Meditations
 Meditations
The Nature of Chaos
Martin LeFevre: We live in chaotic times, almost by design it seems. Chaos is one of those words that seem clear but few can define coherently. Is there actually chaos in nature? And does the present chaos of man hold a deeper potential? ... Order cannot evolve out of chaos. There was simply a different kind of order in the early universe, out of which new orders and complexity evolved. ... Philosophically, the inane idea that we 'create our own reality' has seeped into and saturated the national consciousness over the last 40 years. If you put the two together, Donald Trump is not an anomaly, with his so-called war on truth, but a natural outcome of social predispositions and cultural trends ... Is there a potential for creating something new beyond this assault on the notion of truth and order beyond the whims of men and women?...
Sep 19, 2018, 4:46pm
Meditations
Addressing a Global Failure of Imagination
Martin LeFevre: Few would argue that there is a political 'failure of imagination' in the Western world. ... The deeper question is, can contemplative insight infuse political vision, strategy and policy, or are the two dimensions destined to remain in different universes forever? If so, we're cooked. ... The Western mindset is that the response to a problem, challenge or crisis demands "expertise in various fields." However an independent, non-power-holding global body will not be comprised of experts, since giving primacy to experts is one of the biggest causes of human fragmentation. ... As Einstein said, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." ...
Sep 17, 2018, 5:54pm
Meditations
Is the Universe In a State of Meditation?
Martin LeFevre: What would that mean? It would mean that consciousness is not something that emerges from between the skull bones of potentially sapient species like Homo sapiens. It would mean consciousness is the essence of the universe, and all energy and matter is infused with it. ... Since the Big Bang, the evolution of black holes, stars, planets, life and consciousness is a series of thresholds unfolding through random but directional processes. Are there universal laws that apply to the emergence of cosmic consciousness in sentient creatures? I feel so. ...
So is God simply the awareness of the universe beyond the human mind, which potentially includes the human brain? ...
Sep 15, 2018, 3:22pm
Meditations
Wholeness Is Holiness
Martin LeFevre: The human brain has the capacity for communion with intelligence that pervades the universe, but the very capability that gives us this capacity---symbolic thought---is also a tremendous impediment. Why did intelligence, through evolution, set the bar so high? ... the universe is not a meaningless, mechanical and random place, but an incomprehensibly vast, creatively unfolding, seamlessly whole phenomenon, infused with inseparable intelligence. ... there is holiness, and it flows from communion with ineffable sacredness that permeates nature and the cosmos. Tellingly, the root meaning of the 'whole' is 'healthy, unhurt, entire.' And the root meaning of the word holy is 'whole.' ...
Sep 11, 2018, 5:16pm
Meditations
Igniting a True Enlightenment
Martin LeFevre: Let us reiterate: there is no evil beyond man. Man is the creature that accumulates psychological/emotional darkness, which is the ground of evil. (Darkness is the background reality of the human condition; evil is intentionally directed darkness.) There is no evil in nature per se. ... Essentially, we're failing as a species because we aren't awakening sufficient insight to keep thought in its place. ... Life in America has become utterly empty not primarily because of outer conditions (we have no concentration camps here, except for illegal immigrants and their children). Rather, the utter meaninglessness wrought by materialism and consumerism has overwhelmed the vast majority of people, shrinking the human heart in this land. All that's left is 'me, me, me.' ...
Sep 9, 2018, 4:35pm
Meditations
Depression and Meditation
Martin LeFevre: The beauty and quiet beside the stream at the upper end of the park that runs through town struck me immediately upon taking my seat. Sunlight bathed the water and illuminated the grass across the creek in a shimmering green. ... Ever since I basically lost my 20's to acute depression (the kind where you can't get up off the couch for days), I've taken the time to meditate every day. More than any other factor, meditation saved my life. It's how I was able to avoid going on anti-depressants. ... In the process of meditation I discovered inner riches beyond description. ... After letting the senses attune to the environment and one hears every sound as it arises one becomes acutely aware of the chattering mind...
Sep 6, 2018, 10:03am
Meditations
The Lie That Won't Die
Martin LeFevre: Monday was Labor Day in America, not Memorial or Veteran's Day, but on my bike ride this morning I saw flag after flag flying from pillar to post on single-family homes. Why? ... Since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States (POTUS, an acronym that now sounds disturbingly onomatopoetic), you hear ad nauseum in America: "This is not who we are." That's a lie, and this scourge won't end until enough Americans face the truth that this is what we have become. ... Though most Americans haven't gone bad, the vast majority have given up the ghost, quit on humanity and on life. The death of the nation's soul occurred over 25 years ago .... Writing about Trump's trampling on this nation's norms and institutions has grown boring and wearisome however. The issue is not America, since the context is no longer this or any other nation-state...
Sep 4, 2018, 12:53pm
Meditations
Idea or Insight?
Martin LeFevre: I've encountered many highly educated people who cannot tell the difference between an idea and an insight. To my mind, there is no more important distinction that a human being can make. So what is the difference? ... Ideas are products of the mind that include conceptions, imaginings, opinions and beliefs. Insight is none of these things, since insight is not produced by the mind. ... Ideas are always about people or things. Insight, on the other hand, literally means 'seeing into.' It is a flash of understanding, which may last a moment or a lifetime. ... When one has an insight, one sees the right thing to do and does it. Seeing and acting are one movement...
