Greetings to all of my readers and visitors here at John’s Consciousness!
I recently decided to take it up a notch here and acquired my own new domain, “Johns-Consciousness.com,” and have marked the occasion with the addition of a new theme as well. There have been some changes in my personal life that have prompted me to re-evaluate my approach to both the conduct of my daily life and to the subject which has occupied me almost constantly since I began this blog in earnest in January of 2011. This month, I will have completed my 65th year of life on Earth, and it occurred to me that a great deal has changed even in the almost eight years I have been blogging here at WordPress.
The image above represents one particular aspect of my interest in our subjective experience of human consciousness–one that I have not spoken of much since I began writing this blog. Since October 15, 2006, I have maintained an avatar presence on the website, SecondLife.com, and have had a number of interesting experiences and conversations with other participants from all over the world. For a while, I even maintained a residence and worked an actual paying position as a tour guide for an 18th century palace simulation. Many of the characters I have met along the way have since moved away or stopped visiting the website, but there are still plenty of adventures and opportunities available for anyone with the time and inclination to pursue them.
Part of the reason I decided to participate in the world of Second Life was my fascination with the concept of creating a “second” version of myself through the power of virtual reality technology, which was quite new back in the early 2000’s. As I floundered in the beginning steps towards citizenship, I discovered that the concept of living a virtual life, as opposed to what we like to describe as our “real life,” held many opportunities for contemplating the nature of human life, without many of the distractions of physically interacting in other “real-time” social environments. Much to my surprise, I found the experiences strangely compelling at times, and I continue to enjoy observing and interacting as the opportunity presents itself.
Of course, participating in the “real world,” can often seem unreal at times, and anyone who has been following along here at John’s Consciousness knows that I have had more than my share of seemingly “unreal” experiences. The question that naturally presents itself when you look up at a spectacular and peculiar sky, or experience any sort of “other-worldly” encounter in our daily travels is “What the heck is going on?” If we are paying attention and fully living in the moment when something inexplicable occurs, or perhaps when we suddenly wake up in the middle of the night during a particularly vivid or startling dream, there is a moment or two where we are not at all certain about what is real and what is unreal. It can sometimes take us momentarily to a place where we may question our perceptions and our understanding of our very human nature.
Recently, I left the world of working a job outside the home every day, which had sustained me since I first started working way back in June of 1968. For fifty years, no matter what aspirations I held or what goals I was pursuing outside of work, raising my six children, and supporting my family in all things, I was never really able to give my writing and research and contemplation the full attention they deserved. There were times when I nearly gave up on the idea of fulfilling these aspirations altogether. When the day finally came to step away, it felt like a great stone had been lifted from my chest. I’m still in the early days of disbelief and astonishment at the thought of turning 65 this month, but slowly I’m beginning to feel the compelling sense of participating in a transition to another stage of my life, and I am at least hopeful that it will bear fruit at some point.
Albert Einstein’s quote reminds me that all of the feeling and longing that I have held on to these many years has indeed been a source of creativity in my endeavors, and a motivating force that has kept my blog humming along these past seven and a half years. I hope you will all ride along with me as I navigate through the next phase of my endeavors here, and that we can share in the process of discovery together in the time to come.
John's Consciousness 