Beyond the Map

I was immediately drawn to the title Masculinity in the Metacrisis, as the question of what it means to be a man has surfaced recently in our Between-Us groups*.What I find challenging is not just defining masculinity, but even locating it in my own ...
We often think of awareness as passive.A kind of empty screen upon which experience appears.Of course I can only speak from my experience.I only know awareness from the inside — as this lived field of experiencing and everything arising within it.B...
Setting the Scene:At school I was what would have been termed a nerd. In the 1970s the preferred insult was “swot.” I was socially awkward — these were the days before people were routinely placed somewhere on a spectrum — and I found refuge ...
“Man is condemned to be free.”— Jean-Paul Sartre“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”— Friedrich NietzscheI came of age in the late 1960s and early 70s, in a cultural atmosphere quietly saturat...
This week several apparently unrelated strands began to converge in a way that caught my attention.The first concerned the ethical dilemmas now facing developers of advanced artificial intelligence. As these systems become more powerful, the organisa...
We are pattern-seeking creatures. We are hard-wired that way. With limited data, we model what we encounter as threat or promise — especially in relationship, whatever the “other” may be.Wherever we sense coherent responsiveness — rhythm, con...
This essay was not written about a particular mode of inquiry so much as through it. It emerged from an extended, conversational engagement with an AI system — not as a source of answers, nor as a substitute for human dialogue, but as a partner in ...
Encounter One: Stages, Rhythm, and a Subtle MismatchMy essays and other writings often arrive as surprises. I can be sitting at my laptop, engaged in some ordinary activity, when something appears—a post, a line, a phrase—and there is an immediat...
From a recently discovered working document for what scholars believe was intended as Kafka’s next work, following The Trial and The CastleScholars consider this fragment to belong to a late, unfinished novel.It opens without preamble:“K. attempt...
Prologue: Author’s NoteThis piece began as a late-night conversation with a fellow traveller — a lively two-hour exchange that moved from the definition of enlightenment, where we disagreed, to relational wisdom, the spirit realm, and even disco ...
1. Heart of the DiamondThis essay did not begin as a plan. It began as a kind of pressure—subtle, persistent, irresistible. Not a thought, exactly, but a movement beneath thought. Something wanting to come into form.Often my writing begins this way...
“Once upon a time…” and “A long time ago…” we began to make sense of the world by telling stories. We told them around fires when nights were truly dark, in whispered prayers on our knees as children, in bedtime rituals with storyboo...
The traditional Japanese poem form of the haiku has a sparseness and elegance that few other poetic forms carry.In its English-language version, it consists of three short lines, traditionally with a syllable structure of 5-7-5, though looser forms h...

Sign up for updates, news, reflections, and poems, as well as occasional book or article recommendations from the edges of philosophy, mysticism, and consciousness. After signing up, you’ll receive a welcome email — please click the link to confirm your subscription (and check your spam folder if you don’t see it).

The heart of the Diamond

Newsletter Sign-Up