Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Table of Contents:
Spirituality and Philosophy
My Angle on God (Part 1)
I assume, first, that there are innumerable ways to apprehend the Greater Wholeness of Being, the Everything that Includes the Dimensions of Mind and Realms-as-yet-Inconceivable, and That Which No Mind Can Begin to Imagine. There are bunch of other words or phrases that could be used. Second, I grant myself a unique viewpoint that reflects […]
My Angle on God (Part 2)
This evocative phrase occurred to me last night, following some reading about the mid-Renaissance German mystic, Jacob Boehme. It’s a playful turn of phrase that stands in contrast to the idea that there is only one right way to understand the Divine—i.e., orthodoxy. Can people develop their own take, their own interpretation, aside from that […]
My Approach in Psychotherapy
I found a piece of paper listing “My Approach,” written 6/15/93, at the height (?) of my career: Indeed, I sorta did it. Looking back I think it was extraordinary, but it seemed to be what’s needed: 1. Weave inner connections, using art and creativity. 2. Develop skills of psychological literacy—basic knowledge, education, […]
My Autobiography
It is infinitely expandable—well, not literally “infinite” but a lot—and also capable of being edited down to a few lines for those who are not interested. How much to put into my obituary? For those who read my obituary, it seems that there could be several lengths: (1) addressing just the high points briefly, for […]
My Core Myth
Far from me considering that I can say what my own purpose on Earth is. I am deeply apophatic, meaning that I believe rather strongly that I cannot begin to think about what it’s all about, nor what I’m all about. Our accelerating discoveries about the universe prove to me that whatever our philosophies were […]
My Dharma
It seems to me that we have many dharmas, worthy paths, duties. Mainly my paths calls on me to be a loving man to my family. There are many other things to do, such as maintain my health. Aside from those, though, my dharma or path seems to be primarily to witness to ideas, and […]
My Dharma
It occurred to me that I’m twenty rows back, supporting those in front. I’m still part of the 0.01% of the vanguard of evolution, at least in this part of the cosmos but yet not the leaders. Nor do I need to be, nor want to be. Higher conscious-ness than mine carries with it more […]
My Faith (?)(!)
How embarrassing. I used to think of myself as an unbeliever! But I’ve come round. A friend really challenges me. He is where I was ten years ago. He made me realize that I have truly delved—what a portentous word!—and I don’t want to give that short shrift. I have taken LSD a few times; […]
My Offspringing Kidlings
I was feeling apologetic about my inability to really get into kids, stimulated by a comparison with Allee (my wife) and my daughter, who are more people people. Allee said, Your writings are you “offspring-ings” and I later had the thought, “Verily, the are my “kid-lings.” (Well, I didn’t say verily, but you get the […]
My Spiritual Myth
The first statement is that I don’t know; and my best guess is that I will never know. Nore, to take it a step further, do I think that any human mind can really grasp what it’s all about. This active abdication from the arrogance of trying to name or know “the Everything” goes by […]
My Spiritual Myth
Here’s my statement of faith. First a qualifier: I believe that I don’t know and in my best guess, will never know, nor—to take it a step further—can any human mind really grasp what it’s all about. The hi-falutin’ word for that position is “apophatic.” Another way to say this is that the highest mystics […]
My Visions for the Future
I am a visionary. I don’t claim to be all that great at it, but it’s what I do: I envision what could be. In terms of Jung’s theory of temperament, I’m an intuitive type, I naturally think about things in terms of future possible implications. I’ve also been exposes to a bunch of ideas […]
Mystery Seeks Meaning
mystery seeks meaning myth fills in, expressing mind’s compulsion to create story Not exactly a haiku, but an intuitive hint of transcendental philosophy. Indeed, what if contemporary speculations are cosmologies are higher order examples of complications of a sequence of mystery, myth, story, religion, spirituality, metaphysical philosophy? Given ambiguity, intuited patterns will coalesce. Saying […]
Mystery versus Problem
One of the ideas that deeply impressed me was the re-interpretation of the idea of mystery by Huston Smith, a scholar (1992, Essays on World Religion). Our tendency is to turn mysteries into problems, or worse, problems into puzzles. Worse because we are inclined to use the same trick we use to solve one puzzle […]
Mythmaking (The Great Pumpkin)
Recently I saw this “Peanuts” comic strip about Charlie Brown encountering Linus in the pumpkin patch as the latter awaits the arrival of the “Great Pumpkin.” What struck me about this is the reminder that even surprisingly precocious and intelligent people can have weird notions. For example, Linus, whose character I played in the 2010 […]
Naming the Everything
Tradition is strong, and the names of certain gods themselves became sacred, as they were called on as local, special protectors. This is a residue of what was called “hinotheism,” and some have noted that early Judaism didn’t so much as deny the existence of other gods as make it obligatory for our tribe—on pain […]
Napoleon’s Hemorrhoids (Book Review)
Mason, Phil. (2009). Napoleon’s hemorrhoids (and other small events that changed history. New York: Skyhorse Publishing —delightful book, chock full of brief anecdotes about the little glitches, where things went awfully wrong, close calls, or moments of serendipity. It’s amusing or terrifying to contemplate how things might be different but for… The author in this […]
Natural Inclusionality Approved
I have been corresponding with some acquaintances who in my estimate are really very bright, and I’m honored to be included in their circle. One Alan Rayner, is a retired professor of biology in England who evolved a theory of what he calls “Natural Inclusionality,” an approach that he thinks (and I agree in general) […]
Neurosis: Its Origins
I confess that I am taken somewhat with the new theories of neuroscience that serve as a testable biological source of neurosis and psychosis, but in spite of my wanting to expand psychoanalysis radically, including issues such as temperament and cultural and social issues, I really think that fully half of significant psychiatric disorders—often with […]
New Posts on my Website
Sometimes my percolating brain generates more extensive essays, which I post on my website. The following posted today are worth checking out: 1. Belonging-ness: Posted on webpage: http://www.blatner.com/adam/psyntbk/belongingness.html 2. Paradigm Shift: My intuition is that we are in the midst of several fundamental shifts of world-view. One is the developing of more complex forms of […]
New Website Papers
You might also go to my website papers and browse to see what is new. Longer papers have been written. More recently, I’ve prepared (and posted) papers on the following topics: 1. De-Mystifying Mysticism, a talk I give on October 27 at a conference on Pediatrics and Spirituality in Houston, Texas. 2. Visionaries: […]
Nibbling at the Ineffable
It’s all so big, so multi-dimensional, so head-spinning complex, all we can do is to nibble on this “mountain.” The Ineffable is a adjective that means it cannot be captured in words, nor music nor art. It’s way too big. We can try, recognizing that whatever we say is only a pointer, and by definition, […]
Nibbling At the Ineffable
There are Hindu legend that use the word “kalpa,” which refers to the time it takes for a universe to form. So, alluding to this myth, I envision a tiny bird pecking at a granite mountain, getting a few molecules of that mountain. The meta-cosmos is the great universe that includes the 3-D cosmos plus […]
Nice to See You
I saw God. Well, not all of God, but a itty-bitty glow of the fingertip of “Her” fin-ger-tip, so to speak. I saw it by standing on tiptoe on a chair and peeking over the transom (the window above the doorway) and Lo! There She was, a tiny glow under a table. I said, “You’re […]
Ninety-Nine Point Nine Nine Nine
That has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Anyway, 99.999 percent or more of everything doesn’t get utilized for the precise purpose for which it was designed. For example, sperm, embryo squids, oak tree acorns, various other kinds of seeds, stars, planets, etc.—most stuff doesn’t directly contribute to its own entelechy. The entelechy of […]