Conscious Ritualing

A Taste of Qualia

Jun 172013

The qualiadelic quandary.

Either: qualia is everywhere, and we should learn to appreciate it everywhere. Qualia is in the colors of the landscapes all around us, in the varieties of people and all the different things that people do and think. There is nothing under the Sun and the stars here on Earth that can’t fascinate us for a short time if we pay attention.:

Or: while qualia may be everywhere, we only need to discover one little piece of it, and we can make that piece our own – for life. We can ritual with our qualia, and grow it, and evolve with it.

Both ways of seeing have their merits. While one person goes around (the world) experiencing its rituals in every shape or form, another person practices ritualing at home. While one collects tchotchkes of treasure both for her mind and her shelves, the other builds a home, a community, a world, and a universe all his own. These two are satisfied; they are the envy of people who have done neither – that is, done neither whole-heartedly, with conscious ritualing.

Qualiadelic Quotes

Jun 142013



Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live — Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

One lives by one’s conscious ritualing, and that is how illusions are created. Of course, we inherit other people’s illusions, the illusions of those who have come before us — but we are not living if we merely step into their rituals. The conscious ritualer improves upon the rituals of others, and in the process improves their illusions as well. Like Mr. Twain, we may make an old story our own. We can make a melody our own. We can make a house, a yard, and a home our own. We can make the landscape our own — both the inner and the outer landscape.

The landscape, right down to its very colors, and all that we can sense in it — its qualia — is an illusion. And that inner qualia, all those ideas and beliefs, those dreams and intuitions, they, too, are illusions. Quite literally, if we lose the illusions, we no longer exist.

A Taste of Qualia

Jun 112013

We are what we notice; and there is really not that much to us, because we don’t notice that much. We are just a shallow interface between the inner and outer landscapes which surround us.

But those landscapes move about and transform like phantoms. If we let these phantoms come alive inside of us then we really are something. Dare we notice? Dare we ritual? If we ignore them we are like the “big man on campus” who spends the rest of his life merely reminiscing and thinking about what he could have been.

Qualiadelic Quotes

Jun 072013

We do not desire a thing because we adjudge it to be good, but, on the contrary, we call it good because we desire it, and consequently everything to which we are averse we call evil — Spinoza (1632 – 1677)

Much that we are quick to call evil is to be desired. We can steer away from the adversities in life, but they will always dog us. Our ship, the Conscious Ritual, is built to face suffering; our fears are nothing when compared to the crisis of running on empty; to be calm, to be becalmed, adrift, is not our fate. It is a worse to suffer aimlessly than to suffer failure in the attempt. The ordinary objects of desire are nothing compared to facing the truth.

A Taste of Qualia

Jun 032013

The problem of noticing (aside from the subtlety of the qualia which eludes the unpracticed gaze), is that we fail to appreciate the rewards that await us. We are like children who resist reading books, unaware of the treasures they are missing. Like a child who gets it, though, the problem is a problem no more to the conscious ritualer; as great books will ever fall into our hands, so will new and fabulous qualia always show up to aid us in our moments of need.

Qualiadelic Quotes

May 312013

To each his suff’rings: all are men,

Condemn’d alike to groan;

The tender for another’s pain,

Th’unfeeling for his own.

Yet ah! why should they know their fate?

Since sorrow never comes too late,

And happiness too swiftly flies,

Thought would destroy their paradise.

No more; where ignorance is bliss,

“Tis folly to be wise. — Thomas Gray (1716 – 1771)

Fate is a construction we put upon our lives; it does not merely happen to us. Some things fateful, like winning the lottery or being struck by a branch falling from a tree, seem completely random; nevertheless, we bought the ticket on a whim, or we sat ourselves down under that branch while on a hike. There are the fateful decisions we have made, to have a child, or to pursue a specific career, which the conscientious person, for many reasons, feels a need to justify. In these circumstances, we construct our fate – not in the simple fact that we make a decision, but in the complex fact that we are a good person and so we don’t abandon our responsibilities, even if we resent them. Then we construct fate — like a theory, if you will. Suddenly we find a willingness to put our faith in far-fetched systems of belief. Suddenly we are willing to accept that in a past life we may have done something for which we have, in this life, been given the opportunity to atone — so we stick with our choices; or, alternatively, there is a future life toward which any rational being would strive (heaven, for instance). All such beliefs warrant that we suffer in this life despite opportunities to have it easier here and now. Suddenly, other things fateful, such as being born to a particular family, or in a certain country, or in this century, no longer appear so much out of our control. We have an uncanny inkling, a sneaking suspicion, that we are indeed the masters of our own destiny. It is a big feeling, dare we to have it.

A Taste of Qualia

May 272013

A fundamental question of evolutionary theory asks what is the benefit of a particular adaptive characteristic? For instance, the benefits of sensing light or color may not have been obvious at first, although they are now. The benefits of discursive thought (the ability to use reason and logic) seem obvious enough, at least in the short time we humans have been using it — but lately it seems to be steering the race toward the edge of a cliff.

The question of adaptation is misleading, however, for the benefit of an adaptation may not be for us at all, but for some other creature. Many animals have adapted because of parasites which manipulate them. Other organisms are manipulated by larger organisms (sometimes known as ecosystems). In our case, we are certainly manipulated with ideas. Qualia controls us.

Qualiadelic Quotes

May 242013

More gold had been mined from the mind of men than the earth it self — Napoleon Hill (1883 – 1970)

Everybody has had at least one big idea which got away. “I invented that years ago — darn, I could have been rich!” We remember the flash of inspiration, how it felt, the sense of knowing, and then the regret that we let such a moment slip away. Were we to be perfectly honest with ourselves, that moment was, indeed, but a moment; it was a mere few seconds of an idea to which a bunch of other ideas instantly connected, a constellation spelling a fortune for us. And then it was gone, and we never thought of it again until we saw it on a website, or hanging on the wall at a gallery, or we heard someone sing it on the radio.

The truth is that our thoughts are filled with big ideas at all hours of the day and night, and they slip away in seconds (if not milliseconds). We just don’t pay attention. But the big ideas don’t have to hit us over the head like a baseball bat for us to notice. It is not the capacity to notice which is lacking, but the habit of looking. We are not attuned — we are not ritualing.

Our ritualing, and ritualing consciously, turns us into lightning rods for qualia. Qualia is everywhere, ubiquitously waiting all around us to be noticed. Once we are conscious of it, once we develop and eye or an ear or a nose for it — once we develop a mind for it — we can’t help but sense it. Because everything else on the planet is reaching out toward us, sending qualiadelic signals our way, trying to entangle us in a relationship. Just as a flower calls to a bee with color or smell, so the universe is calling us, too.

No, our big ideas won’t always make us rich — at least not in dollars and cents — but they will fill our lives with meaning, with happiness, with beauty, and even with love. When we have that we don’t need money! All we need is the simple skill of conscious ritualing.

A Taste of Qualia

May 202013

Like a mirage it is simply not clear if qualia is actually existing out there or is just a figment of our imagination. All we can do is move toward it and in the process some of us survive and some of us don’t.

Who was the first creature to move toward the mirage that is color? What blessed organism, long before that, noticed mere light, or weight, or gravity, as in a dream? How far back in time did a cosmic consciousness of some weak force dawn upon a lonely electron in its quest to endure?

Our Daily Qualia

May 192013

Chemical Resistant Qualia

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