Consciousness vs. Science

The question of consciousness is like a chasm that science will never be able to build a bridge over. Science produces many wonderful things. It has revealed tremendous mysteries, made truly incredible discoveries and led to almost magical inventions. But to whatever extent it seeks to comprehend the real nature of reality, it will ultimately fail. Because understanding the nature of reality can't be relegated to machines and objective observation. What would modern science be without machines? It's like in the Douglas Adams book, in which they invent a machine to tell them the meaning of life. It takes a hundred years for it to calculate the answer. And then, finally, it delivers the answer to those waiting so long for it: 42. The joke is on them.

Science can't tell us the true nature of reality, because the most important revelations that will explain reality lie within the observer, not within the observed universe. Thus, the most important answers will come not from objective observation, but rather from subjective experience: from direct experience within one's own being. The ultimate answers will not be found through endlessly picking apart the universe "out there". They will be discovered through connecting with the nature of reality within one's own conscious awareness; discovering what is really real, and what the true meaning of life is, through one's subjective, individual experience of reality.

Consciousness: the final frontier.

The Camping Trip in Hawaiian Paradise That Wasn't

A few weeks ago I went on a camping trip with a friend (for this story I'll just call her Julia), on the spectacular Na Pali coast of Kauai, Hawaii. It was a trip we'd planned for a month or so. Julia had invited me to fly out to Hawaii from where I was in California at the time, for a work opportunity, to spend some time together and also to do the intense hike out to the Kalalau Valley on the west side of the island, where the cliffs (“pali” in native Hawaiian) are so rugged they couldn't build a road along that section of the coast. I'd already done the 11-mile hike several times before and knew how tough it was.

So after ten days or so of working together on a construction project that Julia was involved in, we had the time off to do the hike, with plans to camp out there for about a week. We packed up our backpacks with our tent, mattresses, thin blankets, skimpy clothes (you didn't need much), food and everything else required for a multi-day backpacking trip, and hit the trail.

Confessions: The Story of a Fight That I Started

This is going to be the story of the one and only fight I've been in in my life.....And I started it. I punched a guy repeatedly, a guy who had been my friend for sixteen years. As you will see, however, there was a lot of context to what ultimately ended up in a physical confrontation, that ended with us both being hurt pretty badly (though he was injured worse than I was).

Psychedelic Yoga in Hawaii

My new psychedelic yoga music video, filmed on a spectacular beach in Hawaii. Enjoy!

To Hili Smith (Hili Corinne)

On the beautiful Lost Coast of northern California.

Camping somewhere in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

The Industry of Spirituality

With the emerging New Age movement and the popularization of spirituality in the West, from the mainstream practice of Eastern disciplines such as yoga, meditation, Tibetan Buddhism and ayurveda; to the phenomenon of channeling, angel readings, chakra balancing, tantric workshops and the like, has come another element: the industrialization of spirituality. Around the world, people are making millions of dollars off of others, by offering their various spiritual practices, services and products at a price. And my view, is that there is nothing necessarily wrong with that!

Get Real About the New Age Movement

To start things off here, I will be up front about who will most likely NOT find this article interesting. If you have no belief in a spiritual realm, then this probably won't interest you. If you subscribe to one of the major world religions and you are happy with that explanation of God, life, the universe and everything, then what I will be discussing below probably isn't your thing. And if you're a conspiracy theorist looking for proof that the New Age movement is a vast Illuminati conspiracy, then this discussion will no doubt leave you disappointed. Rather, the audience this article is directed towards are those who are spiritually-minded, yet who are not satisfied with accepting and following one of the mainstream religious paradigms.