The Nature of Conditioning

Without this insight there can be much confusion between any action we might contemplate or take and striving. This confusion can lead either to paralysis or frustration. By linking striving to the attempt to outrun conditionality connects the futility of an approach to life that sees only division and seeks to find answers to self generated problems with the deepest manifestation of that impulse in the desire to transcend our conditioned natures.

Navigating Quality

We’re inundated with arguments and counterarguments over what are considered facts and counter-facts. There is a scramble to create ever-larger data-farms to handle…, well, all the data. There’s also been a curious turn of phrase used by one buffoon, George Will to describe another, Donald Trump. Will has claimed that “Trump doesn’t know how to

There’s no freeing the mind without respecting the limitations of the body.

“(Taoism) isn’t a process of learning more facts or greater skills. It is the unlearning of wrong habits and opinions.” — Alan Watts It’s not just the Singularity Boys who get this wrong…. What is unlearning?

Ends and Purpose

Division rears its head at every turn. How do we distinguish without dividing? There is a difference. Quality cannot be perceived without some way of making distinctions. It’s what we do with these perceptions that either clarify our relation with what-is or lead us to divide our selves and reduce everything to a set of

On Form

There’s a connection and relationship between the way we internalize honesty/deception and how we relate to form. Form is the means by which error is recognized and the means by which correctness is recognized. There are, it seems, two Muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of

Chasing Coherence

What if we remain incoherent when we seek to establish a coherent state? State, a powerful term, one with many resonances. None of them too good…. A coherent condition?

What is at the root of our crisis of leadership?

We expect a leader to “play the part.” Anyone caught-up in roles has nothing to offer us in our predicament. Facing our predicament requires that we embrace uncertainty and set-aside the doing-things-twice role playing forces upon us. Someone acting in this way just does not, “Look like a leader.”

What is missing…

The change of the seasons is so powerful…. It is disorienting…. We tend to view this as a collapse of whatever momentum we had developed over the months spent within a circle of similarity that allows us to feel a kind of certainty building. Yes, even for those of us talking endlessly about the pitfalls of

Addiction & Creativity

Addiction is getting stuck. Seeking relief from suffering instead of perceiving proprioception, we chase a form of release. It is temporary. Its effects lessen each time we resort to it. Our connection to clarity of perception – including a lived sense of its limits – weakens. Repetition digs us deeper.

So much that is irrelevant…

How do we move beyond rebellion? Implicit in this question – if it is to be anything but futile – is another, How do we keep from cycling back around? Only to end up that much further down the same barren path?

Approaching Conscience?

Perhaps a way to shed light on where this track is heading is to introduce conscience. We think of conscience as the internal touchstone for an externally directed morality. There is a superstructure of Good & Evil and conscience is where this battle is joined inside each of us. This conception of conscience covers any

It’s Learning…

It is learning! Once we stop thinking of learning as the product of teaching, as an accumulation of knowledge, data, information; we can begin to look at what it is. Learning is how we remain open in the face of conditioning. It involves deciding without making judgments – to mangle Alan Watts.