Mike Farley
@anopenground.bsky.social
Blogger at https://anopenground.com/ - secular contemplative spirituality and practice. Ex-dairy herdsman, musician, writer and contemplative based in the south-west of the UK.
Simple alignment - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/12/22/s...
Simple alignment
As I read books and articles by others on the path of inquiry and self-understanding, I am often struck by how often they begin with an autobiographical note; and how often that note concerns their…
anopenground.com
December 22, 2025 at 10:52 PM
Simple alignment - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/12/22/s...
Reposted by Mike Farley
Cladonia fimbriata is very common #lichen in Britain, but how splendid to see in such profusion! Distinguished from other similar pixie-cups by 'golf-tee' shape, and by surface of uniformly farinose i.e. 'powdery' soredia. On moss on calcareous drystone wall, Normanby-le-Wold, Lincolnshire, England.
December 20, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Cladonia fimbriata is very common #lichen in Britain, but how splendid to see in such profusion! Distinguished from other similar pixie-cups by 'golf-tee' shape, and by surface of uniformly farinose i.e. 'powdery' soredia. On moss on calcareous drystone wall, Normanby-le-Wold, Lincolnshire, England.
Reposted by Mike Farley
Reposted by Mike Farley
Years ago I was on a meditation retreat and in a state where, while I was effectively "altered," there was very much a sense of direction — a wholesome current moving in a healthy direction. Afterwards I was reminded of an early description of the Gulf Stream: "There is a river in the ocean."
“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it."
Norman Maclean
#VT365 #NaturePhotography
#Poetry
Norman Maclean
#VT365 #NaturePhotography
#Poetry
December 19, 2025 at 1:48 PM
Years ago I was on a meditation retreat and in a state where, while I was effectively "altered," there was very much a sense of direction — a wholesome current moving in a healthy direction. Afterwards I was reminded of an early description of the Gulf Stream: "There is a river in the ocean."
Be happy - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/12/19/b...
Be happy
Happiness… appears at first to be a temporary experience that occurs from time to time, but when investigated turns out to be ever-present and always available in the background of experience…
anopenground.com
December 19, 2025 at 9:28 PM
Be happy - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/12/19/b...
Don't forget to click the link - the real sting is in the tail!
Most people have never lived outside the mind’s theater. They experience life almost entirely as commentary…as stories about what’s happening, what might happen, what should be happening, and who’s to blame that it isn’t. Inside that theater, constant agitatio... https://thisness.one/post/2025-12-16
December 16, 2025 at 9:06 PM
Don't forget to click the link - the real sting is in the tail!
Ordinary lives - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/12/16/o...
Ordinary lives
I find myself at the moment unable to get away from a recognition that the impulse to the contemplative life is at bottom an impulse to an ordinary life. We are so often taught that we should aspir…
anopenground.com
December 16, 2025 at 9:03 PM
Ordinary lives - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/12/16/o...
Reposted by Mike Farley
The master's tools - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/12/13/t...
The master’s tools
Sociologist Nancy Nason-Clark has researched the parallels between abusive religious environments and abuse in intimate partnerships. She has determined that individuals—women in particular—who hav…
anopenground.com
December 13, 2025 at 9:34 PM
The master's tools - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/12/13/t...
Reposted by Mike Farley
More light.
More love.
Not less.
More love.
Not less.
December 13, 2025 at 4:27 PM
More light.
More love.
Not less.
More love.
Not less.
Time and practice: a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/12/09/t...
Time and practice
There is an odd thing about time: that practice which appears pointless, tedious, or irredeemably flawed nevertheless works just as well, in terms of growth or awakening, as the most apparently ins…
anopenground.com
December 9, 2025 at 8:50 PM
Time and practice: a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/12/09/t...
Reposted by Mike Farley
We’re not really used to filibustering in the UK, but this is what it looks like. This is a bad faith abuse of the legislative process at public expense in an attempt to wreck a measure approved by democratically elected members. Deeply immoral and disreputable. humanists.uk/2025/12/05/n...
Needlessly cruel: Peer proposes mandatory pregnancy tests for all in assisted dying amendment
A member of the House of Lords has suggested that anyone applying for an assisted death needs to do a pregnancy test, including men and older people. Humanists UK and My Death, My Decision are disappo...
humanists.uk
December 6, 2025 at 3:41 PM
We’re not really used to filibustering in the UK, but this is what it looks like. This is a bad faith abuse of the legislative process at public expense in an attempt to wreck a measure approved by democratically elected members. Deeply immoral and disreputable. humanists.uk/2025/12/05/n...
