Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Table of Contents:
Spirituality and Philosophy
To Dance a Thousand Flames and Call Them “Self”
This phrase and picture came at me some years ago and re-presented itself recently in light of a growing awareness that I serve as a vehicle for innumerable roles. Some of these include dishwasher-guy (a not-particularly-super-hero), amanuensis (I just take dictation), encourager of others (often international students), etc. The point of course is that “Self” […]
Too Much or Not Enough
The comedian George Carlen remarked, “There are two kinds of people on the road: idiots and nuts. Idiots are those who drive slower than you; nuts are those who drive faster.” A friend wrote that as president of his (church, synagogue, congregation), he was always needing to mediate between those who felt their clergyman (minister, […]
Top Dog in the Cosmos?
What if indeed we are NOT top dog in the cosmos? What if we humans are a species of life that ’s a whole lot smarter than algae, but only about half-way up to the ultimate in really-being-smart (yet still short of omniscience).
Toward Tomorrow: A New Myth
The acceleration of change in our era offers a new myth for our time: The blossoming of a flower or bud. Things can go along for months or weeks, but in a few days buds turn into leaves or flowers. Things change relatively fast after a long incubation. Birth happens. And so it is with […]
Turn the World Around
Harry Belafonte co-wrote a song and performed it on the televised Muppet Show in the late 1980s: “Turn the World Around.” (You can see it on YouTube.) “We come from the mountain,” the song goes. “Living on the mountain; Go back to the mountain, turn the world around!” Then the song repeats for fire instead […]
Tweetum-Tweetum
I think that’s the call of a Cardinal-bird. A walk on a late Spring morning, with Allee, who is recovering from an appendectomy. (It was done with one of those little ‘scopes that go in through the belly button.) Wow. In the olden days she would have had to stay in the hospital a couple […]
Two Aspects of Religion
Traditional religions combined law and spirituality, but in the modern age, law and civility in general has become separated from the more mythic elements of spirituality. Where there has evolved a rather vigorous sense of civility, secularism shows its more progressive side, and law and civility is a sort of secular religion—in the sense of […]
Two More Things About Enhanced Simulations
First, it’s another word for Action Explorations. Second, it’s axiodramatic and sociodramatic as well as psychodramatic. All these are more complex ways of re-examining political, ethical, and social norms as they evolve. What was if not righteous, then normative, become ethically dubious, challengeable, “evil.” This has been one angle on history. In this last century, […]
Types of Knowledge
There is a spectrum here. There’s stuff I know pretty much with certainty and then stuff I pretty well know but I could tolerate being corrected. Then there’s stuff I sort of know and I can go back and retrieve other memories and shore this up. Sort of “yes, that was when… and the book […]
Tzimtzum Reconsidered
This title speaks to a re-thinking or re-interpretation of the Hebrew word, tzimtzum, which means contraction, and alludes to a mythic doctrine developed by Rabbi Isaac Luria in the 16th century community of Safed near the Galilee in Israel. So in the following myth I present the new story: In the beginning God’s presence was […]
Ultimate Truth (Maybe)
We all have intrinsic quirkiness—and that 9.3% of us even allow it to be expressed interpersonally; only 2.1% know they do it on purpose—but they don’t know what they’re really doing. Only 0.0021% know what interpersonal quirkiness is about: We all live in separate realities that we co-construct both unconsciously and to a rare minor […]
Unaffiliated Idealism
If I had to give a name to my “religion,” this would be it. I realized only recently that I did indeed have a spiritual path as a teenager: “unaffiliated idealism.” (I had no name for it then, though.) As a lad I collected and cut out nickel-priced used copies of Readers’ Digests, and similar […]
Uncovering the More
In the last half century humanity as extended itself tenfold (at least) in many directions: We now know there are many galaxies orders of magnitude in numbers and distance beyond what we knew before (thanks to Hubble-like telescopes); and realms of atomic interactions more subtle and complex than we knew before, with theories involving orders […]
Unfolding Consciousness
.Consciousness is progressing gradually, unfolding, ideas building on each other. Things take time and their processes operate on multiple levels and in multiple dimensions. Much of my work has gone in the direction of facilitating this unfolding consciousness, at whatever pace. A bit of encouragement here, a boost there. It’s a very slight intervention I […]
What If Dreams Are Reflections of Trans-Dimensional Existence?
I have become vaguely aware that we humans are similar in many ways, and dissimilar in many ways; we are multi-dimensional minds in (as far as we know) three-dimensional bodies. But dreams tell us we are far more than 3-D! This is a cockeyed interpretation of dreams: Dreams, most people assert (and who am I […]
What Keeps Me Going:
First thing is singing, often an improvised marching tune, or anything. It might be a simple note that I begin to vary and watch what begins to come. The notes are then amplified into a basic tune. Be-boo-bop, no particular words. Occasionally I might insert the words to a spiritual chant, such as Om Namah […]
What We Don’t Know
Truly, of all the happenings in the vastness of the cosmos, what we know is almost infinitesimally tiny. So as a friend asked herself, “How can I teach when I don’t know?” I responded, “I too know (on this scale) next to nothing. Courage! On another scale, most people don’t have the tools to see […]
What’s It All About
It’s gloriously complex, to begin with. Each person has an incredible complex of challenges: – to heal the various hurts arising from areas of particular weakness, general weakness, lack of talent, physical disability (even slight), body form, too much this, not enough that, so many things to feel ashamed of. Then there’s the subtle […]
Who “Has” What? The Relationship of Self and Soul
Do I have a soul, or does my soul have me? The word “have” and the notion of possession may be misleading. When you were a young child you learned about what it means to have something by associating it with simple concepts: “I have my toy, I give it away, I don’t have it […]
Why Is There Anything
A recent book by John Holt is titled, Why Does the World Exist? (New York: Liveright / Norton.) It occurred to me that the basis for this book, reasoned argumentation that forms the foundation of modern philosophy, is based on the assumption that there must be a rational explanation. To the contrary: It’s an aesthetic […]
Why Is There Anything?
Book Review and Comments: Krauss, Lawrence M. (2012). A universe from nothing: why there is something rather than nothing. New York: Free Press. Professor Krauss, at Arizona State University, writes a book that I would have agreed with pretty much 45 years ago. But I’ve changed my mind. This book surprises me with my […]
Wisdom & Folly in Our Time
This blog was stimulated by my reading a recently published book by Howard Gardner titled, Truth, beauty and goodness reframed: educating for the virtues in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Basic Books / Perseus, 2011). I have become increasingly aware of the responsibility each person has for integrating the reality of his or her individuality […]
Wise-Eldering
Might there be a role for “wise-elders”? The word, “crone” has been used, mainly for a woman wise-elder, and some have included men in that role, but I think wise-elder is more inclusive of both genders. Anyway, at a certain age, gender considerations still obtain—such as for some in the realms of romance and sexuality—; […]
Wonder-Filled
A Negro spiritual song from the 19th century goes: “Oh won’t you sit down? Lord, I can’t sit down! (Repeat two more times) I just got to Heav’n, gotta look around!” It turns out that we have a bit of heaven right here for those who have eyes to see. Really, it’s not the eyes, […]
Working on My Magnum Opus
Working on My Magnum Opus: my great work, which may be titled “Dimension-ality.” It’s a summation of my several studies in psychiatry, process theology, new-age philosophy, transpersonal psychology, comparative religions, and bunches of other readings. It’s all coming out in a cartoon-doodle-illustrated book that’s mainly mandalas, but also an illustrated commentary as to how these […]