Housecleaning completed

After the usual procrastination, I've finished the job of culling old, unwanted posts. I left in the ones that I think may still be of interest, as well as a few that I just happen to like. 

My criteria for elimination were pretty straightforward. In general. I deleted posts that ... 

• dealt with transient political issues, without raising any larger philosophical questions
• existed only to publicize a link that is now defunct 
• advertised upcoming events, now long forgotten
• promoted my non-paranormal books 

I did not check the links in posts that had enough relevant content to stand on their own. Doing so would have been an endless job. No doubt there are many expired links, but as long as a post still had something to offer, I left it in. 

I also tried to clean up the weird formatting that plagued the earliest posts. 

With a handful of exceptions, I did not delete posts merely because I now disagree with them. My opinions have changed considerably over the years. Today I'm not inclined to explain away reincarnation as possession or errant ESP, as I was at first. I'm also less inclined to see the Bible as a valuable tool of spiritual insight. In the early years of this blog, I was influenced by conservative New Testament scholars like N.T. Wright, with the result that I tried to find a historical underpinning to Gospel stories wherever possible. I now think those stories were mostly invented by ardent believers who combed the Hebrew scriptures (the Old Testament) for "prophecies" of the messiah and then incorporated those details into the life of Jesus. 

I was quite obsessed with Ayn Rand in the first few years. Though I had broken with her philosophy, Objectivism, I was still in the process of, so to speak, "deprogramming" myself. I was probably overly hard on her as I worked to escape any remaining hold her ideas had on me. 

My attitude toward mediumship, life after death, etc., was pretty wishy-washy in the beginning. In some of the earlier posts I make more concessions toward skepticism than I would now. 

I haven't looked at the comment threads. Reviewing them would take forever. There have been many, many excellent comments, and there have also been some that were irrelevant, silly, or even crazy. In the early years I did not use comment moderation, so everything got published, including stuff that moderation would have blocked.

Naturally, the fact that a comment appears somewhere in this blog does not mean that I agree with it. I don't even agree with all of my own opinions anymore, much less the opinions of other people! 

Comments

[Ian]

Reading all that, Michael, I'm now curious... What part of your views on matters of spirituality has changed the most over the years?

[James Oeming]

Michael:
Thanks for curating your most excellent legacy.
~ Your blog has played a big part in my personal development.
~ Thank you

[Paul]

Thanks Michael. Hope all’s well.

[Matt Rouge]

I'm glad the blog's still up, Michael! Thank you for your valuable work on this subject over many years.

[Michael Prescott]

Thanks for all the kind words! Sorry for my late reply; I very seldom remember to check for comments anymore.

"What part of your views on matters of spirituality has changed the most over the years?"

Hmm. That's a tough one. I suppose I've become more accepting of the idea that since all experience is subjective, the quest for objective proof of our spiritual nature is likely to fail. It's like asking for objective proof that you are conscious. By its nature, consciousness is subjective.

The spiritual realm is essentially a realm of consciousness, and as such it's not amenable to objective testing in the way that physical phenomena are.

Efforts to reduce the spiritual to a material substrate -- for instance, by positing a quasi-physical "heaven" where atoms vibrate at a faster rate, or locating the afterlife environment in physical space, or talking literally (rather than metaphorically) about frequency spectrums -- are, I believe, category errors.

Likewise, efforts to build a machine that will enable communication with the "other side," such as George Meek's Spiricom, are unlikely to be productive, unless perhaps a technology like Hemi-Sync can be used to shift our consciousness to a different level. But I suspect this kind of change involves more than a shift of brainwaves and must come from a deeper source.

In other words, it all comes back to consciousness and to the necessarily subjective nature of personal experience. As Tennyson wrote in "Ulysses,"

I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.

[sbu]

Some people believe that individuals never change their minds. Planck once said, 'A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.' Elon Musk has echoed a similar sentiment. However, I think your blog and this particular post serve as wonderful reminders that people can indeed change their minds during their life journey.

[Tiffany]

Hi Michael. You don't know me, but I was a frequent lurker of your blog back in the day, around 2008ish to 2015. I obviously didn't keep up with everything, but I always found your posts on spirituality and the paranormal thoughtful and nuanced, even if I didn't always agree (I haven't done the extensive amount of reading you have, either!)

Last year I went back to check--something had twigged in my memory and I was reminded of this--and saw that you'd retired this. Imagine my delight when I come today, for much the same reason, and see that you're still updating, however infrequent.

I know it's not likely you'll see my comment soon, or at all, but thank you for all of your posts throughout the years and best wishes.