Sep 1, 2018, 2:56pm
Meditations
Looking Forward to Things Versus Ending Time
Martin LeFevre: Having things to look forward to is important, a central part of a healthy human life. But living entirely in terms of looking forward to things means never entering a timeless dimension of being. ... We're inquiring into bringing into being a brain that is igniting insight every day, rather than a brain that lives in terms of ideas and becoming (which are essentially the same thing). ... The brain that is dominated by thought is a very different brain than the one infused with insight. The brain in which the program and its contents have halted has left the stifling stream of psychological time. ... During spontaneous meditative states, the mind-as-thought falls completely silent, and one hears and sees and feels things as they are, without the overshadowing of the present by the past as memories, associations and conditioning...
Aug 29, 2018, 3:26pm
Meditations
The Net Is the Global Culture
Martin LeFevre: The Net is a favorite punching bag for the dinosaurs of mainstream media. They might as well be punching the air. Who can tell the difference between virtual and reality anymore? No one. ... The Net is not just like human consciousness; it is a mirror, however distorted, of human consciousness. And like consciousness, it's inane to speak of the Net as an abstraction, separate from oneself and society. ... The first thing to realize in reflecting on the Net is that it's not just about technology. The Net is not first a technology, or a thing at all. It is an increasingly pervasive reality, a simulacrum or representation of human consciousness itself...
Aug 26, 2018, 2:33pm
Meditations
Self-Knowing Has Become a Matter of Survival
Martin LeFevre: (Will) Durant asks, "We frolic in our emancipation from theology, but have we developed a natural ethic---a moral code independent of religion---strong enough to keep our instincts of acquisition, pugnacity, and sex from debasing our civilization into a mire of greed, crime, and promiscuity? ... Thinking and feeling people recognize that the West's voices of moral and intellectual authority are a rotten, leaking bucket when countless people are inwardly dying of thirst. ... The reality is that the human condition and consciousness have become a global ecological, spiritual, social and political nightmare. The question is, can enough of us awaken in time? ...
Aug 23, 2018, 5:13pm
Meditations
We're All Potentially People of God
Martin LeFevre: Even though pedophilia in the Catholic Church has been known for decades, the recent report is reverberating throughout America. Perhaps that's because evil is now so clearly manifest in the White House. ... Evil is man-made. It did not pre-date humans on this earth, and it will not outlive us should we succumb to its death wish in human consciousness for humanity. ... With respect to the Roman Catholic Church, its very formation in the 4th century marked the defeat of the Gnostic mysticism of Jesus by the forces of power, hierarchy and patriarchy. If people had truly followed Jesus' teachings, there would have been no organized religion as Catholicism and its Protestant offshoots...
Aug 20, 2018, 4:54pm
Meditations
Our Place in the Universe
Martin LeFevre: Is there an intrinsic intent in the universe to evolve brains with capacity for communion with indivisible Mind? ... I feel there is. Further, that conscious, symbolic thought is the threshold that gives the brain on this or any planet that capacity. Paradoxically however, because the power of thought and the intellect are so great, they become the greatest impediment to realization of the cosmic intent. ... Brains such as ours have the capacity for the state of insight, but insight must first end the contradiction inherent in symbolic thought itself. That is, thought separates, when life is whole. ... Humans are certainly not the only lifeforms in the cosmos capable of high science and technology, and the latent capacity for insight to use them wisely...
Aug 18, 2018, 5:40pm
Meditations
Mind Beyond Thought and Intellect
Martin LeFevre: The green waters of the reservoir are like glass. On the surrounding ridges, motionless pines tower over the man-made lake, and reflect off the water with mirror-like sharpness. ... All sound occurs in silence, but we rarely feel the silence because the inner and outer noise of man is deafening. Without doubt, perception and reception of the sacred requires a very still, empty mind. ... What is the difference between mind as thought, and mind when thought falls silent? That distinction, in actuality not theory, makes all the difference, not just to philosophy of mind, but in how to live. ... The meditative state is a radically quiet mind, a mind not ruled by thought. That is, it has ceased mediating sensory experience through symbols and memories. ... Science cannot investigate the mind quieted of thought, because science is based on thought as the intellect....
Aug 17, 2018, 12:10pm
Meditations
Concerning Power and Puniness
Martin LeFevre: How can such a powerful creature as man be comprised of such puny creatures as humans? How can such puny creatures as humans compose such a powerful creature as man? Clearly, as a species and individuals, humans are both powerful and puny. ... Our destructiveness as man is our puniness as humans, and vice versa. Man is a destructive force of nature, or more accurately, force against nature. ... Contradictions abound. Is that what makes us human and keeps us from growing into human beings---to accept contradiction? Clearly, growing into human beings involves resolving the contradictions within us. ... Contradiction is difficult to resolve intellectually, but much more difficult emotionally. That's largely because we like the comfort of complexity rather than the hard work of simplicity...
Aug 11, 2018, 4:16pm
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