Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

The path of individuation can feel isolating, but some relative seclusion can be extremely developmental, giving you the space to discover and unfold your individuality. It is true that the more you work on yourself the fewer will be the people you can relate to as full equals. Don’t fall into self-pity or victimhood about…

Journey into, mapping, the underworld of the unconscious. The totality of the self includes many layers that the waking personality often ignores. The path of wholeness, however, requires that you know and integrate all parts of yourself, including the subterranean aspects you may consider dangerous, chaotic, inferior and evil. Nothing could be more crucial than…

Meeting halfway is the touchstone of relationships. You don’t want to meet others less than halfway — shy retreat, neglect, etc — or meet them more than halfway — doing too much, compromising your dignity by pushing forward where unwelcome, giving unasked for advice, etc. The halfway point may shift moment by moment. A key…

This is a time for rebirth, renewal, fecundity and growth. Sail forth now while the tide is high, follow your guiding star and the life force will fill your sails. This is a propitious time for new life, great endeavors, creation and metamorphosis.

We live in the age of the narcissistic personality type. Even if we are not narcissists ourselves, we are all affected by the narcissism of others. Although I’d been influenced by Ken Wilber and others to think of the Baby Boomers as the most narcissistic generation of all time, recent research indicates that narcissism has…

Often our attention focuses disproportionately on the perceived deficiencies of our present incarnation and we miss the myriad blessings that were necessary to allow us to be alive and reading this right now. We also tend to think that blessings must be warm and fuzzy. But a warm and fuzzy universe would retard our spiritual…

A human being is typically a composite of sub-personalites all of which call themselves “I” when they take over. Different personalities bring with them different moods. Moods are as real and ever-shifting as weather patterns. It is all too easy to allow yourself to be ruled by moods, to go with the high of over…

Sadness, mundanity and alienation behind the hyped-up counterfeit enthusiasms of the Babylon Matrix. We can all see how the black magicians (advertisers, industrial psychologists, etc) of the Babylon Matrix deceive people with images of perfect bodies always in a state of just crossing the finish line and winning the prize. Movie romances, for example, typically…

Acting from blind ego. The mind and ego often form an unholy alliance and dominate the decision-making process leading to incompetent action and blind-sided consequences. Deepest intuition needs to be in the ruling position while mind and ego are like its ministers, its skillful assistants. The positive aspect is that this may be a propitious…

“My Avatar betrays me. It is a mortal corporeal version 1.0 requiring constant, expensive upkeep. It carries me, like an arrow through linear time. It includes a brain that builds a simulacrum of this sensual world. I want to perfect my Avatar with mouse clicks, but it stubbornly adheres to source codes I cannot access.…