Posted inDelusions Fundamentalism

A believer in Putin’s propaganda reminds me of religious dogmatism

Proving that I'm able to tolerate people who embrace absurd conspiracy theories, for several weeks I've been engaged in an exchange of emails with an acquaintance who also lives in Salem, Oregon. His name is Jack.  In the past Jack and I have corresponded about subjects we agreed on, both of us being on the left side of the political spectrum. But Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine revealed another side to Jack. He buys in almost 100% to Putin propaganda about the war. Jack's sources for this disinformation are web sites biased toward Russia, if not controlled by them. When…
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Posted inBooks Reality Science

“Reality is Not What It Seems,” a book by Carlo Rovelli

My new favorite book, until a fresh one arrives from Amazon, is Carlo Rovelli's Reality is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity. Rovelli is an Italian theoretical physicist who, not surprisingly given the title of his book, is focused on resolving the mismatch between relativity theory and quantum mechanics. The key to doing this is to find a theory of gravity that is more fundamental than Einstein's general relativity, which describes gravity as the warping of space-time and isn't compatible with quantum mechanics. That's a fascinating subject, made more fascinating by Rovelli's impressive writing ability, albeit in…
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Posted inBooks Reality Science

Life is Simple, a fascinating book about Occam’s razor

I've been making my way through Johnjoe McFadden's book Life is Simple:How Occam's Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe. It traces the history of science through the lens of Occam's razor. William of Occam, who was born in the late 13th century, is famous for favoring the simplest solutions in theology, science, and other areas of life. The book says, "Three centuries after his death, the French theologian Libert Froidmont coined the term "Occam's razor" to refer to William's preference for shaving away excess complexity." But contrary to how many people look upon Occam's razor, this doesn't mean…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

“Under the Banner of Heaven” a compelling story of religion gone bad

Having just written the title of this of this blog post, the question that comes to mind is whether there's ever a compelling story of religion gone good.  In my current atheist frame of mind, the answer is no. But during the 35 years I was a believer, Eastern religion variety, I would have said, "Of course there is, my chosen faith." Problem is, everyone who buys into a religion thinks the same way. Their faith is absolutely great, almost faultless. It's those other faiths who give religions a bad name. My wife and I have started watching Under the…
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Posted inMiracles

A really unusual Lululemon miracle story

I'm going through old emails today (I have some really old ones) and just came across a not-so-ancient message from November 2021 that a woman sent me after reading a post I'd written about miracles. The miracle story she shared struck me as so strangely wonderful, it deserved to be made into a blog post. The person who sent it to me called it a boring story, but I heartily disagree. Her story was so honestly told, I didn't find it boring at all.  My wife is hyper-conscious of matching colors, so even though Laurel is an atheist, I can…
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Posted inBooks Science

“Nature versus nurture” is just wrong

This morning I noticed a book in my office languishing under a pile of papers. I'd read most of it quite a while ago, except for a few pages at the end.  Having finally finished "Unique: The New Science of Human Individuality" by neuroscientist David J. Linden, I wanted to mark the occasion by sharing some excerpts on subjects that I found particularly interesting. First up is the familiar "nature versus nurture" phrase that I remember from my schooling. The idea is that who we are is a function of just two things, heredity and upbringing. Linden makes clear that…
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Posted inBooks Delusions

Bullshit: “What you dislike in others is what you dislike in yourself”

There's a lot of New Age absurdities that irritate me. One of them is the ridiculous notion that if I dislike something about someone else, it's because I actually dislike that something in myself. Oh, really? That's absurd. Sure, perhaps it is true in a few cases, but almost always we have a good reason for our dislikes. I dislike Donald Trump because he lies incessantly, has a monstrous ego, lacks any genuine sense of morality, and exhibits an almost total lack of self-awareness and self-criticism.  (Those are the dislikes that come most readily to mind. I could come up…
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Posted inMorality Politics

Leaked Supreme Court opinion shows abortion rights about to be overturned

Christian fundamentalists in the United States are happy right now. Today Politico reported that a leaked draft Supreme Court opinion indicates that Roe v. Wade, which found a constitutional right to abortion in that 1973 case, is about to be overturned. The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wadedecision, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by POLITICO. The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision –…
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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

Lieh-tzu is a Taoist complement to Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu

When most people think of classic Taoist writings, likely they'll recall the Tao-te Ching and the Chuang-tzu. But there's a third classic, the Lieh-tzu. Eva Wong has written an eminently readable translation of the Lieh-tzu: Lieh-tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living.  Here's how she describes "The Voice of Lieh-tzu" in that portion of her introduction. What then, is the voice of the Lieh-tzu? To me, it is a friendly voice, a casual voice, and not the voice of an all-knowing sage or master. It is the voice of someone who gives advice not because he is an expert, but…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Don’t repress your feelings because you think that’s “spiritual”

I'm coming to dislike that word, spiritual. It conjures up an image of something ethereal, other-worldly, supernatural, divorced from the messy reality of this physical world. Which, of course, is the only world there is -- because there's precisely zero demonstrable evidence that any other realm exists. No heaven. No hell. No divine regions of reality.  This is it. So rather than say something like "I'm a spiritual person," how about simply "I'm s person." Just as we all are. Doing our best to live a good life in a world that's filled with challenges. That includes dealing with challenging…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Embrace everything about yourself, including the good, bad, and the ugly

