Musings of a Middle Aged Man

f I had to hazard a guess, I would say one of the oldest conundrums pinging humanity's consciousness is the simple question, "Why am I here?" Not as in a physical location, though that is also a mystery. No. Why, as in "Why do I exist?" "What is my purpose for being?" The pursuit of a nacreious answer has led to all sorts of bricolage answers without ever really a...

Not only do we not need a new religion or Bible, we no longer need, never actually needed, the old religion or Bible. In fact, we would be much better off had they, and other holy tomes, never cursed the human condition by driving people to believe their contents are true despite contradicting evidence and internal conflicts. The new experience needed is a transformation in how we perceive our ind...

The Bible can and has been 'interpreted' to justify everything from chattel slavery to genocide to sanctioned rape of virgins to dashing babies on rocks...along with a smattering of niceties such as love thy neighbor, the meek shall inherit the earth, and forgiving transgressors 70 times 7 times. This is partly due to imperfect translations between ancient and modern languages, translators...

Twas a season in my life when I was energized and invigorated by loud music and parties attended by many, with a heavy flow of alcohol lubricating social interactions and, maybe, a late-night tête-à-tête with a member of the opposite sex. Some of the best times took place at my parents' summer estate, a two-bedroom cabin in Central Wisconsin Lake Country, attended by family and friends, where...

It is a travesty that the richest country in the world ranks a paltry 20th in quality of education on the global scale. That our traditional adversaries in China and Russia are ranked higher does not augur well for an impressive future. There are a couple of factors leading to the embarrassing rank...hoarding of money by politicians for pork barrel projects and an undue influence from religious-ba...

I find it intriguing that death as a beginning is a belief held vigorously by both religious sects and the zombies amongst us. Two querlous groups, both looking beyond the immediate toward a future that may or may not have any basis in cold reality. I wonder how the zealots rationalize their bodies becoming animated post death, a time they mythologize that the soul separates from the physical befo...

Since the advent of time, it is conservatively estimated that 18,000 different gods, goddesses, and related deities have been invented for veneration and worship. The cults arising around the deities range from single-deity monotheistic religions to thousands of deities in polytheistic and pantheistic religions to 330 million in the Hindu pantheon. In practice, the Hindu number is symbolic, reflec...

believe most, possibly all, humans have a deep-seated desire to be accepted for who they authentically are, including the rough spots others might see as warts or defects. That given a safe space, they would discard the accoutrements designed to help them blend in with the masses and stand emotionally naked, exposing those attributes, making themselves uniquely themselves. That they would sing the...

do my damndest to placate my soul with the goal of minimizing any hate harbored in my heart. Mostly, I am successful. It is a challenge to maintain a modicum of temperance, considering the country in which I am a citizen in good standing is going down the shitter because a narcissist with craploads of money has wrapped tiny hands around power and is using the power to take from the poor so the ins...

The movie Shane, along with High Noon, released the prior year, and Unforgiven, coming 39 years later, are three Westerns that forever changed the genre. The first two shifted the narrative from simple good guy versus bad guy, both cowboys decidedly entrenched in the black and white decision-making, with nary a shade of ambiguity to add tension, to psychologically complex stories of conflicted ind...

In general, humans look upon the cycle of life with an eye toward the born version being the ultimate end goal. Human arrogance takes this thousands of steps further with the proclamation that all existence was designed so that humans could thrive... even though the Earth occupies far a less than miserly 3.08x10-58% of the universe's volume. That myopic notion arises because we humans are esse...

highly doubt our arboreal ancestors spent their precious time contemplating the existence of a soul, busy as they were gathering and hunting while keeping watch for the multitude of predators hoping to turn their tender flesh into a satisfying meal. Contemplation of abstract concepts is superfluous when struggling to ensure the tribe can survive, let alone thrive. Possibly, the only human foible m...

If you were to ask my mother, she would say I was born with an appetence for rebellion. Where raising some children is challenging because they are strong-willed, I was doubly difficult because I was born with an equally strong won't. Thankfully, she was blessed with a fortitude of a saint, helping her steer me away from a life that could, under different circumstances, have propelled me into...

