun Read (iii)
We lost sight of Jonah when, on our hero’s uncompromising insistence, the good-hearted sailors very reluctantly tossed him into the sea. At once the inestimable power of Jonah’s God was demonstrated, in the immediate and complete calming of what had been an overwhelmingly tempestuous sea. No great surprise then, that in the New Testament, Jesus…
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Awareness, Consciousness, Experience, Mind
Is there anything we can be absolutely certain is ‘real’? The answer to that question is, yes! There is one thing, and it is consciousness. Always however, and especially here, we need to define our terms, lest there be any misunderstandings. By ‘consciousness’ I mean subjective experience, whether of thoughts, of feelings, or of sights,…
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Unconditional Love (ii)
I wrote in a previous post that, for me, the symbolic image of Jesus with his arms outstretched on the cross, is a movingly powerful symbol of ‘unconditional love’, which I see as the ‘beating heart’ of Christianity, and its greatest gift to the world. I also noted that my own journey towards this persuasion…
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My Little Wise Guy
I keep my little wise guy on my desk – to remind me never to take myself (or anyone else) too seriously ….. you could say that he’s the Apple of my eye ! “Too bad all your blogs aren’t as short as this one”, he’s telling me. You’re probably right, little fella …..
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Myth, Religion and Kaleidoscopes
Because I’m interested in religion (though not a paid-up member) I’m interested in mythology. Religion and mythology, being bed-fellows, inter-penetrate. Both paint pictures that can be felt to convey deep-seated truths about ourselves and our world – which unadorned and prosaic literalism would seem to have much less ability to convey. The same is true…
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The ‘Final’ Reality
For the final time (for now), let’s think again about the fascinating fact of a different level of ‘reality’. Let’s consider a picture that should make immediate sense to us. Wherever we are right now, passing through us, are radio, television, and internet ‘waves’. They are real, but we can’t see them. Common sense would…
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