Hi and welcome.
Whether you’re drawn to questions about reality, consciousness and what it means to be human, or simply have a sense that our culture is missing something essential to how we understand ourselves and the world — welcome.
This site is a living inquiry into questions that continue to unfold in unexpected ways. At its centre are three questions that have preoccupied human inquiry across philosophy, science, and contemplative traditions for millennia: What is reality? How can we know it? And what are we to do about it? What has become increasingly clear to me is that these questions cannot be separated without distorting them. What we can know depends on how we look; how we look reflects prior assumptions about what reality is; what we ought to do follows from both. Treating them as independent disciplines — which our institutions tend to do — doesn’t keep them clean. It distorts them.
I am not a specialist in any of these subjects, and there are many people far more capable working on them. What I can offer is one person’s honest engagement — shaped by lived experience, contemplative practice, and sustained study of Eastern and Western philosophy, science, and spirituality — whilst striving to maintain intellectual rigour and honesty. This is where I write from: not from having arrived at a final understanding, but from ongoing engagement with questions that refuse to stay settled.
Thoughts are the primary content here — ranging from the personal and immediate to longer philosophical and cultural explorations, and the Library gathers resources that have shaped it. If you are new here, the Precepts may be a good place to start.
Two notes on content
Non-ordinary states of consciousness
This site discusses psychedelic and other non-ordinary states of consciousness as objects of philosophical and phenomenological inquiry. Nothing here constitutes an endorsement or encouragement of their use.
AI use
I am interested in patterns, connections, and problem solving rather than in the writing itself, so I use Claude in the writing process. This usually goes like this: I arrive at a connection, reach an understanding, see a pattern, or notice something, and write it down in whatever form it comes — from rough notes or bullet points to a somewhat articulated idea, and build from there. Sometimes, AI support is minimal, as in more personal pieces where I use it purely as an editor; other times, as in my more analytical and exploratory ones, I often engage in a dialectical process with Claude to refine and articulate my thinking. The inquiry and intuition are entirely human; the articulation and communication are AI supported. I take full responsibility for the ideas, the direction, and the final content of every piece.