I just read a headline: “We May Have Found the Part of the Brain Where Conscious Experience Lives.” This has been a focus of science for years, and as fun as the investigation is, it is misguided. Don’t get me wrong. I love science. I trust scientists, mostly. I enjoy reading about where their discoveries …
Tag Archives: Consciousness
Life is Kind That Way
It’s been an interesting evening. Well, it’s been like this for a while, but I am just now attempting to put words to it. Why? Because I can. That’s as close as I can get. It feels like I’m playing a game of Clue and polishing the pieces that have emerged, fascinated by them and …
The Hero’s Journey
Life is a mystically magical tangle of highs and lows, shadow and light, happiness and sorrow. Most of us want the highs and light and happiness without that other stuff. It may be natural, but it isn’t possible. Desiring the good without any of the bad, devising ways to win and conquer, or at least …
Life Itself
It was a glorious walk this morning, earlier than normal. The sun was just peeking over the horizon, lighting the maple trees, the firs and cedars in a most spectacular display, mystically splashing their infinite shades of green against the backdrop of shadow and light. As I walked I found myself dipped in awe, in …
It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way
Life’s basic building block is consciousness, or at the least, that is as much as this appearance in consciousness at present is able to grok. Consciousness, a word, not unlike every word, can only point to that which is inconceivable since it is as deep or shallow as its perceiver. What we perceive is a …
Nothing But Mud in the Middle
It’s a puzzle and all puzzles have edges, the outliers of the mass of contradiction within. Within the puzzle of aliveness lies every possible imagining, and those quite unimaginable to the opposing edges. It’s cool that puzzles, like life, have edges all around, edges of the polarities, left and right, up and down, all across, …
This Dark Beauty
The idea of death is for the living. Death has no meaning for the one no longer in form. Death is felt by the ones left behind, or it is glossed over with polite triteness, watchful escapism: It’s okay, she’s gone to a better place, he is flying with the angels, they’ve gone home to …
Can You Hear the Roar?
We live in a world that teaches, expects, commands exclusion. Competition, boundaries, judgement, winners and losers, families – those we love and those we don’t, is built right in, the silent, or not so silent, operating structure of separation. What we are, what this is, is inclusion, simple, basic, all-in, never was two, actuality. To …
Voyeuristic Delight
How could we ever be strangers. Even the idea of it strays far from the actuality of life. It seems true, appears to be so, and at the same time is an utter impossibility. When we slide into home plate, fresh from our sojourn into form, will we look at one another and see strangers, …
And Maybe That’s the Point
Many years ago when I volunteered at the prison I was talking to the men about the present moment. Even as the words came out of my mouth, I knew that something was off, something very important. For years, the present moment had been offered up as the golden talisman, a charm that once fully …
Maybe There is No Definition and No Way
Real or not real? That is the question, and it seems to be much discussed these days. What is enlightenment? Listen to me … this is what it is. No … it’s not that, it’s this. If we can’t even agree on a definition of what it is, how in the world would we ever …
It Doesn’t Have to be That Way
What is, is what is. You can’t change it. It already is what is. Change, however, is always happening, so change, it will. We never know what will appear in the next breath, or if we’ll be given a next breath. It’s impossible to know. It hasn’t happened yet. There are too many variables, so …
Always Pointed at the Target
Life is an interactive simulation with a gazillion options. Do you want to play out the life of a successful businessperson? Yay. How about mister or miss popularity? Hoorah. Maybe a pilgrim on the spiritual path fits or even one who awakens. Are you playing the role of victim, the one who everyone abuses? Does …
Don’t Forget to Celebrate
Have you noticed? Whenever someone dies, someone important to the freedom days of our youth, someone who meant something to us along the pathway of our grand unfolding, someone whose life was simply tangled up with our own, we mourn. It doesn’t seem to matter if that person was enduing immense pain, taken out in …
The Cosmic Bubblegum Machine
What would your life be like if you knew that you couldn’t do anything other than what you are doing? That may include dithering back and forth, trying to make the best decision or being impulsive and taking no heed of consequences. It could encompass getting frustrated and filled with doubt or seemingly breezing effortlessly …
Amaya Gayle 