Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Table of Contents:
Spirituality and Philosophy
Final Letter
I thought I’d post this now because in the future I may be too forgetful, preoccupied, or disabled to do this. So (possibly way in advance): It was great, and now I’m finished. Thanks for all you’ve all done. Most of you have been friends who’ve helped me. Admittedly, some few of you haven’t liked […]
Finding God’s Purpose
A friend used this term, “God’s Purpose,” and it got me to wondering: Well, one interpretation is to just do what we can to make everything nice, the greatest good for the greatest numbers, as Jeremy Bentham suggested? (Or was it Frances Hutchinson? You go to Wikipedia and find that clichés are more than what […]
Foolin’ Around
On my website under “papers” at the bottom is a section titled “Foolin’ Around, and there I have posted some links to webpages that might be amusing to you. They have odd cartoon-doodles I’ve drawn, too. They are bits of fluff that in a sense illustrate my doodles. No, they’re really profound and mysteriously exotic […]
Framming the Zhork-2
Zordak (pictured on the right) offered a further elaboration of what “Framming the Zhork” might entail, responding to my entreaties: “Please, anything. What are you talking about.” He sent this: “Here. Fat lot of good it’ll do you.” There will be of course a variety of problems in translation. For example that mid-1960s fancy automobile […]
Freedom to Create
You may enjoy more or less foolin’ around, creativity, making-stuff-up, as you grow older. The important thing is that you feel free to do so, that you are not inhibited by phony residuals. Tradition says that all the great stuff is made up by great men. Rarely women. Myths, beliefs, laws, stuff like that. It […]
Fully Enlightened or “Excessive ‘Spiritual’ Excess?
This is a gentle rant against the use of such words as “fully,” “completely,” “absolutely,” or “pure” in talks and articles that have to do with spiritual practice. Such words represent that category in grammar called the “superlative”—as in not better, but “best.” The trouble with this group of words is that they often represent […]
Future Computers: Clever or Wise?
In a recent Time Magazine February 21, 2011, a feature article speculated on the exponential growth of computer speed, power, size of memory, and other variables. As an example, a computer named Watson beat other experienced (human) contestants in a difficult game of Jeopardy! Computers will become smarter than humans soon! (?). I’m dubious about […]
Getting Ready to Move to California
All has been a-flurry! We sold our house in Sun City Texas and are planning to move to mid-coastal California, San Luis Obispo, half-way between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The railroad stops there, and we hope to use it more. So much “stuff” to pack. It’s our precious treasures! It’s our crap! It’s mixed. […]
God Made Mud
I must confess that this passage from Chapter 99, page 149, of Kurt Vonnegut Jr’s 1973 novel, “Cat’s Cradle” appeals to me. I’d like to have it read at my funeral. It’s from his imaginary religion of “Bokononism,” which says that all religions are based on lies. I am a flagrant myth-maker, who nevertheless aligns […]
God Realization (??)
We all get our god-realization in different ways. For me as I fell asleep on the edge of the Autumnal Equinox or thereabouts, 9/21/11, something like a minor god-realization happened through a gentle extension of a slight talent I have—i.e., when at the edge of sleep I begin to remember thousands of dream images as […]
God-Playing: Can you DO that?
Well, you can’t pretend to yourself that you really are God. It’s taboo! Don’t even think of doing that! Indeed, there is a whole category of things you may not do. It’s all mixed in with what we don’t know how to do and what we believe that there’s no way of doing. "Whoa! Can […]
Good Gracious!
This blog has been inactive for a few months as we’ve been moving from Texas to California. We have reached an age where we need the help of our daughter’s family, and, indeed, more of us may well be able to achieve more of what we aim for. Meanwhile, our goals and aspirations have been […]
Happily Ever Aftering
What a sweet idea, part of the lyrics to the title song in the 1960s Broadway Musical, “Camelot.” How appreciative I am that I seem to have settled into this condition with my soulmate-wife, Allee, and our wonderful home and community. Yet happiness is by no means complacency or stasis: There is work to be […]
Helping God Be Born
This is my preferred myth at this point in my life. It really doesn’t matter to me that this may be far from the truth. It feels to me that it’s close enough and by comparison to any other philosophy I’ve encountered—and that relativistic comparison is what counts—it’s better on many counts. The myth suggests […]
Here’s How It Works
(Disclaimer: I have little idea of what’s going on. It’s a metaphysical intuition. In a thousand years it will seem laughable. Saying it another way, I’m “apophatic,” which is another way to confess that I haven’t a clue. Nevertheless, I’m a meaning-making creature, and that is in part the nature of mind. So what follows […]
Higgs Boson, Higgs Field?
So, really, now they give a high probability to having seen if not the Higgs Boson, then the odd pattern of decay particles it was calculated to generate.. and then what that refers to—this is VERY WEIRD— a "Higgs Field" that pervades the cosmos and without which nothing would be thing-ish, no mass. So I’m […]
High Dimensionality
I’ve been coming to the thought that mind itself is the primary reality, not matter, the 3rd dimension—which is what most people take to be hard reality. Most recognize that the 2nd dimension—what they can see in pictures, read in papers, is not altogether reality. Alfred North Whitehead went up one notch and noted that […]
Higher Consciousness (More?)
Mind is both rational and non-rational; it is multi-dimensional and although part of it does logic, the wider processes of mind cannot be explained in terms of any linear approach to logical connections. It includes the shape-shifting nature of language, and play, along with related paradoxical actions and experiences. These are abundant in humor and […]
Higher Dimensional Thinking
Yes, about “straight answers”— what if at higher dimensional levels of mind there are no straight answers? so I’m putting on my blog and also will weave into my lectures: S.J. Perelman, in his book, Most of the Most of S.J. Perelman (Modern Library, NY, 2000), on page 64, wrote: “Yet figures, which I am […]
How It Looks from Here
Zordak speaking: So here’s the deal. Pretend that when you talk this way you don’t mean it, you’re just foolin’ around. Okay. So somewhere on the order of 24,000 sprite-souls have been incarnated onto your planet because Earth-people really need them. The species has become caught up in illusion. We’ve been sending liberatory sprite-souls for […]
How It Really Works
Okay, this is a bit mythic, and speculative: The cosmos breathes, the rate of expansion and contraction operating along the course of what in mathematics is known as a sine wave—not a spike, not a square wave—but gradually then faster then slower then that sequence going in the opposite direction. It becomes more complex and […]
How It Works
I have been informed by those in the know—or say they’re in the know—that we live in a multi-dimensional cosmos. “Duh, we all knew that.” “No,” they say, “Most folks don’t.” “What? I replied, Haven’t they been reading my blog?” I guess not. Anyway, there are lots of interpenetrating dimensions. As for us, we’re at […]
How Life Goes
I find the diagram known as the Shree Yantra to be a profound one that I use to exercise my imagination. In the following freehand drawing, I note within each triangle its own sort-of maze. What this symbolizes for me is this. The eight central triangles and the one that weaves them together is the […]
How Psychodrama Works
I have been contemplating how Moreno’s method works, and tentatively conclude that it makes explicit that which is done implicitly. It unfolds consciousness. Words allow the beginnings of intuition to take form, and, speaking mythically, G-d created people , evolved them painstakingly over a million years, so that they could use words. The neocortex mediates […]
Hyper-Complexity
My spirituality continues to evolve. I’m 78½ and some would say I’m too old for continuing evolution, but it’s a promise to younger people that life can get better and better even as in some ways one declines. A colleague and I will be presenting on ways action explorations (i.e., psychodramatic methods) can facilitate spiritual […]