"Driftwood," by Winslow Homer (1836-1910) “I can reach a state where I seem to be watching things happen as if I were there. That is, I suppose, that my memory supplies what I had forgotten, so that it seems as if it were happening independently, though I am really making it happen. In certain favorable … Continue reading Blog Post #400 – Moments of Being
Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary says: “A supernatural event regarded as due to divine action; an extremely remarkable achievement or event; e.g. “it was a miracle he wasn’t hurt.” Anyone possessing even a passing familiarity with religious ideas has probably heard of what holy books have described as miracles—turning water into wine, healing the sick, and other … Continue reading The Mystery of Miracles – Divine Intervention or Just Impossible To Explain?
Anyone even vaguely familiar with the term “mystical,” whether from a religious practice or simply from an investigation into the subject generally, can usually agree that it includes a whole range of possible experiences which may qualify. In his classic volume, “Varieties of Religious Experience,” William James writes: “The adjective ‘mystical’ is technically applied, most … Continue reading The Mystical Is Often Metaphorical
Day six of covid infection... Finally beginning to feel human again after five horrendous days of illness this past week. My experience with this illness has been very educational and directly responsible for an environment where my basic brain functionality suffered a major impairment of unprecedented character in my nearly seven decades of life. In … Continue reading And on the seventh day…
There have been moments lately, where it seemed to me, that I, myself, have been chasing the shade. Clearly, in the summertime, when it gets particularly hot, and the sun is particularly dangerous, we find ourselves moving our chairs so that they remain in the shade. As the sun creeps up, we move the chairs … Continue reading Winter Pastoral: Chasing the Shade
This most recent effort in producing video content has been the most challenging of the series, for a number of reasons, and the software I'm using continues to provide a fair amount of aggravation as I worked at putting it all together, but I think the result is interesting enough considering the subject, in spite … Continue reading Consciousness Video Series: Episode 7: A Theory of Everything
I finally had a chance to post the poem I worked on during my recent trip into the mountains, and hope my readers and visitors will enjoy this brief video. https://videopress.com/v/SlIyuuM6?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true Here is the text of the poem, so you can read along as I recite it. Enjoy! The Only Light in the Wilderness The … Continue reading Light in the Wilderness
While reviewing my personal journals this month, I was surprised to come across a lengthy account of a particularly intense episode during one of my ventures within, which I had set aside a few months ago. I generally prefer to review my writing after some time has passed, as I frequently find the routine of … Continue reading Consciousness Video Series: Episode 6: Metaphor and the Inner Experience
I recently presented a brief video episode about our experience of life, https://johns-consciousness.com/2022/03/26/consciousness-video-series-episode-3-experience-of-the-world/ and wanted to elaborate on the topic of our experiential awareness a bit, since there seems to be a fair amount of variation in the understanding of how our experience of life comes about. This is a fairly broad topic and I … Continue reading Our Experience of Life
Universal Mind series. Background composition of human head and fractal clouds to complement your layouts on the subject of mind, dreams, thinking, consciousness and imagination The subject of transcendence as it relates to our subjective experience of consciousness is pretty broad in scope and complexity, and while it is one of the core issues when … Continue reading Consciousness Video Series: Episode 5: Transcendence Intro
John's Consciousness 