The Short Version

Love, Life, Meaning, Zen, and Science, by Norm Bearrentine

  • Home/Blog
  • Live With Beauty
  • Norm’s Books
    • High School Zen
    • Free Will, the Self, and the Art of Cunnilingus: One Guy’s Tumble Toward Reality
  • Light & Dark Inc
  • Norm’s Photos

Powered by Genesis

Timeless: Conceptual Thinking and Perception of Time

March 5, 2008 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

Originally posted on 06-07-07: After I got dressed this morning, which comes after peeing, washing face, stretching, and Tai Chi, I put on my glasses and stood for a while, gazing out my bedroom window.  An article I read … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2008 Tagged With: attention, awareness, brain, clocks, conceptual thinking, Discover magazine, James Joyce, perception, Planck scale, sensory, Time, verbal processing

Further Exploration: Shifting Attention Away From the Verbal

March 4, 2008 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

Originally posted on 05-21-07: Yesterday I talked about one of the ways that meditation can improve understanding of our brains—by giving us another perspective on their operations—but there are many other insights … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2008 Tagged With: attention, brain, consciousness, meditation, peace, perception, verbal activity, word processing

Changing Perspective: Meditation, Intention, and Control

March 4, 2008 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

Originally posted on 05-20-07: Each of these visual illusions, which I mentioned yesterday, besides being entertaining, includes a lesson on perception that can begin to broaden our ideas about "reality." We can become more … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2008 Tagged With: attention, brain, control, environment, intentions, meditation, mental activity, perception, perspective, visual illusion

But What Is Real? The Limits of Perception/Conception

March 4, 2008 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

Originally posted on 05-19-07: I ended yesterday's post mentioning the importance of distinguishing fantasy from reality, which brings up a really big question: What is reality? Which reminds me of the current installment … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2008 Tagged With: complexity, free will, humor, illusion, language, perception, reality, reality-tunnel, Robert Anton Wilson, sensory, suffering, Tricycle

Be Here Now; The Complexity of the Present Moment

March 4, 2008 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

Originally posted 05-10-07: One of the first books I ever read on meditation was Be Here Now, in the early 70's. Since then I've seen many references to staying in the present moment, paying attention, mindfulness, etc. but … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2008 Tagged With: attention, brain, complexity, consciousness, meditation, perception

What This Site Is About

When I realized that the idea of god was a joke, I thought that was the end of the story. Later I found that Christianity had shaped my values, and while some were worth keeping, many had lost their foundation—the meaning of life, for example. Something similar happened when I realized that the idea of free will was a joke, and I’ve spent the decades since both those realizations discovering and editing what Julia Galef calls the “orphan beliefs” they left behind. It’s a tricky business, and this blog has been a chronicle of my efforts to puzzle it all out, including reviews of related books. I hope you find it helpful.

Categories

Tags

AA (4) Antonio Damasio (2) attention (4) awareness (2) awe (2) brain (17) brain function (2) Buddha (4) Buddhism (5) Buddhist (6) causality (2) choice (1) complexity (2) conditioning (2) consciousness (7) control (2) Daniel Dennett (3) decisions (3) depression (2) Douglas Hofstadter (2) free will (10) happiness (2) ignorance (3) illusion (3) Jean Klein (2) language (3) meditation (6) Michael Gazzaniga (2) Mind (2) mistakes (2) Naturalism (2) perception (5) Philip "Wylie (2) pot (2) reality (4) responsibility (2) Sam Harris (3) science (2) self (3) sensory (3) suffering (2) thoughts (2) Time (2) Tricycle (5) Zen (3)

Archives