Emptiness of Space Leads to Deeper Consciousness

This article was originally published by Technorati on 19 May 2010 as a Simply Spirited feature. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

The numbers are staggering--no, not even staggering, more like incomprehensible. When they start talking about half a billion light years from earth and a mass equivalent to a billion suns, one gets the impression that they're just making this stuff up.

No one can comprehend it, no matter how big-brained.

But according to the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, that's the distance from Earth and the mass of a supermassive black hole that has been--get this--"kicked out" of its home galaxy and is now hurdling through space in search of a new home.

Come on, stop pretending that any of this computes. Kinda makes you feel puny, doesn't it? The heavens from time immemorial have lent themselves to just this sort of philosophical contemplation of human smallness.

A Non-imist's Rebuttal to "5 Ways to Become an Optimist"

This article was originally published by Technorati on 18 April 2010. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

You have your optimists; these are the-glass-is-half-full people. You have your pessimists; these are the-glass-is-half-empty people.

There should be a third category: "non-imists." These are the glass-is-as-it-is people.

A recent USNews.com article directs our attention to a study published in the journal, Psychological Science, extolling the health benefits of optimism--according to the journal, optimists have stronger immune systems--and then offers 5 ways to become one.

As a devout non-imist, I would like to attempt, in reverse order, a point-by-point rebuttal of these 5 ways. Here goes.

Father of Slain Marine a Modern-Day Job

This article was first published by Technorati on 15 April 2010. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

Albert Snyder, father of Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder (pictured), a slain Marine whose 2006 funeral was picketed by members of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, is a modern-day Job.

Like Snyder, the sons and daughters of the biblical Job were killed by a mighty wind. Like the biblical Job, Snyder has enjoyed the company of a set of "friends" who give him unwise counsel as to why travesty has befallen him.

In Snyder's case, these "friends" are a slightly deranged, thoroughly unconscious group of people who wish to advise him that his son's death came as the result of national tolerance of homosexuality. This message is not so much offensive as a shock to the collective faculty of logic, since the two are so utterly disconnected, especially while "Don't ask, don't tell" still holds sway.

Moving Refrigerators with Marcus Aurelius and Eckhart Tolle

What is evil to thee does not subsist in the ruling principle of another; nor yet in any turning and mutation of thy corporeal covering. Where is it then? It is in that part of thee in which subsists the power of forming opinions about evils. Let this power then not form opinions, and all is well. And if that which is nearest to it, the poor body, is cut, burnt, filled with matter and rottenness, nevertheless let the part which forms opinions about these things be quiet, that is, let it judge that nothing is either bad or good which can happen equally to the bad man and the good. For that which happens equally to him who lives contrary to nature and to him who lives according to nature, is neither according to nature nor contrary to nature.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book IV No. 39

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There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Shakespeare, Hamlet Act 2, scene 2, 239–251

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In Zen they say: "Don't seek the truth. Just cease to cherish opinions."

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 121

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Judge not, lest you be judged.

Jesus, The Holy Bible, Matthew 7: 1

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Whenever one is called upon to move refrigerators for a friend (that isn't us in the picture), it is likely in that mode of awakened doing our good friend Eckhart Tolle calls "Acceptance." The other two are "Enjoyment" and "Enthusiasm" (see Monetize Your Life for a complete discussion.)

"Whatever you cannot enjoy doing," he writes in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61), "you can at least accept that this is what you have to do. Acceptance means: For now, this is what this situation, this moment, requires me to do, and so I do it willingly."