How the Universe looks from here

By Ciel - About Me - E-mail this page - Add to My Favorites - Add to Blog List - See other blogs in Religion & Spirituality

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Ursula LeGuin... I miss her already.

https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/04/10/ursula-k-le-guin-late-in-the-day-science-poetry/?utm_source=Brain+Pickings&utm_campaign=596737f6c1-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_04_13&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_179ffa2629-596737f6c1-237625185&mc_cid=596737f6c1&mc_eid=445b266d6c If we don't change the way we look culturally at the rest of Creation, we doom all of it, and especially our particular place in it. Sign in to see full entry.

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

sharing a Meditation: Basket of Light

In a moment of your choosing, find a calm place to sit: calm within even if not all around. Be aware of your own stillness, or lack of it--in which case, breathe and relax, a digit, a limb, a muscle and tendon at a time... Be aware of your breathing, your heartbeat, the things you feel like the chair under you, the floor beneath your feet-- until you find your stillness.. Sit in that calm at the center of the world that is whirling around you, and be aware of your connection to the Earth: your... Sign in to see full entry.

Saturday, April 7, 2018

Seeing the world through ancient eyes

In the past two days I have watched two documentaries that offer up a way to look at our world from different angles than our cultural traditions have conditioned us to see. We look at things so superficially, so at-the-moment, so very materially: Western society has forgotten there are other ways to see. But these ways require us to slow down, to see the world without all we have built and paved and altered. These two programs are like taking a deep breath of truly fresh, clean air with all the... Sign in to see full entry.

Sunday, February 25, 2018

Over on Facebook, my son and one of his friends of many years have engaged in a rather heated discussion over issues of what constitutes hate-speech, and particularly, if the term "white male patriarchy" is in itself, hate speech. They got me thinking: I think the overall and most useful point to be made here is that there is a very long-standing culture of male supremacy in the world, that there is a very long-standing culture of white supremacy particularly stemming from the colonial era when... Sign in to see full entry.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Faith

My dad once said, "I don't need faith, I've got knowledge!" I think it was a response to my asking him to have a little faith in me. It was, however, his scient ist-mindset all around. Scientists seek knowledge, or as close as they can get to something they can claim as 'knowing.' At the same time, true scientists know they never know enough to say more than, "It looks like this is true with the information we have and the tests we can make." Real science is always ready to accept its own... Sign in to see full entry.

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Veneration

A program called WILD CHINA tours China's little-known and less-seen regions and through the course of several episodes, explores the relationships between the people and the wilds. This has always been a theme of the Chinese philosophyical world-view, the harmony of man and nature, that man holds nature and its expressions in veneration. This got me thinking: This sense of respect and awe, this recognition of the sacred in what is presented by nature, this is not uncommon in the world of human... Sign in to see full entry.

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Time to grow up

So much violence, so much anger and rage, so much fear... So many places in the world seem to be coming apart at the seams, all based on conflicting beliefs about the values of things, the necessities of life, the threats of difference and change... But life and the world are not static, and however comfortably we want to settle back with what is familiar, however much we cherish and defend untrue and unreal beliefs, forcing unreality on the reality of the world only creates havoc. Reality might... Sign in to see full entry.

Friday, December 15, 2017

Conversation

It has been a while since I had a really interesting conversation with a stranger over my occasional morning coffee at Starbuck's. We traded ideas and words over a number of current social trends and topics, and discovered that we have several different terms for the same concepts, and that we agreed on most topics. He mentioned the Bible several times as his source of wisdom, and came around to stating that he has committed his faith to what he finds there. I acknowledged that my own faith lies... Sign in to see full entry.

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Swimming against the flow

I believe that we are here in the world not merely to dream the illusions of living, but to learn, as evolving entities, how to make choices: to try things on, to treat them as real for a while, until a more absolute version of Reality comes along and slaps down the personal version for its non-conformity to What Is. Then we fight back, trying to force what disagrees with our personal version to fit through our own special perceptual filters that are based on what we believe is real. When things... Sign in to see full entry.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

I have been asked what I believe in...

I believe in a complex Reality. It is not a Universe, or Multiverse that can be described in simple, linear notions. I believe in God, but not a God as much like Man as the God of Western Culture is taken for. I believe in Good and Evil, in Light and Darkness, but neither without shadings of twilight, of mixture and inclusivity. I believe in Absolutes and also in Qualifiers and Conditionals: that there are spectrums and continuums of which we as humans perceive but a little and tend to attach to... Sign in to see full entry.

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