On Being An American

My son-in-law, an Englishman by birth, has held a green card for several years. This week he took the test and the oath and now he is an American.  This is a strange time for Americans, as the dominating force at the top is the most anti-American we have ever had to contend with. Even …

The School of Becoming

Here we are, living on this fairly special planet; as Terry Pratchett described it and us, “…where the falling angel meets the rising ape.” That’s us, indeed: a spiritual entity living in a body evolved over time from ape ancestors. Spirit vibrates at a high frequency while the body vibrates at quite a slower frequency, and …

Stopping Shopping

The sun is shining, the temperature is over 60F and I’m off Facebook. This is the day that’s been set aside by a few million Americans, perhaps, to pull back our credit cards and our wallets and withhold our coin from the profit-driven commercial segment of America. One day, 24 hours… to deliver the message …

Death and Past Lives

January 2, 2005[January 15 2025] These are two things that appear quite differently to Body and Spirit.   An eastern teacher taught one day, ‘Death is an Illusion.’  The next day, he taught, ‘Death is Real.’  His students tried to pin him down:  ‘Today you tell us Death is Real, yesterday you told us it is …

Having and Being

Dec 31, 2004[2025 edits] A model of human-being: I don’t have a soul: I am a soul; I have a body.      A simple reframe and all at once, many things that didn’t quite fit, fall into place.  Body and soul each has its own protocols: its own needs and problems, and its own solutions, too.  When we try …

The Value of Trust

Hannah Arendt told us: The lies are not meant to be believed, they are meant to make us not trust anyone about anything. And being unable to trust the information we’re given, we can’t make any choices because there are no sure safe trust-worthy choices. And that’s why so many Americans stayed home on Election …

Atrocity fatigue…

the normalizing of huge lies & injustices just to get on with life… The Social Contract of any society is based in trust and reliance on the sources of truth. In these times, trust is one of the chiefest of casualties: We have been lied to in large and little ways our entire lives, all …

What Do You Believe?

Everyone at some time in their life, if they cannot travel widely around the world, should study anthropology. Or at least, read a book or two on the subject. I recommend Edward T Hall’s many wise and readable works. Since humankind traded instinct for intellect, every society in the world has wrangled with the same …

America Dreaming

Well, here we are in the United States: living in a time of the ascendance of a social order that glorifies greed and selfishness, that revels in ignorance and defies science in favor of clever but inane conspiracy theories. It is a time of Dunning-Kruger exemplars gleefully, self-righteously preparing to lay their agendas on all …

Over-Thinking About Thinking

It’s not anthropomorphism to believe that animals think & feel like us. It’s assuming they think & feel the same ways about the same things as we do. Misreading physical cues like facial expressions or body language leads to totally mistaken interpretations of what an animal has on its mind, what it intends or wants. …