Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
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 […]
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The Adventure of Dialogue
There’s a quality of dialogue that, when refined, illustrates an interesting dynamic: The superstars of Jesus’ childhood were the wise elders of that culture, the scholars who debated the deeper meanings of the Holy Scriptures. Two were outstanding: Rabbi Shammai and Rabbi Hillel, the former being somewhat conservative, the latter somewhat liberal, but both were […]
Posted in Essays and Papers, Spirituality and Philosophy, Wisdom-ing | 1 Comment
Zordak’s Journal: The Elementals
Zordak here. No, over here. No, I guess you can’t see me directly… just out of the corner of your eyes. One of the problems of being trans-dimensional is that we are more perceptible to the rod-cells of your eyes, away from the cones in your high-focus macula part of the retina. Oh, well. The […]
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Another Creation Story
Zordak here, channeling through Adam: Just as “Genesis” in the Judaeo-Christian Bible became widely-known creation story among many humans on your planet, there is another creation story that has been popular among some other intelligent species living on a number of planets in other galaxies who are in contact with each other psychically. (Oh, Adam […]
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Moreno’s “The Words of the Father”
Here’s a great video on YouTube of a sound-recording of J. L. Moreno, M.D. (1889-1974), reading from his spiritual poetry, “The Words of the Father”—accompanied by photographs of Moreno. (Moreno wrote the poetry originally as a young man in medical school in Vienna. It was posted a few years ago by my friend Greg Tomeoni […]
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A Psychodramatic Story
(This is actually my condensation of an old Hasidic Jewish story attributed to the great story-teller and mystic, Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, who was active in the first third of the 19th Century in what is now Byelorus, but was then the "Pale of Permitted Jewish Settlement" west of Moscow. I used this as an […]
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The Origins of My Cartoon-Doodles
There are other cartoons a-plenty on my website. This character, perhaps not elsewhere shown, is sort of a radio-head fellow, whose bodily hair goes from scalp to beard to chestal region to nether regions… vaguely akin to some characters of Al Capp in his Lil’ Abner Series. As a youth I cartooned and he was […]
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Vaguely Quantitative Psychology
Sometimes I use percentages with decimal points when I write or talk, as if I knew with some precision what I was talking about. I don’t. These numerical affectations suggest two things: First, on one level, most of the time, I am serious about the general proportion involved, though the actual number really may be […]
Posted in Psychological Literacy, Psychotherapy and Psychiatry | No Comments
A Contemplation on Faith
I was moved by a plot of a short story, The Toynbee Convector, by the very poetic science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, whose writings I really liked when I was in my teens almost sixty years ago. Written in 1983, this story has some passages that I want to note: The story begins with a […]
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Liberating the Mediocre to Enjoy the Arts
One of my missions is to foster the liberation of the mediocre, which refers to the majority of the population. Most people are not all that great when it comes to singing or dancing or making music or doing drama or whatever—but these are important vehicles for self-expression, self-discovery, and having fun. It is a […]
Posted in Current Events, Essays and Papers, My Favorite Things | 1 Comment