For My Students Who Are Trying To

As I Understand It, A Universe Is A ... Well, A Totality. A Universe Is Everything That Is, As Far As The Inside Of The Thing.

Most People Have Learned To Live In The Moment. The Argument Goes That If The Past Has Uncertain Effect On The Present, There Is No Need To Dwell On The Past. And If The Present Has Little Effect On The Future, Present Actions Need Not Be Weighed For Their Consequence. Rather, Each Act Is An Island In Time, To Be Judged On Its Own. ... It Is A World Of Impulse. It Is A World Of Sincerity. It Is A World In Which Every Word Spoken Speaks Just To That Moment, Every Glance Given Has Only One Meaning.

I'm Humbled And Enormously Grateful To Be Connected To [franz] Kafka In A Any Way. He Is One Of The Writers I Admire. I Think He Has Been A Big Influence On Me. I Appreciate The Idea Of The Individual Person Battling The Society - Which Is True In All His Books.

One Metaphor For How We Are Living Is That You See So May People With Cell Phones. In Restaurants, Walking, They Have Cell Phones Clamped To Their To Heads. When They Are On Their Cell Phones They Are Not Where Their Bodies Are...they Are Somewhere Else In Hyperspace. They Are Not Grounded. We Have Become Disembodied. By Being Always Somewhere Else We Are Nowhere.

For Me, Spirituality Includes The Belief In Things Larger Than Ourselves, An Appreciation Of Nature And Beauty, A Sensitivity To The World, A Feeling Of Shared Connection With Other Living Things, A Desire To Help People Less Fortunate Than Ourselves. All Of These Things Can Occur With Or Without God. I Do Not Believe In The Existence Of God, But I Consider Myself A Spiritual Person In The Manner I Have Just Described. I Call Myself A Spiritual Atheist. I Would Imagine That Many People Are Spiritual Atheists.