In a previous post—Star Light, Star Bright—I posed the question: What is meant by “observation” in various physics paradigms, and how does this relate (if at all) to Awareness as the final, ultimate perceiver/observer? And, as we saw, what is meant by “an observer” differs quite dramatically, between Newtonian, special relativity, and quantum mechanical paradigms. And this is quite …
Nonduality
Practice Notes: Prodigal Children
The Parable of the Prodigal Son In the parable of the prodigal son—shared by Jesus with his disciples—a father has two sons. The older son stays close to home, being faithful to his familial duties and frugal with his funds. The younger son takes his inheritance and leaves town, wanders far and wide, and lives in a reckless, wasteful and extravagant way. Eventually—with his fortune squandered, …
Practice Notes: Detective Work, Part Two
To continue our exploration of the anesthesia experience, let’s now consider the recording and projecting capacities of the human brain—which all evidence reveals to be a super-sophisticated electrochemical device which plays a central role in the creation of our sensory and cognitive experience. Much of how the human organism thinks, perceives and interacts with the surrounding environment has …
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Practice Notes: Detective Work
You may be familiar with detective shows—e.g., Poirot, Inspector Morse, NCIS, Sherlock—whose plot periodically features a bad-guy who deletes a segment of security-camera footage, in order to commit a crime, unobserved. Heist Say, for instance, the bad-guy is planning a heist of a jewelry store. There are a variety of ways that security-camera footage might be eliminated: 1. Most crudely, the …
Practice Notes: Space-Time Interval
As of late, I’ve been contemplating the relationship between, on the one hand, intention/aspiration; and, on the other hand, accomplishment. What determines the extent to which an intention or aspiration translates into an actual accomplishment of the thing (or no-thing) that was intended or aspired to? As a starting-point, I’ve divided the inquiry into two cases: 1. When the accomplishment …
Practice Notes: The Serenity Prayer
There’s this thing called the serenity prayer, which you may already be familiar with. It was penned, originally, by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and goes like this: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Eckhart & The Dalai Lama, too There’s something about this that I’ve always liked. …