Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Table of Contents:
Autobiographical
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 […]
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 […]
Growing Up in Paradise
Well, there were a number of elements in my childhood that were not paradisiacal, but on the other hand, there were some. The location of my home in my early years was one, the subject of this blog. I grew up in Los Angeles about half-way between Hollywood and Beverly Hills, in an area bounded […]
Happy Springtime! (2018)
Glorious Spring! Birds are singing, and mocking-birds (my favorite) are impro-vising ! We’re all dancing! We are creating in multiple ways in the service of God-Becoming in an exponential-experiential way. (I just made that phrase up!) I’m writing on my next project, which is an anthology of ways to use Moreno’s psycho-dramatic methodology (or related […]
Heavens to Murgatroyd
This old essay circulating on the internet many years ago, was sent by an old, old friend: Remember the name, Murgatroyd. Would you believe the email spell checker did not recognize the word Murgatroyd? Heavens to Murgatroyd! Lost Words from our childhood: Words gone as fast as the buggy whip! Sad really! The […]
Hello and Good-Bye
I’ve just written birthday cards to friends and relatives and I realized that these may be among the last few score or hundred that I ever write. If you’re not in email contact with my descendants, you’re “out of it,” literally. Postal mail, greeting cards, are going the way of penguins and parrots. It may […]
Hello, World
Well, there you are, whether you’re aware of it or not, needing if not awaiting my efforts to change you for the better. Please forgive me for not being able to offer much more than the tiniest nibble at the ineffable monumentality of the challenge, but I’m just a little person, a member of a […]
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 […]
Helping Others Feel Better
In the aforementioned Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. book, “Cat’s Cradle,” there is another quote that asserts the priority of encounter, human help, over mere, dry, facts as we believe them to be. One of the characters, a Doctor von Koenigswald, in Chapter 98, page 148, says, “I am a very bad scientist. I will do anything […]
History of Medicine: Now Playing
Thinking about my medical school class reunion, I flash on the branching of the Great Story, the history of the cosmos , out of which come the history of the evolution of humanity, and with it, – the history of consciousness evolution, which branches in many directions, such as the history of various endeavors, farming, […]
Holiday Cards? Life Moves On
‘Tis the season to be jolly, and part of that is the exchange of cards and connections. Aside from the cards exchanged, there is a small degree to which this ritual arouses mixed feelings. On one hand, I am a little hurt, if I think about it, at the degree to which people I’ve reached […]
Holiday Greetings 2015
Much has happened if I think about it, and also I sort-of forget, thinking that life goes on, la-dee-dah, nothing much happening. Yet both a lot and nothing much are both illusions. I’ll be talking and posting in a while about illusions, mainly psychological illusions—the defense mechanisms of the psychoanalysts, the cognitve distortions of cognitive […]
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 […]
I Blog
I don’t have anything else to do; I’ve done it enough for almost 80 years. Now I want to sit back (literally) and comment on it, and few people may care. Maybe you. So I’m doing it for you. I realize that we are socially embedded creatures who need at least a figurative if not […]
I Changed My Name!
Yes! And if you don’t like your name, maybe you can change your name, too! Why not? Re-invent yourself. Before that my given name was Howard, which was—how shall I say it—an okay name for the 1920s and ‘30s, but kinda dorky. Howard-the-Coward. Yuk. But I had become involved in learning more about psychodrama, and […]
I Did It Thy Way
One of my favorite songs to sing in the shower over the last few decades is the Frank Sinatra theme song, “My Way,” (the words actually by Paul Anka); but about ten years ago in the shower Uncle Bud, my conscience, said to me, “Come on, you didn’t do it your way!” “Whaddaya mean?” says […]
I Found God (Sort-of)
At least I think it’s God. Or, more likely, a projection of Her/His/Its shadow. The Ground of Being itself can’t be directly perceived with either senses or even intuition. Anyway, as I get ready to turn eighty, I do believe there’s something that gives rise to our reality “Higher Power” is the wrong word. It […]
I Found God! (Finally!)
I’ve been playing with dimensionality as a tool for exploring mind, and have been making mind the basis of a philosophical scale. So that mind that thinks about mind is the 6th dimension. Working back: Mind that thinks at all is the 5th dimension. Time is the 4th (according to Albert Einstein), ordinary reality is […]
I Get To!
I feel privileged to be trusted with doing the laundry and the dishes. These chores appeal to a simple part of me that express my willingness to help. But I also get to do so much more! – sing songs that I’ve loved from childhood, such as “It’s a Grand Night for Singing,” etc. […]
I Gotta Be Me (?)
This cartoon by Gary Larson over 20 years ago struck me as funny. There’s a part of me who is this penguin. There’s another part who finds my stance pitiful, because I know that there are thousands, millions of other entities working “in the fields of the Lord” to advance humanity and the evolution of […]
I Lived in Paradise
Well, it was paradise to us. I had several karmic challenges, but I was also given an idyllic childhood in many ways. I know, lots of kids idealize their home, and lots don’t. But I just want to note my home on the map, so as not to take it for granted. We had a […]
I’m Baaack!
There has been a hiatus in my blogging as I’ve been out to visit family. During this time I’ve become more sharply aware of my finitude, and the need to divest my stuff. It’s interesting stuff. I’m a stuff-aholic—mainly books, but also puppets and song books and little doll-like thingey-o’s (in Yiddish, “Tchatch’-ke-les,” little toys. […]
Iconoclasm Revisited
My wife and I were chatting and I murmured, “I guess I’m a bit of an iconoclast.” She erupted vehemently—the word has very negative connotations to her, shallow, destructive rather than constructive, close to the sense of mere anarchy. Aha, here is another instance of certain words being nested in associations that are sometimes emotionally […]