Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Mission Statement 10/21/10
A friend asked me, “What is your goal when you are exploring such territories as spontaneity, creativity and in a more spiritual/esoteric domain, mysticism? I mean, some folks just close the door to these explorations, but you don’t do that. . .. I think you try to have a critical and rational approach to it, […]
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Is a Puzzlement: What to Do?
Sometimes I want to get out and do various things—support local or national candidates or causes, work for the team, give more money to this or that charity, get all worked up about various political issues, religious issues, social issues—so many things. And then there’s my profession, and the insatiable needs to do more to […]
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Constructing a Philosophy of Life
There’s an instinct in the deep psyche to lead the mind towards a sense of meaning. In this sense, almost everyone has a philosophy of life, insofar as they assemble a satisfactory collage of platitudes, social norms, widely-accepted beliefs, and so forth that in their aggregate offer the illusion of coherence and significance. More most […]
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The Seven Deadly Sins—but Sometimes a Little Bit is Good!
The seven deadly sins were enumerated by clerics in the Church in the 6th and 7th centuries. The point to be made here is to think of them and their sub-categories in the spirit of sin not as something to be punished, but rather as a recognition of that which is off the mark, harmartia, […]
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Introduction & Resisting Distractions
The topic for this blog is folly, also to be realized as forms of self-deception, lapses in critical thinking, giving in to your less-worthy motivations, allowing yourself the luxury of illusion, and so forth. In some roles, illusion is just fine, very adaptive, mature, poetic, sublime. It is the mythic foundation that makes our life […]
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Confabulations 3
Welcome Hallo Dere, Mind-Expanding Friends, Phenomenal Phenomenologists, and the rest! Today, for your enjoyment, some more mind trips, mind-ticklers, mind-blowers, and mind-stretchers. My mission is twofold: One part of Adam Blatner is serious and wants to promote critical thinking, disseminate factual information, and develop the skillfulness of self-management. Another part wants to promote the opposite—not […]
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Just Do It–A Misleading Cliche
The saying, “just do it,” is an oversimplification and deserves to be critiqued, semantically unpacked, examined more closely, which is what this blog piece aims to do. (Please forgive my pedantry. One of my goals is to promote imagination, spontaneity, play. Another goal is to promote critical thinking, reflection. It might seem that these two […]
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The Lowdown (?) on the Higher-Ups
I was told an anecdote by a friend, who said: “A friend of mine who started out in apocalyptic fundamentalist group, whose leader said there were the only ones who would be in heaven, and the only ones with certain privileges in heaven etc. also had a clairvoyant relationship with his wife. His wife preceded […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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