Unremarkable - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/12/06/u...
Unremarkable
Eve Baker writes, in Paths in Solitude (pp.10-11): The solitary is the bearer of the future, of that which is not yet born, of the mystery which lies beyond the circle of lamplight or the edge of t…
anopenground.com
December 6, 2025 at 8:55 PM
Unremarkable - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/12/06/u...
Awake awareness - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/12/03/a...
Awake awareness
Awake awareness has been described as the “groundless ground,” or the foundation out of which all phenomena rise and dissolve back into again and again. It’s a big idea, but it can be explored in m…
anopenground.com
December 3, 2025 at 9:24 PM
Awake awareness - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/12/03/a...
What is awareness? - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/12/01/w...
December 1, 2025 at 9:55 PM
What is awareness? - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/12/01/w...
Ground and network (republished) - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/11/30/g...
Ground and network (republished)
Merlin Sheldrake, in his book Entangled Life, discusses the way all life, on this planet at least, seems to be underpinned by fungal networks, mycorrhizal webs connecting tree to tree, plant to ani…
anopenground.com
November 30, 2025 at 8:43 PM
Ground and network (republished) - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/11/30/g...
The freedom of the elbow - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/11/25/t...
The freedom of the elbow
Again and again, I find liberation in the very places I thought it was not—in brokenness and imperfection, disappointment and disillusionment, limitation and death, failure and darkness, unresolvab…
anopenground.com
November 25, 2025 at 7:06 PM
The freedom of the elbow - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/11/25/t...
Succession and substance - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/11/21/s...
Succession and substance
The stream is nothing less than the sparkling surface of becoming. For us, I suppose, it is time, since we are transient waves on the motion of what is coming to be; and we can only see what has be…
anopenground.com
November 21, 2025 at 9:20 PM
Succession and substance - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/11/21/s...
An admission - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/11/21/a...
An admission
It seems to me that perhaps I may have been precipitate in switching back entirely to Blogger as a platform. It is hard, sometimes, to admit that one may have made a mistake; but possibly I have do…
anopenground.com
November 21, 2025 at 5:45 AM
An admission - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.com/2025/11/21/a...
Is it possible? - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.blogspot.com/2025/11/is-i...
Is it possible?
Secular contemplative spirituality, silence, the solitary life
anopenground.blogspot.com
November 20, 2025 at 9:22 PM
Is it possible? - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.blogspot.com/2025/11/is-i...
Vastness - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.blogspot.com/2025/11/vast...
Vastness
Secular contemplative spirituality, silence, the solitary life
anopenground.blogspot.com
November 18, 2025 at 9:22 PM
Vastness - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.blogspot.com/2025/11/vast...
The fundamental unknowability of God - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-...
November 16, 2025 at 9:20 PM
The fundamental unknowability of God - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-...
Reposted by Mike Farley
What's the linguistically correct term for Santa's little helpers?
Subordinate clauses
👍
Subordinate clauses
👍
November 15, 2025 at 4:48 PM
What's the linguistically correct term for Santa's little helpers?
Subordinate clauses
👍
Subordinate clauses
👍
By the window - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.blogspot.com/2025/11/by-w...
By the window
Secular contemplative spirituality, silence, the solitary life
anopenground.blogspot.com
November 14, 2025 at 9:33 PM
By the window - a new post on An Open Ground: anopenground.blogspot.com/2025/11/by-w...
Back to Blogger! I am reverting to good old Blogger. For future posts, please go to An Open Ground, using this link. You can request an email subscription by using the Contact Form in the right sidebar, below the RSS feed buttons. See you there!
anopenground.blogspot.com
anopenground.blogspot.com
An Open Ground
Contemplative spirituality, secular Buddhism, silence, the solitary life
anopenground.blogspot.com
November 14, 2025 at 6:43 PM
Back to Blogger! I am reverting to good old Blogger. For future posts, please go to An Open Ground, using this link. You can request an email subscription by using the Contact Form in the right sidebar, below the RSS feed buttons. See you there!
anopenground.blogspot.com
anopenground.blogspot.com