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The Metaphysics of Creating Your Own Reality: Focus, Schrödinger’s Cat, Mystery Boxes, the Rapture, and Timeline Jumping

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From a psychological perspective, the idea that “focus creates one’s reality” suggests that an individual’s attention and cognitive prioritization shape their perception and experience of the world by filtering sensory information and amplifying what aligns with their focus. This process, often linked to mechanisms like the brain’s reticular activating system, influences beliefs, emotions, and behaviors, effectively constructing a subjective reality based on where one directs their mental energy. The principle […] Read more »

The Path to True Liberty: Reason Over Rebellion

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Parenting with Love and Logic by Foster Cline and Jim Fay advocates for raising responsible, self-confident children through empathetic discipline and natural consequences. The book emphasizes allowing children to make choices within clear boundaries, fostering accountability by letting them experience the logical outcomes of their decisions. It promotes a parenting style that balances love with firm guidance, avoiding punitive measures to encourage critical thinking and independence. Rebellion is a counterfeit […] Read more »

Jesus Walking on Water: A Metaphor for Neutralizing Life’s Storms

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22 Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. 23 After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, 24 and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it. 25 Shortly before dawn Jesus went out […] Read more »

The Illusion of Control: How Zooming-Out Liberates Us

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Human consciousness often clings to a zoomed-in state, fixated on personal narratives, viewpoints, and structures that provide an illusion of control. This hyper-focused perspective stems from a primal need for safety, where individuals anchor themselves to familiar stories and rigid frameworks to navigate life’s uncertainties. By staying zoomed-in, people believe they can manage their environment, relationships, and outcomes. However, this narrow focus creates a self-imposed “control Matrix”—a mental construct reinforced […] Read more »

The Eight Intellectual Character Traits & the Eight Intellectual Standards

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The Eight Intellectual Character Traits: intellectual humility, intellectual courage, intellectual empathy, autonomy, integrity, intellectual perseverance, confidence in reason, and fairmindedness. NOTE: All text below is from the book “The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools (Thinker’s Guide Library)” by Richard Paul & Linda Elder. Intellectual Humility: Having a consciousness of the limits of one’s knowledge, including a sensitivity to circumstances in which one’s native egocentrism is likely to […] Read more »

Confronting and Overcoming the Victim Mindset Within and Without

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Karpman’s Drama Triangle is a psychological model describing dysfunctional social interactions through three roles: the victim, who feels powerless and seeks rescue; the persecutor, who blames or oppresses; and the rescuer, who intervenes to “save” but often perpetuates the cycle. These roles create a dynamic of blame, dependency, and conflict, trapping participants in unhealthy patterns. The Empowerment Dynamic (TED) Triangle is a constructive alternative to the Drama Triangle, featuring three […] Read more »

The Great Reset as a ‘Great Reckoning’ of Accounts Due

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We are individually and collectively approaching “Childhood’s End”. The Great Reset is a proposed global rebalancing of societal and economic systems, envisioned as a reckoning where individuals and institutions face accountability for their moral and transactional choices. It forces an internal confrontation with one’s ledger, aligning outcomes with the standards—reasoned or exploitative—chosen by each. Klaus Schwab’s concept of the Great Reset is a proposed global initiative to reshape societal and […] Read more »

Certainty as a Substitute for Truth

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Deductive rigidity refers to the strict application of fixed premises to reach conclusions, often stifling inquiry by treating those premises as unchallengeable, leading to inflexible and potentially flawed outcomes. In contrast, abductive reasoning offers flexibility by inferring the best explanation from observed facts, adapting to new evidence and context to align further with truth. The maxim “You can be dead sure and dead wrong” exposes a fundamental flaw in human cognition: the tendency to […] Read more »

Abductive Reasoning and the Pursuit of a Moral Life

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A rational process is a moral process. You may make an error at any step of it, with nothing to protect you but your own severity, or you may try to cheat, to fake the evidence and evade the effort of the quest – but if devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of […] Read more »

The Transcendence of Law & the Path to a Non-Transactional Agape-Based Existence

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Law is the shadow of reason; whereas children require rules from their parents to navigate life, adults instead use reason to guide their morality and decision making. ~Nathan Martin Laws are only meant to be an age appropriate way to communicate reason, and what is reasonable, to small children. Spiritually and psychologically mature adults do not need laws then, as they have reason to guide their morality and ethical decision […] Read more »

Prolonged Childhood: How Schooling and Laws Cause Dependency

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The word “authority” derives from the Latin “auctoritas,” originally meaning “growth,” “influence,” and, crucially, “authorship” – referring to someone who originates or brings something into being. This etymological root reveals how attributing authority to another implies granting them the power to “author” our actions, beliefs, or even our life’s direction, essentially ceding control over our own narrative to their will or judgment. The concept of prolonged childhood has become a […] Read more »

Law as a Type and Shadow of Reason

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John Locke’s “law of reason” refers to the natural capacity of human beings to use rational thought to discern moral and ethical principles that govern just interactions, independent of external authority. It is an internal guide, accessible through reflection, that aligns individual actions with objective truths about reality and human rights. Law, at its core, represents a fundamental failure to trust in individual reason. While proponents often frame it as […] Read more »

The Morality of Negotiation vs “My Way or the Highway’s” Deductive Rigidity

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Deductive rigidity refers to the strict application of fixed premises to reach conclusions, often stifling inquiry by treating those premises as unchallengeable, leading to inflexible and potentially flawed outcomes. In contrast, abductive reasoning offers flexibility by inferring the best explanation from observed facts, adapting to new evidence and context to align further with truth. Transactional Love is a conditional exchange where affection or care is offered with the expectation of receiving something in return, […] Read more »

Prometheus, Epimetheus, Stolen Fire, & Pandora’s Box

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The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act—the process of reason—must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a meal among many […] Read more »

Pride, Arrogance, and Grammatical Fallacies

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Pride, in a virtuous sense, is the rational recognition and celebration of one’s earned achievements and self-worth, grounded in personal integrity and effort. It fosters confidence and resilience, enabling individuals to stand firm in their convictions without veering into arrogance. Socratic humility is the intellectual virtue of recognizing and embracing the limits of one’s knowledge, fostering openness to learning and growth. It counters arrogance by encouraging a continuous quest for […] Read more »