In this episode of Sacred Tension, I speak with Richard Lang about the Headless Way, which is a meditation method pioneered by Douglas Harding. We discuss the fundamental nature of consciousness, how the Headless Way expands empathy, how Headlessness might connect with Satanic practice, and much more.
Find the Headless Way here: https://headless.org/
Continue reading “Sacred Tension: The Headless Way with Richard Lang”
In this episode of Sacred Tension, I speak with philosopher Philip Goff about panpsychism, the nature of consciousness, the potential limits of materialism, and much more.
Continue reading “Sacred Tension: Panpsychism and the Hard Problem of Consciousness with Philip Goff”
Several months ago, I had a meditation experience the likes of which I’d never had before. The instructor advised me to take note of the feeling of being a subject looking at an object. He then said, “look for the one who is looking. Turn awareness upon itself, and look for the subject who is perceiving the object.”
Continue reading “There is Only Consciousness: On Minority Experience and Universal Humanity”
Growing up in the evangelical world, a central lesson I learned about reality was that there were necessary and normative divisions. These divisions began at the moment of creation itself: God separating light from dark, land from water, sky from earth, and, most relevant to me, woman from man. The first 27 verses of the book of Genesis describe this process of creation by way of division, from an earth “formless and void.”
As a gay child, I was raised to believe that the sin of my homosexuality blurred these foundational distinctions established at the dawn of time. Homosexuality, by its very nature, violated the metaphysics of man and woman. It was therefore understood as an act of Uncreation: a terrifying unraveling of the created order, a returning to an earth formless and void.
Continue reading “Meditation as Uncreation”
In this episode of Sacred Tension I talk to philosopher Philip Goff about Panpsychism, which posits that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe. Find Philip Goff here. Read his blog here, and follow him on twitter here.
Continue reading “Sacred Tension: Panpsychism, feat. Philip Goff”
In The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, Eastern Orthodox Theologian David Bentley Hart writes that he believes true atheism must be “nurtured by an infantile wish to live in a world proportionate to one’s own hopes or conceptual limitations.”
Continue reading “Does Atheism Lack Wonder?”
In his brilliant introduction to artificial intelligence, Max Tegmark describes our existence as the universe waking up from a zombie slumber. As I’ve struggled to understand what I believe about God and the universe around me, I’ve found myself finding wonder and hope in the material universe itself.
Stephen Bradford Long 