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The sacred isn’t a social myth; a delusion of the religious. It is what happens when we bind moments of personal meaning and power to something greater than ourselves. And, without the sacred, we are left unable to transform meaning into purpose.

The Value of the Sacred

article

At the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs lies the spiritual ones—to connect with the world, and something greater than ourselves. He describes, in this space, the kinds of ‘peak’ experiences many of us are familiar with—a feeling of euphoria or bliss when encountering an awe-inspiring piece of art or natural vista. If we are familiar with Maslow’s states of transcendence, it implies we are capable of fulfilling our spiritual needs. One then wonders why we are in the midst of a spiritual crisis. I suspect a reason lies in a problematic attitude toward the concept of the sacred.
The sacred isn’t a social myth; a delusion of the religious. It is what happens when we bind moments of personal meaning and power to something greater than ourselves. And, without the sacred, we are left unable to transform meaning into purpose.
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spiritual-architecture betterment gratification somatic-architecture on-being-fruitful on-(un)happiness on-the-nature-of-things

article

Our culture spurns the ‘guru’ as a charletan and the traditionalist as a relic. Legitimate knowledge comes from reasoned observation, not intuition. Except that this is a lie that we tell ourselves and which blinds us to how useful the sage can be.

In praise of the sage

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Knowledge is a peculiar concept. It’s a form of belief, really. We believe in things and some things that we believe in, we feel so sure about that we call it knowledge. This begs the question, of course, what kinds of things make us so certain? Why do we accept the scientific method, but shun tradition and experience?
Our culture spurns the ‘guru’ as a charletan and the traditionalist as a relic. Legitimate knowledge comes from reasoned observation, not intuition. Except that this is a lie that we tell ourselves and which blinds us to how useful the sage can be.
Check it out

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betterment spiritual-architecture thought-architecture on-leadership on-thinking-and-reasoning on-culture on-politics-and-power

article

The rational mind is new, and it is weak in the face of emotion. Emotions motivate us to act, but our mind takes these visceral feelings and tangles them. Pay not attention to the mind or the emotion, but to the source of the emotion and its meaning.

Emotion and the Mind

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Emotions are a messy thing, and defining them is a tricky business. Philosophical thought has concerned itself with the messiness of emotions since philosophical thoughts have been preservable. The primary concern is how to control these emotions. Unfortunately, the same instrument that would be responsible for controlling our messy emotions might be the reason emotions are so messy to begin with.
The rational mind is new, and it is weak in the face of emotion. Emotions motivate us to act, but our mind takes these visceral feelings and tangles them. Pay not attention to the mind or the emotion, but to the source of the emotion and its meaning.
Check it out

filed under:

somatic-architecture on-(un)happiness on-thinking-and-reasoning

article

The scientific method is just another belief system, a ritual subject to errors of application like any other. In being thus, it has become ‘a machine for generating exaggerations’.

The Scientific Ritual

article

One might say we have acquired something of an obsession with the scientific method. News articles enthusiastically tell us what the science says and secular culture scoffs at the myths of the spiritual. In this we are mistaken. The scientific method is a belief system, a ritual, subject to errors of application like any other.
The scientific method is just another belief system, a ritual subject to errors of application like any other. In being thus, it has become ‘a machine for generating exaggerations’.
Check it out

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thought-architecture spiritual-architecture on-thinking-and-reasoning on-being-fruitful

article

Varela’s gestures of awareness—suspension, redirection, letting go—align with cognitive science findings on insight, emphasizing their value in understanding human thought and experience.

Insight and the Sciences

article

Varela’s gestures are a simple, almost trite, model of the crowning achievement of human thought—insight. At first it might appear to simple. Here, we take a survey of the sciences of the mind, and we find that in fact, despite all the technology at our disposal, the complex methods and methodologies, the summary of the sciences is strikingly similar.
Varela’s gestures of awareness—suspension, redirection, letting go—align with cognitive science findings on insight, emphasizing their value in understanding human thought and experience.
Check it out

filed under:

spiritual-architecture somatic-architecture on-thinking-and-reasoning
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