Long before I was an undergraduate, there has been an adage in the humanities and social sciences that “everything is subjective,” or that “objectivity is a myth.” These statements hail from quantum physics’ discovery in the 1920s that the observer’s mere inclusion in an experiment influences that experiment, which is to say that detached observation… Continue reading Subjectivity, objectivity, stillness
Tag: Spirituality
Ego death at Green Gulch Farm and spiritual education’s offerings for secular reform
Reincarnation as educational heuristic
Reincarnation is a built-in education modality. According to reincarnation, individual souls populate the world in successive, incremental incarnations, learning or failing to learn lessons each time. Associated concepts include karma (often translated as fate or destiny), dharma (vocation or purpose), and the ultimate goal is to “graduate” from the system such that one no longer… Continue reading Reincarnation as educational heuristic
What Dreams May Come and the acquiescence that is true love
At face value, Richard Matheson’s What Dreams May Come embeds a romantic tale of soul mates at first rent apart, then rejoined. This occurs because one of the souls, Chris, is killed in a car accident and enters the afterlife—a fact which for the principal third of the novel he refuses to believe. Then, Chris’s… Continue reading What Dreams May Come and the acquiescence that is true love
On the waxing and waning of symbolic meaning
Colorado College's Cutler Hall The morning after I graduated from Colorado College, I walked around campus and noticed that the buildings had changed. It wasn’t that new construction had taken place—rather, it was as though some symbolic layer of meaning had been removed from the buildings, their earthen reality revealed. Apart from the purpose the… Continue reading On the waxing and waning of symbolic meaning
Jackson Holzberg Buckley 