I'm cured! But before I get too excited over this news, I need to remind myself that what happened yesterday was, after three counseling sessions, Wayne, the counselor I was seeing, agreeing with me that there wasn't any need for me to continue seeing him. What caused my therapeutic breakthrough is interesting, because it fits with the blog post I wrote about a week ago, "Zen'ish adage: when you're sad, be sad; when you're happy, be happy." I mentioned that post to Wayne in the course of explaining my Big Realization. Namely, that the goal I'd written down at Wayne's…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation Vedanta/Advaita

Nonduality says nothing about how the world really is

Following up on my previous post about David Loy's book, Nonduality, here's some additional thoughts on a subject that both intrigues me and irritates me. The intrigue part stems from a desire most of us have, me certainly included, to look upon the world without feeling so separate from it. That separateness is inherent in a central fact about we humans. Each of us views things from an inescapable subjective perspective. Meaning, we are subjective beings in an objective world. Or at least, what sure appears to be an objective world. No one knows what it is like to be…
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Posted inBuddhism Vedanta/Advaita

“Nonduality” is a great book about a fascinating subject

Since I've been writing about nonduality in a couple of previous posts (one explicitly, the other implicitly), I was drawn to pick up David Loy's book, Nonduality, after noticing it gathering dust on a bookshelf. I've written three posts about the book:Pink Panther and Alan Watts Cutting out the bullshit from "nonduality"Why an experience of "pure consciousness" says little about reality A favorite part of the first blog post (September 2013) is a You Tube video by Jeff Foster, The Advaita Trap, in cartoon form. Brilliant. Hopefully I've never sounded this bad, but for sure I've written some posts that included…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Sam Harris speaks eloquently about non-dual mindfulness

A few days ago I wrote a blog post about my Zen'ish adage that when you're sad, be sad; when you're happy, be happy.  I mentioned that part of the inspiration for that post came from listening to a conversation Sam Harris had with Nikki Mirghafori on his Waking Up app.  Mirghafori believes that equanimity is central to spirituality. She has a dualistic approach to enlightenment, or realization, where the goal is to attain an inward state of silent/pure consciousness that is separate from everyday consciousness.  I skipped quite a bit of the more than two hour conversation. But at…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

Zen’ish adage: when you’re sad, be sad; when you’re happy, be happy

Whenever I have a Grand Intuition about something that really is obvious, I'm never sure whether (1) I deserve to be honored in the Great Hall of Enlightened Beings or (2) laughed at for not realizing sooner what I should have understood long ago. (Personally, I'll go with #1, but I can't argue with someone else who favors #2.) The core of today's Grand Intuition is the title of this blog post: When you're sad, be sad; when you're happy, be happy. It's an emotional echo of some familiar Zen sayings. Chop wood, carry water. When hungry, eat. When thirsty, drink.…
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Posted inReality

I aspire to a radical embrace of reality

There's quite a bit to unpack in the title of this blog post, but I'll try to keep it fairly simple.  "Aspire" obviously means that a radical embrace of reality is something that I'd like to be able to do, but often this is more of a hope than an actuality for me. "Radical" refers to the fact that I, along with just about everybody else in the world, chooses to not embrace reality much of the time. Too disturbing. Too painful. Too whatever. So we cling to a form of unreality instead. If we always turned toward reality, that…
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Posted inBooks Consciousness Science

What hitting a fastball tells us about the brain

I'm not sure what to make of this seemingly correct fact, but I find it so interesting, I feel that it must have some deep significance to those of us who aren't professional baseball players. In the course of rereading a chapter in Robert Burton's book, On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not, I came across his analysis of baseball pitchers and hitters in the "When Does a Thought Begin?" chapter. Here's the crux of the issue: Professional baseball pitchers throw with velocities in the range of 80 to 100 miles per hour. Elapsed time from…
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Posted inBooks Consciousness Science

How neural networks operate in the hidden layer of our brain

ln my previous post, I referred to the hidden depths of the brain without including much of a description of what goes on in those depths. Neuroscience is still working on that problem. But even though Robert Burton, a neurologist and neuroscientist, wrote the book I spoke about in the blog post (On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not) in 2008, the basic points he makes are still valid. (Neuroscience doesn't evolve that fast.) Here's passages from his chapter on Neural Networks that will give you a good feel for how the hidden layer of the…
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Posted inBooks Science

Our sense of knowing flows from hidden depths of the brain

The human brain remains largely mysterious, even though modern neuroscience has learned a lot about it. It's unclear to what extent computer artificial intelligence will come to mimic our brains. But at the moment this much seems clear. Just as "deep learning" takes place in artificial intelligence in a manner that even AI programmers can't figure out, our own sense of knowing arises from hidden depths of the brain that we can't figure out. Meaning, when you've been trying to figure out what to do about some problem -- like whether you should take a new job that's been offered…
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Posted inAwareness Spiritual practice/meditation

Lose yourself to find yourself

For a long time, over three decades, I assumed that a central goal of my life was to know myself. Another way of saying this was self-realization. The idea was that somewhere hidden away in my psyche was a True Me who was different from the current Untrue Me. So I diligently meditated every morning. Sometimes as long as two and a half hours, sometimes for a shorter period, but never less than an hour.  I don't regret all that meditating, which totaled well over 20,000 hours. Plus, I've continued to meditate every day since the end of my religious…
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