Security & Well-being

It’s a common expression. We consider the two must go together, “How can we feel good if we’re not secure?” Here’s John‘s recent comment on An Exploration, Navigating Without a Map: Tony, I have read and re-read your original posting, and I think I have a better grip on where you are going with it.

The Consequences of Our Precarity

“Most of all you can break out of your mind’s silo and initiate yourself into the tribe — become one of the people. But however you move, you know you can’t do this stuff on your own. Somehow you have to decipher the law. Our ways of understanding life in graphs and linear narrative are

Where is the break with our past most apparent?

“Forever.” When I read this simple word no matter where, it gives me pause. There was a time when forever had a tangible solid ring. Today? No more. There are countless assumptions that were once seemingly reasonable, that ring hollow today. It is a symptom of the end of an era. In this situation the

Doing No Thing, a Path Past Ego Death

We are caught up in urgency. We do good things. We are good people. What we strive after needs to be done! Yet we are exhausted. We are frustrated. We are pressed by the futility of our actions and have no idea how to change anything in a worthwhile way. Double-binds rear their ugly heads.

Fear, Authority, and Craving After Security

I just came across this quote from Krishnamurti’ Life Ahead. “…you create authority because you are seeking a safe way of conduct, a secure manner of living. The very pursuit of security creates authority, and that is why you become a mere slave, a cog in a machine, living without any capacity to think, to

Anxiety & Security, Two Sides of Ego

Recently – and I’m afraid I can’t place the source right now – I came across the insight that anxiety is a refuge of Ego. In my own case it was the last free bastion for untrammeled egotism after I’d been able to leave my chronic depression behind. As with any mechanism of Ego, anxiety

A Sense of Security

It’s just struck me. Our off-balance craving for security is a symptom, an intensifier of our hunger after power. Does this hold true for any sense of security? All our thoughts and feelings, our very perceptions, their focus and their blind-spots, are interpenetrated by our conditioning. We cannot escape illusion. We can only shift how

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