In this post I want to play with a big backgrounding idea that’s been shaping my thoughts on human nature and creative change for some time now. It’s about consciousness and how our human evolution and individual development can be understood as progressing through three distinct stages. I’m using this term in both its temporalContinue reading “The Three Stages of Consciousness”
Category Archives: Philosophical Underpinnings
Human and Fully Alive
The attraction of any so-called unified theory is in its claim to bring several previously disparate and unreconciled things into a single all-inclusive picture or account. One of my abiding aspirations over the years has been to clarify a unifed theory of human nature, an “anthropology” that doesn’t reduce us to dumb matter or deifyContinue reading “Human and Fully Alive”
Dropping Into Reality
In More Than You Think I offered a theory that regards mind as more than what’s going on inside your head. Western culture, particularly, has tended to equate consciousness (or spirit) with mind, mind with the brain, and the brain with the body as the central ganglion of its physical nervous system. Granting such exclusiveContinue reading “Dropping Into Reality”
Breaking the Frame
Let’s play a game, called “Breaking the Frame.” The Frame refers to what defines right behavior and good character for a specific group of people. For each of us, The Frame began to take shape when we were very young and the family was our original group. As we got older and more involved inContinue reading “Breaking the Frame”
Living From Our Higher Nature
I would say the major reason why humans suffer so much and project their suffering onto each other is that we don’t understand ourselves. There is indeed a truth that can set us free, but it involves more than just getting our facts straight. This truth has to do with waking up to what weContinue reading “Living From Our Higher Nature”
More Than You Think
Let’s start with an interesting scientific fact. You have 100 billion neurons in your brain, 40 thousand neurons in and around your heart, and 500 million neurons in your gut. We’re used to thinking of neurons as “brain cells,” but that’s a serious misnomer perpetuated by our brain. Neurons are not simply nerve cells, butContinue reading “More Than You Think”
The Heart and Hope of Democracy
Let’s begin this meditation on the heart and hope of democracy with you identifying yourself with either the Blue or Red sphere in the diagram above. Then let’s pretend that all of your life you’ve been training to be the best Blue or Red you can be. From an early age your tribe was activelyContinue reading “The Heart and Hope of Democracy”
Touching Reality (and Talking About God)
Religion is the more or less systematic way that humans express, develop, and apply spirituality to their daily life in the world. You may believe that you have no religion and that you are not “religious,” but I know better. Your particular way of connecting spirituality to daily life might not be very relevant orContinue reading “Touching Reality (and Talking About God)”
Touching Reality
The true longing of our spiritual life is to touch reality, to connect with what’s really real, and thereby to become more real ourselves: more authentically and fully human. This of course implies that to some extent we are not presently in touch with reality, and maybe not fully real. According to the spiritual wisdomContinue reading “Touching Reality”
Learning to Trust Ourselves
At this same time four years ago I published a post that introduced what I called The Two Systems, referring to two sets of values and concerns that profoundly shape human culture and our individual lives. These two systems are like the Yin and Yang of Taoism, where the creative tension between them informs ourContinue reading “Learning to Trust Ourselves”
Tracts of Revolution 