Vital Vulnerability

I kid you not! I don’t “make this stuff up!” It occurs to me. That means, as I write, something comes to mind. This is a participation in an act of creation. It is not a commanding or an ownership of creativity. So, as words come into awareness, by writing them down, I can capture

Vulnerability, Ultimate Realism?

Realism is another fraught word. Let’s imagine for a moment that it meant having a perspective on the world that was the best possible match for the conditions we face. To paraphrase John Lennon, “It might be easy if we try.” If we did have such a viewpoint it just struck me that the most

Brené Brown, The Power of Vulnerability

Casting about looking for what to write about I found this talk by Brené Brown. I groaned at the start, with the quote about nothing being worth study unless it was measurable, then went on to find her expressing so much of the crux of our predicament and talking about it with clarity and a

Out of the Depth of Our Numbness

Once we begin to recognize what it feels like to be alive it can still be a shock to acknowledge how much of our lives is spent in circumstances that are dead and threaten to engulf us once again in the numbness we’ve just begun to leave behind. But, if we fail to let this

Rational

We believe we are rational. We use logic to confirm it. We ignore the circularity of our arguments. How do we drop defensiveness? We live in a tumult of fear and anxiety. There is a gap between our beliefs and what we know we are hiding from behind those defenses. We are at least in

Consuming the Internet

We consume the internet. A movable feast. Lights kept on by a belief that someday it will “pay.” Or. that it is just too good an attention trap to let it go. It’s supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to provide visions of “freedom.” Where free means there is no up-front cost to us. Somebody

Complicity, not conspiracy

The subject of the last post, questions around exploring our vulnerability and finding the sources of violence, leads to, implies, an examination of the questions of complicity in relation to conspiracy. As the objectivization of thought sends us following projections placing what we strive against outside us, we find it easy to see conspiracies everywhere.

Ecocidal Suicide, Where does the violence begin? The Gulf Between a Trail and a Path

Recent misunderstandings have helped breed a new insight. I’ve been reluctant to post on the subject as I’ve looked for ways to write about it that do not remain focused within the drama that incited them. Driving down what passes for the loveliest lane in the area the other day brought to mind the way

Disinterested, Why the Fool was so valuable

Two points: All that’s been covered here so far is preamble. Disinterested parties provide the most valuable commentary. The first point aims at the unfinished quality of what has appeared here.

The Currency of Trust

The last post has brought us to the point of examining trust. This phrase, the currency of trust, appears to hold some promise. Let’s begin with another word, seriousness. Serious, trust, compassion; these are among a suite of terms we fear today, or hide our fear behind disdain at their current condition and denatured meanings.

The Outer Ring, a Permeable Membrane

Let’s begin at the outside. We live in a holographic universe. The whole is encoded in every part. Maintaining this quality in whatever we endeavor to do, as opposed to cutting away all we would rather not consider as the reductivist’s knife would have us do, is a way to keep contact with a deep

Discover, Find, and Gather

In Qi Gong, at least in the ad hoc mongrel form I practice, there are three opening phases in our relationship to Qi, to the life force. I do not approach Qi Gong, or anything in life, from within whatever might pass for a mystical view. I do not willingly bring beliefs to any confrontation