Giving ideas guns

I was watching a show about the scientific research into the areas of the brain that trigger transcendent/"beyond self" experiences. The researchers are able to generate vision-like experiences, sensations of the presence of others, and many other things usually associated with spiritual experiences. The part that was so interesting to me wasn't necessarily the content of what they were talking about, but the immediate conclusions drawn when allowing a single thread of logic to its conclusion. The tendency was for the researcher to immediately say that, since they are able to replicate these experiences systematically by directing a weak magnetic field at a small portion of the right temporal cortex, God is likely to be purely a phenomenon of the mind.

Suddenly, a cognitive conflict happens. I have lots of experience that allows me to conclude that God is not simply a phenomenon of the mind, although my ability to make an independent judgment on that is suspect due to the inherent mechanisms of the brain... But the conflict is mine and mine alone. By trying to enforce my view on findings presented out of pure research, I closed myself initially.

More later.

Being and doing

I went over all of the posts that I started but never finished over the last couple of years, and I just posted the ones that had text in the body. Several were good, but I can remember at the time that it was simply the act of transcribing my thoughts that allowed me to release the ideas, satisfy some thought process, etc. and the need to actually post the material subsided pretty quickly. Here's to accepting more free thinking and writing.

One of the posts was on trusting my initial instincts when addressing a problem. I'm challenged to do this more and more, working through instinct and intuition, now that new my job is demanding a bit more than my previous one. This is exactly what I need to develop more.

Along the same lines, I love the idea of writing stories. Short stories are what I love, so I will post some sketches some time soon. I've always started but then stopped soon after, because I always wanted to see the end in the beginning before I undertook the effort. I'm finding that sometimes that's not a productive means of operating, so here's to blind landings.

Working hard on something.

After a long time, now is the time to start writing again. The last few weeks have been hard. Moving from Seattle to Savannah, trying to get settled in a completely new place, quitting a job that I loved, starting a new job that is compelling yet has direction and no direction simultaneously.

Where are my friends? How can I keep in touch?