• Extension

    Tuesday, April 8, 2025 5:30 a.m. Reading in A Search in Secret Egypt, remembering my own time in the King’s Chamber, but [unlike Paul Brunton in the 1930s] surrounded by the others of Ruth Shilling’s party, I having done no preparatory fasting, but wanting some form of contact or knowing, and not receiving it. Did…

  • Productive complications

    Wednesday, April 9, 2025 5:35 a.m. Have ben reading Walden steadily, but almost through now. I have hoped for another session such as yesterday’s. but I don’t think I have energy enough. Return to Brunton rather than Thoreau (much less [Earl] Diggers [creator of Charlie Chan]), and perhaps your wells will refill. Thoreau inspired you,…

  • Health and being

    Thursday, April 10, 2025 5:30 a.m. So, Jon, if you have a topic, I have the pen in hand. Notice in print what you just noticed in thought. I surprised myself, realizing that I had written more than a page here, not noticing that I do not have my glasses. This, despite the fact that…

  • Thoreau on Alcott

    Quoted from Walden: I should not forget that during my last winter at the pond there was another welcome visitor, who at one time came through the village, through snow and rain and darkness, till he saw my lamp through the trees, and shared with me some long winter evenings. One of the last of…

  • Aspiration

    Friday, April 11, 2025 6:10 a.m. Two things Jon said require treatment at length: (1) Aspiration and finding the key to health, and (2) How to ask for the key. Perhaps we can pursue that? I said, not belief or belief in any rote system. It was to these that I began to oppose aspiration…

  • The key to health

    Saturday, April 12, 2025 4:45 a.m. Jon, I can’t help feeling we missed the point somehow about aspiration as one of the keys to health. I do feel like we left it undefined somehow. I’m going to reread it and ask you again. Perhaps we did, but it seems obvious. If you have belief in…

  • Health and illness as indicator

    Sunday, April 13, 2025 5:30 a.m. Perhaps we could say more about how our health challenges provide indicators of our – what should we call them? – moral deficiencies? First let’s define terms a bit. We don’t want to leave things so loose that people fit our discussion into their theologies or philosophies rather than…

  • Illness as indicator

    Monday, April 14, 2025 4:45 a.m. Illness as indicator, and illness as facilitator. Yes? And how do you feel? You know how I feel: crummy. (Crumby, for purists.) But I trust my state of health or non-health is not being used for display purposes. Isn’t the theme illness as indicator? Why would your state of…

  • Facilitation and clarity

    Tuesday, April 15, 2025 12:40 a.m. Should we begin? We were going to discuss illness as facilitator. Which is the same as discussing wellness as facilitator, or geography or heredity or proclivity as facilitator. Just one more factor in bounding our possibilities, you mean? Certainly. Not all factors are of equal strength within any given…

  • Illnesses of aging

    Wednesday, April 16, 2025 3:45 a.m. Jon, if you have an agenda, let’s proceed. Otherwise, perhaps we can address the questions posed by Jim Austin in a comment on my blog. Let’s address his questions, which are good ones. But we will address them from an angle he may not have been considering. Nothing new…