Rick's Blog

The things we fret over - our desires and aversions of the past, present and future - in our minds are not real. This is the simplest and most profound truth. But it is the depth to which they are not real that resonates with me the most. In all of the mind-numbingly vastness of space and reality, through everything we understand of the fabric of space-time and everything material and theoretical that exists within it, where physically is the future? If we could draw a map of the entire universe, could you point to a place on that map to locate the past? No. Why not? Because it doesn't exist. Time is nothing more than the measure of change in reality, and "when" is reality? Now. And now, and now. It is never "then". Nothing in the observable universe - no galaxies, no stars, no black holes, no physical entity that we have ever discovered - ever reflects anything more than what it is at the time of observation. Even the oddity of the double-slit experiment which ...

I certainly don't mean to suggest that I am enlightened in any way. I honestly don't think I know or have experienced enough to be qualified to determine if I am enlightened or not or to what degree I may be down the path, and given that fact, any consideration that I may be enlightened seems much closer to arrogance than to acknowledgment of truth. But the truth is I don't particularly care, and I think that is also kind of the point. To seek enlightenment is a desire itself. Enlightenment is not the goal; presence is the goal. Enlightenment is just the label we have applied to the experience of nothingness, no different than "rising"-"falling", "in"-"out", "lifting"-"placing"-"stepping". What I do know is that I am fundamentally different than I was six months ago, even three months ago, and different in an irreversible way. Living behind the waterfall is an appropriate analogy, but I resonate more wit...

The concept of nothingness and emptiness is also something I view as particularly aligned with the scientific method, and my dedication to (and even affection for) the scientific method provided me what seems to me to be an easier springboard for truly understanding - grokking - the concept and embracing it on a deep level. It is a misconception that we discover the truth in science. The reality is actually the exact opposite: we use the scientific method to discover what is  not  true, and then we move forward with those disproven claims and beliefs excluded from our concept of reality. I use the analogy of a pie. If we are given an apple pie and told there is a single cherry somewhere within it, how do we find the cherry? Do we point to some random area and declare Here it is!? No, we cut a slice out of the pie and investigate it, and when we find it does not contain the cherry, we repeat the process; we discover where the cherry, the truth, is not and exclude that slic...

I recently had two insights related to the concept of no wasted time . It is part of my 2018 goals to be more "productive" with my time, which is to say to be aware of the voice and the emotions that make me want to "turn off" and go veg out to tv, YouTube or Facebook instead of doing things that I will feel regret over in the future for having not accomplished. I realized a couple of weeks ago that spending an hour watching my DVR'd shows is not "veg time" or even wasted time; it is an explicit course of action, and not necessarily one whose intent is to ignore other tasks but to take that time to tune out and by passively entertained. The fault, if any, in that decision is not in the ignoring of other, higher value tasks but in the choice to withdraw from presence. The latter is accompanied by the ignoring of other, higher value tasks, but I was not making the choice with the intent of having lack of something but gain of something, and that gain w...