Of all the world's religious leaders, I most admire His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Not because I consider Buddhism to be true, rather because the Dalai Lama has a propensity to not harass people to convert to Buddhism in any of its forms. In fact, he discourages conversion from other religions, arguing it is safer and better to stick with ancestral or cultural faiths because switching risks supe...

Mired, as I am, in Western linear modes of thinking, I have a difficult time grasping the circular time concepts comprising the Vedic texts and the Bhagavad Gita, especially the lifetime conjecture scope in the opening quote. I was indoctrinated with the belief the human scope consists of a single lifetime, where the Gita outlines multiple lives dictated by reincarnation cycles bent by Karma Yoga,...

While I have never had the pleasure of living in Bear country, I have hiked and camped in Bear's world and had the ecstatic experience of seeing a Grizzly Bear sow and her three cubs. Seeing them in the Montana wilds, separated only by physical space, induced feelings of reverent terror coupled with awe that is impossible to achieve when viewing Bear from the safety of the protective barriers...

Most mornings, I sit meditating at my altar under the watchful eyes of Ganesh, Buddha, Athena, the Venus of Willendorf, three skulls of two raptors, one corvid, and an obsidian Raven with yellow eyes. Today, my space is scented by a slow-burning, earthy incense stick. I generally wait until one stick is consumed by the subtle flame before lighting a second of a different ilk to prevent intercourse...

wonder, does the spider know the insect net it creates by first laying down the Y frame, followed closely by radial spokes, all connected via the sticky spirals, giving it the classic shape depicted in Charlotte's Web, doubles as its own prison? That madame spider is at once guard, inmate, and executioner? That she is simultaneously a bull and fish, patiently awaiting the arrival of fresh fish...

Too often, the word chaos is burdened with a negative connotation. Think: disorder, confusion, unpredictability, and lack of control that overwhelms or destabilizes. It is often associated with evil or malevolence, a consequence of what some call sin, undermining god's so-called perfect order. It is a view requiring walls to be arrow straight, all corners set at a perfect 90 degrees, all circl...

Modern religious expression has become as fouled by selfishness as carcass-contaminated water. All who drink from it risk their mental health from toxins that infiltrate and infest the mind, undermining the ability to be a loving human. It is no longer an individual path toward spiritual supremacy, but a performance where the believers accost the non-believers (aka thinkers) to boost the number of...

This quote hit me with the force of slamming into an overhanging tree branch while running with abandon at full speed in the dead of night. Yes, I had to pick my ass up off the floor and it took me quite some time to return to my senses. On separate occasions, I have laid hands on the trunks of three trees, thousands of miles apart, and felt them vibrating with an energy that used my hands as a co...

f asked to diagnose society's ills, I would say the root cause of most, if not all, of humanity's problems boils down to polarity, the arbitrary divisions that are imagined and prevent us from unifying as a collective whole. Typically, those characteristics leveraged to keep us divided are nugatory, trifling, amplified such that we encounter others with our hands firmly grasping a war club...

Harmony serves as a core principle in multiple belief systems, emphasizing interconnectedness, balance, and peaceful coexistence with other humans, animals, plants, and the objects we tend to arrogantly misclassify as inert. I can attest to rocks having unique spirits by virtue of the 19 rocks gracing my altar, each emanating stable spirit energy unique to their character. Harmony is a tenet of Co...

s it any wonder that people living intimately with the Earth view all things as having life, spirit, and personhood? This encompassing perspective sees these three qualities inherent even in those things Western philosophy has relegated to the lowly, inanimate classification. They are treated as pretty much irrelevant in the grand scheme and completely devoid of that spark that gives life and agen...

n Thoreau's book, Walden, he creates the illusion he is far from civilization, where he is immersed in solitude, far, far from anything and anyone intrusive, enabling the opportunity to bask in the soothing salts of solitary living. However, Walden was only a couple of miles from his home. His temporary cabin was on land owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Henry was far from being isolated. He frequ...