two birds on a line.

Two birds were perched on a telephone wire, busily eating worms, when one bird said to the other, "isnt there more to life than this."

"This?  What do you mean?"

"We're just sitting here eating worms.  I mean, isnt there more to life than only this?"

"I feel like the answer to life, our reason for existing, has something to do with eating worms."

Parallel Lives: the broken and unbroken line.

The broken line and the unbroken line, amazingly can be said to have lived the same existence, certainly in the same universe, yet they appear differently than one another.  I observe the uneven wear in my pair of shoes, how one deviates sideways, and the other doesnt.

The lines travel, from an indistinct starting point, to a terminus, so distant seemingly that we would dare say "infinity!", but as some mathematicians say, some infinities are not truly limitless, and as such with the life of boyh the broken and unbroken line.

The broken line deviates itself into almost nothingness, and traverses obstacles.  And in our dullness, there is a spark of hope from the whetstone when yhe line re-emerges somewhere straight ahead in the distance, that Prodigal.

Meanwhile, the other line is both a standard and comparatively superlative, and though we attach these traits in mind, we may be lead to ignore the unbroken line, and cast our fascinations on its downcast feral twin.

We urge on, maybe, the walt whitman's among us cheering for the broken line to form itself anew and conquest eternity itself;  meanwhile Oprah has a tv special hour long interview with the unbroken line--Gail King might even claim to share emails with the unbroken line, while the broken line depends on "government assistance".

big goals, little goals, and success comes from lifestyle.

So you make a huge ambituous goal, and after the initial enthusiasm wears off, it begins to seem impossible, unlikely, and like too much effort.  Such is the expression "pie in the sky", referring to usually a dreamlike ambition that seems quite improbable.

But what if you broke a huge goal into smaller pieces?  We live that way: hours add to form days, days form weeks, weeks form months, and then years.

So they say, a lot of great goals require a daily effort to grow and improve, whether its life, "wellness", or even learning a foreign language.  But think of bodybuilders and fashion models.  We can all wish for their aesthetic, their appeal, but only daily work can bring such results.

In my own time, i create an overall fitness goal.  I then place a goal for the year, to be evaluated on december 31.  But then their are months, weeks, and days.  I look at it every day, and sometimes from hour to hour.

Hours makes days, and days make weeks.  Enough of these stringed together create an overall successful campaign towards a goal.

Not daily wishing, but putting in the work.  Oh the fitness stars are amazing, but i have a much lower fitness level and couldnt hope to indulge in their workouts, nor could i hope for their results without the effort.

How to grow huge muscles if one doesnt like strength training?  Or cultivate a gorgeous tan without sitting in the hot sun?

None of these things are simply handed to people, but with the ease of presentation, we could easily be lulled into thinking we can have the results too easily.

We make a daily goal then, with additional weekly benchmarks, and we press firm on the hours when we feel up to it, or when our schedules allow:  there is no better way.

Its a lifestyle that achieves that goal, not a wish.  If you can sustain the lifestyle, then the goal is apt to come to you, but otherwise, can you make a more modest goal? Can you set reasonable benchmarks?

Cashapp cashtag $origen1979

"Where is God?" redux and addenda: Hume and Spinoza/

So I had wrote a devotional piece entitled "Where is God?".  In that piece, I postulate that God is basically in an around everything, by virtue of it being said that He knows all: in other words, the two conditions amount to basically the same omnipotence, whether He is or isn't in everything.

So here I go reading Hume, and he's pulling apart everything we think we know, poking doubt holes in the veracity of our thoughts, our senses, and saying that in the end we meet uncertainty in the form of confusion which begets indifference.

And he mentions God.

He says that Spinoza and Theologians would point out that God is in everything, that everything is a piece or component of God.  

Mind, I'm mildly educated in Theology, serving some eighteen months at a Bible Institute.

So I guess I'm partly in the camp of Spinoza and the Theologians, pointing to God, not as impossible or improbable, not as silent and unapproachable, or unproven, but certainly as very real and substantial as our natural world as we see it.

And asked to prove God, I would point to Hume's skepticism, and demand of them to disprove God, or conversely, prove anything about the natural world.

 

Productivity: simplified goals and at least one lesson learned from the prior week.

There are people that stick to those short lists.  "Five priorities".  "Top Three Goals."

The trick is to devote the majority of your work to those few goals, nevermind smaller less significant tasks, but the most important, going after those from the start.

Any smaller item then, would service the larger item, or, in other words, support that larger goal, such as making ancillary calls or emails, fetching supplies and so forth.

But another big technique is to make a statement of at least one lesson learned from the prior week.  Do this between Saturday afternoon and start of business Monday morning.

One lesson.

If you pull one lesson from the prior week, then the prior week was in no way wasted. 

In that respect, one can claim or believe in some way, they have learned and improved over a period of time.

Write it down: that lesson learned.  Make a note of it, lest it get lost in the daily grind.

They say some of the most successful people in the world get up really early in the morning.  During that time, some read books, podcasts, audiobooks, consume news.  And some make their lists.

Make your list.

Mark down that lesson learned from the past week.

Cashapp cashtag $origen1979

quantum entanglement and the analog computer of the mind: a thought.

The brain, as a weird flesh analog computer, frustrates science.

As it is known, the computer system as we know it is modeled in general after the layout of the mind.  With processing and memory separate, and so forth.

However, each little piece of the nerves of the mind contain a wealth of dedicated connections to other nerves.  What really frustrates science is that so much of that is used at any given time, and, having converted biochemical into pure electricity, we find that the brain usually only vaguely sips at its power supply, unlike the IBM Personal Computer that was inspired by the brain.........

Not just a maze of nerves, but a maze of interconnections is the brain, its a wonder, in the indeterminate haze of meshwork nerve connections, that so many don't overlap and intermingle unintentionally: or do they?  Is such interconnection quite the stuff of life?  The source of odd associations in thought and memory.

This is the "quantum entanglement" of the mind: the seemingly unintended interconnection and interaction between various sections of the mind......

Deity and the Tao, and how odd it sounds explaining to the non contemplative.

So, in the indeterminate fog between heart and mind lies the Tao, and the Tao is basically an expression not of doubt, but an expression of God.

Follow me on this.

God is not "indefinite", for whatever the word connotates, indefinite, for that seems to imply limitation, but more aptly defying human understanding, at the absolute infinite best, most wise, most connected and so forth.  Think of this indefinite quality as an infinity, a superlative that we can point to, but in no way define.

A however vague perception of God, with a complete lack of apprehending a qualification or quantification is the Tao, that foggy concept that we can give a name, but not totally grasp: we can point in its general direction, we can say what it is not, but that's as far as our definitions find purchase.

We only approach this through a synthesis, a process, the faculty of the emotional sensibility and actual sensory input, along with all the benefit of our experience, along with the rational mind: a heart and mind process.  Kant's synthesis of induction and deduction thoughts both readily apparent, and thoughts we come to after some deliberation.

Deliberation on God, the synthetic process of "heart and mind" then, is what so many call "contemplation"; I had a rumination in a doctor's office just yesterday about this, about God and threads that hold us all together.  The doctor admitted confusion at my statement, and in that, I thought maybe I had not been clear enough in my words, that it was my fault.

Consider I was expressing something of the Tao, something that perturbs understanding, and give me the benefit of not, upon an improvised prompt, explaining the ties that bind life and reality all together.  No one has ever crossed this threshold, be it a philosopher, theologian, or preacher.