Knowledge of Good and Evil

Knowledge of Good and Evil

Copyright 2017 Don Ray

(Reference: the Biblical tale of the Garden of Eden)

To have profound knowledge of good and evil you must be inescapably trapped in a situation out of your control.  If you can merely wish yourself out of an unpleasant situation, if your conscious experience is not bound to some interaction matrix (the role served by this temporal-physical existence), your experience of good and evil is no more real and substantive than if you were watching a movie or playing a video game.

If the circumstances and outcomes remain in your control you cannot experience good and evil with the full essence of your being.

Small World

Small World

Copyright 2017 Don Ray

The world looks small this morning, the thinness of the atmosphere somehow evident, the rippling geology only a thin crust, the burgeoning population compressed into an acutely finite area.  

Big earth or small earth, like everything the difference lies only in our mind, qualia of terminology fooling us into imagining relative scales of our own creation have some actual meaning.

If the perceived largeness and smallness of entire planets and galaxies are merely a whim of our momentary fancy, speaking not of the object we declare to be large or small but actually just reflecting our perception of our own scale of relative influence or subservience to the object in question, how much credence should we give to all our other judgements, beliefs, and paradigms?

Our Actions: Coerced, Compelled, and Chosen

Our Actions: Coerced; Compelled; Chosen 

Copyright 2017 Don Ray

The answers are all right before us.  The structure of existence, the nature of our being, the summary of purpose and meaning, it is all right before us.

Look just a little deeper, just a little deeper.

Gently peel away the worldly façade and recognize what is really transpiring in most of our human endeavors.

Everything we do falls into a few categories.  1) We do that which we think facilitates our survival-security-and comfort.  2) We do that which connects us to something or someone.  3) We do that which is irrationally loving. 

Soul Music

Soul Music

Copyright 2017 Don Ray

While watching an amazing piano concerto performance by John Nakamatsu.

As I watch the extreme facial and body language and contortions, and marvel at the physical training and skills of these artists, it strikes me how ridiculous the whole thing is.  To train the human body to this extreme level, to concoct such bizarre contraptions of wood and string and metal, all in the effort to communicate from one soul to another…….this scene and countless others like it through the ages give powerful testimony to a profound and fundamental truth.

Musical instruments, and the musicians that master them, demonstrate the desperate drive that takes the human spirit to any lengths to establish, even if only for the duration of a performance, some connection with another human soul.

Coalescing Confluence of Circumstance

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Coalescing confluence of circumstance: isn’t that what leads much of our lives?...that and disruptive shocks.

Is it really unreasonable …….to perceive our lives as being led?  We rebel against the notion, insisting we are in control.  But honest assessment of our personal histories usually reveals conscious choice played a bit part compared to the coalescing confluence.

The tides and currents and waves are out of our control, and there is great peace to be had in admitting that.

Our capacity, and our responsibility, lies in our choice as to which tides we will feel, which currents we will allow to touch us.  Before the coalescing confluence places opportunity before us, we have chosen if we are open to opportunities for profit or personal growth, for power or passionate service.

Do not delude yourself

Cranial Caucus: confusing conundrums of consciousness

Cranial Caucus

Don Ray

Copyright 2016

Self-awareness, thoughts arising from within the self, objective-external sensory inputs, the self’s filtering and perception of those external inputs, dictated-genetically programmed thoughts and behaviors, randomly firing neurons and synapses, reactions and automatic responses, and somewhere in that cacophony, the whispering of the Holy Spirit?!

Good grief, can consciousness really be so complicated?!  And I’ve not even yet invoked the mysterious subconscious!

Maybe we should introduce a few possessing spirits while we’re at it!….and let’s not leave out addictions, lusts, and hungers, with their concomitant ability to deftly weave our rationalizations of our irrational behaviors.