Month: July 2025

For a long time, I’ve been puzzled by the social reluctance to believe those who disclose that they have suffered sexual abuse or violence. Admittedly, there are women who have falsely reported being harassed or violated. I have experienced this in my own life. But i doubt that is the norm, and I know many reportings are credible, many supported by witnesses. Yet there is a resistance in our society to acknowledge the abuse or violence.

I think sexual abuse and violence are part of the ambience of our culture. Fathers do abuse their daughters, men do force women into sex, husbands do assault their partners. It is all around us.

For a few years I have been studying the dynamics of racism in our culture. It is so much a part of our every-day ambience that we have become unaware that it is happening. The hidden violence and abuse of racism happens all the time. We are hardly even aware that we are participating in this culture of racism. We ignore and even deny that it is happening. We doubt the reporting by those who have experieced racial abuse or violence. We are unaware of our participation in this dynamic.

I think this same dynamic is at play in how our culture denies and ignores sexual abuse and violence. It is such an integral part of the patriarchal world that we no longer recognize or accept when it happens in front of us or is evident on the pages of the newspaper. It is such a part of the ambience of our culture that we have largely become unaware of its presence, like the air we breathe. We often deny its presence.

The reporting of the sordid details attributed to leaders in our county are just one example of our broad unwillingness to believe the victims. Officials are elected and appointed without regard for their role in sexual abuse and violence. Like racism, the dynamics of our culture are so infused with sexual abuse and violence that many feel compelled to ignore them. Like racism, to acknowledge that the ambience is so affected by sexual violation would require a radical remaking of our culture.

If we widely acknowledge the prevalent ambience of sexual violation, our whole patriarchal house of cards could tumble.

Like the broad universe, the Earth follows a built-in intelligence that guides how everything interacts. Some people call these guides the laws of physics. This intelligence guides reactions to actions. These guides shape what for the Earth are logical consequences.

Atoms combine and break apart according to this internal intelligence. Outcomes are shaped by this guidance. Evolution and expressions of genes are simply a result of changing circumstances affecting the way things used to be. It is how the Earth and its myriad components act.

I think that the Earth may have reached a limited carrying capacity for humans. The Earth and its guiding intelligence recognize this. Many signs have emerged that say things have changed and the guiding laws are altering the conditions of the Earth. Humans have triggered an evolutionary process that is governed by the built-in intelligence of the Earth.

The Earth, following the guidance of the universe, may be in the process of ridding itself of certain kinds of life forms. That includes humans, particularly those whose thinking and actions challenge the internal guidance of the Earth. Only those who are consistent with the intelligence of the Earth will endure.

Science has prepared me to enter the realm of formless perception. It has been science that has prepared me by offering concepts that have made my mind more pliable and malleable, ready to enter where there is no perception or form.

My experience gives shape and form to my embracing of insight. It is the scientific experience of others that have prepared me to let go of the forms associated with perception. The contours of my mind have been shaped both by my own experience and the experience of countless individuals of science. My mind has been conditioned to yield to no form. My mind has been prepared to expand into the realm where there is no form.

Because of science, my mind can more easily combine the paradoxical realm of the historical and ultimate. For me, science has not been an impediment to the ultimate. Science has been an assist and facilitated that absorption into the formless realm.

Prepared as it has been by science, my mind is more likely to accept what the heart has come to grasp. My mind is more facile in being shaped by the heart experience of the guiding consciousness of the universe. This is the realm beyond form and perception. My heart is more easily moved by the driving energy and intellectual force of the universe. My mind, conditioned by science, is more easily shaped and led by the stirrings of my heart. I am more likely to trust with my mind what my heart already has felt and knows so well. My mind yields, puts up less resistance. It has been prepared by science to be docile to the leadership of my heart.

The experience of my heart allows my mind to open to the world of the absolute. But the mind has been prepared for that adventure by science. My mind has been freed of resistance and roadblocks. it is prepared to enter the realm that defies description and explanation.

I am grateful for all the people of science who have prepared my malleable mind for this excursion into the absolute.