MEDITATION TIME

This lecture briefly reviews the most salient ideas expounded in this podcast.

Based on a conversation between Susan Blackmore and Jordan Peterson, this lecture opposes the secular to the religious path, as contrasted answers to the search for meaning.

This lecture briefly explores pantheism and panpsychism as theoretical options for understanding the ultimate foundations of reality,

This lecture highlights our threefold human nature in terms of life, knowledge, and power. It also explores the practical conditions for a good life and a good society.

This lecture looks at arguments against euthanasia but also makes a case for it, in light of various insights taken from human psychology and biology.

This lecture pits against each other two opposite philosophical stances toward life: acceptance and rejection. In the final analysis, acceptance stands as the healthier and wiser of the two. 

This lecture argues against all forms of reductionism in favor of emergentism, where the creative potential of the universe manifests itself incrementally, in stages, with each stage creating the opportunity for the emergence of the next stage, which displays new properties that are contingent on those of the previous stage but are not reducible to them.

This lecture proceeds to deconstruct the reality of life with the purpose of reconstructing it mindfully and meaningfully.

This lecture lays the groundwork for the management of our emotions to prevent them from running wild and wrecking havoc with our life.

This lecture shows the path to an authentic and fulfilling life through our awareness and embodiment of the creative and nurturing force at the heart of everything, including us, Our attitude and behavior then become a testament to our enduring adaptability and expanded love.

This lecture looks at the concepts of God and divine love through the lens of critical thinking and rational understanding. The question is, do these concepts keep some manner of sense and legitimacy from this exacting perspective?

This lecture takes a theoretical stance on the topic of universal determinism, wherein the natural order is viewed as the product of soft determinism, blending necessity and randomness in the form of a determinate field of indeterminate possibilities.

This lecture aims at finding a happy medium between extreme detachment toward the objects of our desires and excessive attachment to them. Both are unsuited to our nature, which can neither be reduced to its dark side of suffering and death, nor can be viewed exclusively as a bright side that is forever blissful.

This lecture delves into the many different forms of human happiness, from the one we find in a peaceful conscience and the one we experience when our efforts meet with success, to the one we may fantasize about in some hypothetical afterlife.

This lecture highlights our human difference in the evolution of species, as our brain's superior plasticity affords us a great ability to learn, that proportionally increases our adaptability and chances of survival in a wide variety of environments.

This lecture promotes acceptance to achieve harmony with nature and virtue in society, as the necessary condition for peace and happiness. It also encourages critical thinking to avoid lapsing into laxness and servility, which are perverse forms of naturalness and sociability.

This lecture opposes, on the one hand, the traditional reliance on great religions for understanding the world and guiding our conscience and, on the other hand, the modern trust in science and political philosophy for developing a credible and sensible worldview, together with rules of conduct that follow naturally from the demands of social organization.

This lecture aims at striking the right balance between commitment to things that we love and can or must do, and detachment toward everything else.

This lecture is all about adaptation, or the capacity to constantly realign our purpose with life, that is always changing. Misery, from this perspective, amounts to clinging to things that have become impossible or impractical, versus letting go and moving on, toward things that are both desirable and feasible.

This lecture calls our attention to the process of habituation, which renders us insensitive to beneficial things that have become familiar and predictable. We need to avoid taking these things for granted and losing our ability to be thankful for them, insofar as they help us live and thrive.

This lecture stresses the fact that our consciousness is a malleable interface between the world and our emotional self. Within that interface, our attitude is a software of sorts that runs on our cerebral hardware and determines how we feel about things. The key is to write this software in such a way that the focus is placed on the positive side of things, while the negative side is acknowledged, but not overemphasized.

This lecture makes the point that, notwithstanding our best theoretical frameworks, be they scientific, philosophical, or religious, the universe still appears magical, unless we are so naïvely impressed by our  so-called explanations that we fail to get this point.

This lecture stresses the importance of acquainting ourselves deeply and meaningfully with reality through philosophical inquiry, above and beyond our cultural assumptions, that are the mindless product of social conditioning.

This lecture sets the question of truth against the backdrop of consciousness: the stage upon which truth is conceived about reality, based on our perceptions of it. The language of reality is thus translated in the language of our sensitivity, besides other human languages posing a problem of fidelity to their model.

This lecture highlights fragmentation as a feature of rational thought that relates to the practice of analysis and the use of language. It also encourages a holistic approach to the conceptualization of reality: one that is consistent with both the complexity and the unity of things.

This lecture on some points overlaps with my lecture entitled ULTIMATE FOUNDATIONS. I nevertheless offer it to my listeners because it includes additional insights that they may find intellectually stimulating. 

This lecture provides an analytical breakdown of our self as composed of three distinct but indivisible aspects: our acquired habits, our genetic makeup, and the fundamental creative principle at the heart of everything in the universe, including us.

This lecture relates inner peace to the effort we make to honor our commitments in every area of personal and moral responsibility. 

This lecture argues that, like a sculptor who carves an undifferentiated block of marble into a particular figure that has artistic value, we cannot achieve a worthwhile and meaningful life, in terms of relationships or occupations, without committing to a small subgroup of people and things that are best suited to our individual nature.

This lecture makes a distinction between our genetic makeup, our vast human potential, and our habits, which realize a fraction of that potential and can change in accordance with a wide variety of circumstances.

This lecture talks about the present, as being our only point of access to reality, and about the need to be mindful of it. It also calls our attention to the many ways in which we become distracted from the present and lose ourselves.

This lecture highlights the intimate and often overlooked relationship between the ability to learn or face the truth, especially unpleasant ones, and the ability to cope. It also highlights this important fact: Humans are incredibly adaptable.

This lecture describes two ways of coping with hardship: The first compensates a problem of maladaptation; the second resolves it. In order to illustrate my points, I bring my own experience to bear.