Meditations
Meditations
The Source of Life and Death
Martin LeFevre: When you are young, the ocean is a place of endless possibilities, great hopes and distant goals. When you are older, the ocean becomes a place of nostalgia, healing, and perhaps renewal. In actuality the ocean, literally and metaphorically, is the place from which life arose, and the place to which life returns...
May 18, 2013, 2:15pm
Meditations
Experiencing the Universe as a Single Cosmic Whole
Martin LeFevre: A young but full-grown deer ambles down and stands in the middle of the stream 30 meters away, drinking and munching on overhanging leaves. An hour later, as a mallard couple preens in the shallows at the same spot, there is a sudden, violent and unpredicted shift in the weather...
May 15, 2013, 1:09pm
Meditations
The Crisis of Consciousness
Martin LeFevre: "The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years," the New York Times reported today... The crisis of consciousness facing humankind is total and unprecedented....
May 11, 2013, 3:01pm
Meditations
The Brain Is More Than the Mind
Martin LeFevre: In considering whether the mind is greater than the brain, it may be useful to put the question the other way: Is the brain more than the mind?... In one sense the answer seems obvious-the neo-cortal or consciously thinking brain is a portion of the entire brain, overlaying older and more 'primitive' functions. These ancient layers of neuronal substrate are often referred to as the mammalian brain and the reptilian brain...
May 8, 2013, 1:46pm
Meditations
The Mind Is More Than the Brain
Martin LeFevre: As hard as it is to emotionally perceive, one's country is not the world; the world is not man; man is not humanity; and humanity is not the universe... Most people are stuck at the first level, and don't go beyond tribal identification with 'my country.' Some people are stuck at the second level, and don't see beyond their own time. Many are stuck at the third level, and don't go beyond the dying species of 'man.'...
May 4, 2013, 4:40pm
Meditations
The Seventh Generation
Martin LeFevre: Though more and more people don't think beyond the next seven minutes, most people are familiar with the first part of the Great Law of the Iroquois: "In deliberations, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation." But the second part of the Great Law is rarely quoted "...even if it requires we have skin as thick as a pine."...
May 1, 2013, 1:51pm
Meditations
Rusted Shut at the Hinge of History
Martin LeFevre: "In our de facto global society, the future of humankind requires a workable framework of global governance. National governments must begin to live by the same laws that the citizens of every country are expected to live by...
Apr 28, 2013, 10:15am
Meditations
Chaos Out of Order
Martin LeFevre: "Science is built on a foundation of observable facts and testable truths. But I recently heard a prominent young physicist utter perhaps the greatest false premise in science when he said: "The story of our solar system is the story of the creation of order out of chaos." ...
Apr 24, 2013, 4:34pm
Meditations
Ask Not For Whom the Bell Tolles
Martin LeFevre: ...I recently read something the great religious philosopher J. Krishnamurti said that keeps reverberating within one: "The brain is sensitive, and to remain sensitive, without its familiar self-protective responses, without its customary judgments, condemnation and approval, the only thing it can do is to be utterly quiet, which is to remain in a state of negation, complete denial of itself and its activities." ...
Apr 20, 2013, 9:55am
Meditations
Responding to the Boston Bombing: A New Kind of Revolution
Martin LeFevre: The depraved and cowardly terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon comes as no surprise and causes little shock. Though it looks like an act of domestic rather than Islamic terrorism, it's already being used as filthy fodder for the pall of patriotism in America...
Apr 16, 2013, 3:59pm
Meditations
The Divergence Between Religions and Religiosity
Martin LeFevre: It's a warm Sunday morning. After a fine walk along the newly verdant paths in the park, and a pleasant talk with two women on horseback, I stop to sit at picnic site. The divergence between religions and religiosity is about to come to a head...
Apr 13, 2013, 3:23pm
Meditations
Toward an Adequate Philosophy of Evil
Martin LeFevre: The original and most popular TV magazine show in America, 60 Minutes, devoted most of the hour last night to interviewing parents of the 6 and 7 year olds massacred in Newtown Connecticut on December 14th. Besides heart-wrenching tributes to their children, there was lots of talk about gun control, some discussion of mental illness, but not one word about the core element in that horror: evil...
Apr 9, 2013, 11:14am
Meditations
Back to Basics
Martin LeFevre: "It is a strange experience to be in a wilderness in the afternoon, where the bear scat is as big as miniature coke cans, and then be back in the land of malls and McDonalds by dark... We hiked a few miles into a small mountain lake at about 2200 meters (over 7000 feet) in Lassen Volcanic National Park (the least visited National Park in America). After 15 minutes of silence at that place, everything extraneous falls away...
Apr 6, 2013, 5:15pm
Meditations
Straight Wedding, Gay Marriage
Martin LeFevre: "My oldest sister's daughter-the eldest granddaughter-got married the week before Christmas in the lakeside, snowy, storybook province of northwestern Michigan. No rotting institutions and degenerating traditions embody the sorry state of American culture more than weddings and marriage...
Apr 2, 2013, 4:04pm
Meditations
Return and Become Like Children Redux
Martin LeFevre: ... With the complete ending of control, one literally feels content-consciousness dissolving away. Full sensory perception returns, and there is joy and insight beyond words. This is the true meaning of Jesus' admonition, "Truly I tell you, unless you return and become like children, you can't enter the kingdom of God." ...
Mar 30, 2013, 5:14pm
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