Lent 2026: Day two – the very essence of your being

I am aware of being aware, therefore I am. Awareness – consciousness – precedes thought. Thought is a cerebral process, thought is the passage of electrons firing through neurons and synapses. Thought is about reason, deduction. But consciousness is primal. It is the very essence of your being. Feeling, experiencing, being alive. 

Here, the notion of qualia needs to be explained. Qualia are the subjective, first-person instances of 'what it's like' to have an experience. The word 'qualia' (from the Latin, of what kind) stands in contrast with that which is countable – quanta.

Example: having just drunk my morning cup of black coffee, it would be possible for a scientist to measure the pH level in my mouth, and to compare the metabolic effect of the caffeine on my organism to the state of my blood pressure and heart rate before I drank the coffee. But all none of this data captures the 'coffeeness' of my experience itself. That complex sensation of coffee aftertaste that I'm experiencing right now is a quale (the singular of qualia). As is the feeling that I just got looking up from my keyboard at the horizon through the snow-covered forest, tand he brightness of the sun shining through the trees.

Qualia are the quintessence of your lived experience. They are sensory in origin; the smell of the now-empty coffee cup; the feeling of stroking the long, silky hair of my cat Céleste; the pungent taste of anchovy; the sound of my laptop's 'new mail' alert; sunlight acting on my retina. Sensory inputs all adding up to how it feels to be you at any given moment. 

Those lived moments are experienced and remembered; they return, familiar moments of recognition, tinge your consciousness with their afterglow, then dissipate in a second or two, like a snowflake melting on your hand. But they give you a sense of continuity; despite not a molecule in your brain having been there even ten years ago, those recollections persist.

The youness of you is formed over time from myriad qualia memories, memories of qualia rather than events, as the recollections of doing things, witnessing things, saying things, all tend to degrade over time, changing with each subsequent retelling, shifting in emphasis, importance and tone. But qualia memories remain constant to you across time. Sharp and resonant.

Qualia imprint themselves on your memory, and those memories of purest qualia experience can return to you, summoned, triggered or unbidden. I've just conjured one up – an old familiar one – the qualia memory of the smell of my first day at primary school – the smell of newly-varnished parquet flooring and Magic Marker pens. A qualia memory as sharp as the moment I originally experienced it. And this prompted a new memory, just as vivid, but one I've not had since leaving primary school; classroom door knobs. Knurled brass with concentric 'ribs' – set high, I was not yet five years old – reach up, twist and push (or pull) to open the heavy door... I can see it, feel it in my small hand... as if it were yesterday. Yet it was over 60 years ago.

Our bodies age, but our conscious experience does not fade over time. The experience of being aware, conscious, is as acute as its ever been. This fact to me offers proof that unlike our bodies, our consciousness is not subject to entropy – the second law of thermodynamics; things fade and decay, but qualia memories (as opposed to memories of events) maintain their precise quality, unsullied by time.

This to me is an intimation of the immortal nature of consciousness, or to use language of the past, the soul; the spirit. It is a consciousness that's fundamental, that pervades everything and everywhere in the Universe; consciousness that is present in you and in me, consciousness that abides – unlike matter that is subject to death and decay.

More tomorrow on how I understand that 'consciousness everywhere' idea.

Lent 2025: Day two
The language of science, the language of spirituality

Lent 2024: Day two
How much spirituality do we need?

Lent 2023: Day two
The Nature of Reality Pt. I

Lent 2022: Day two
Objective/Subjective, Ego and Consciousness.

Lent 2021: Day two  
Your life: a miracle? Or something that just happened?

Lent 2020: Day two
The Physical and the Metaphysical; the Natural and the Supernatural

Lent 2026: Day 1 – in the beginning.

In the beginning was... what?

Since before the dawn of recorded time, we humans have grappled with our origin story. How did we explain how we came to exist, how our world came to exist, how our universe came to exist and why? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why are we here to participate in the great unfolding of the universe? How do we make sense of reality of which we are a part?

At such moments of existential curiosity, we have always been able to devise answers to fill the void.

Every culture has its creation myth. And every one of these myths required supernatural intervention to kick-start existence. A god or gods, standing outside of the day-to-day routine of human life. From those oral traditions – myths and legends passed on from generation to generation around paleolithic campfires – to written accounts that would formalise into the great religions of the world, myth morphed into theology. Today, the language we use for our creation myth is that of science. The Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago.

The Enlightenment shed new light on creation. Descartes stripped away the material from the spiritual, creating dualism; two worlds, one material and one spiritual, the latter being an invisible realm of the soul, of angels and of God. Newton turned alchemy into science; the scientific method demanded that every effect have a cause. And for Newton, a God-fearing man, the first cause was God. But subsequent generations of scientists bore down in ever-greater detail into the physical world of matter, with more and more coming to reject the need for a Supreme Being to explain reality. 

By 1885, Nietzsche could proclaim – without fear of being put to death as a heretic – that God is dead. Indeed, who needs God if you have steam engines, telegraphy, weaving machines, newspapers and hygiene? And as a theory posited by Darwin, evolution has great explicatory powers to answer questions about how we came to be. Descended from apes, which in turn were descended from early mammals, which evolved from fish that learned to adapt to life on dry land. And all the way back to the last universal common ancestor, then back to the first primitive life forms on our planet.

While science was getting to grips with the inner workings of the atom and the cell, and the vastness of the Cosmos, our lives were becoming more and more focused on the acquisition of material possessions. The spiritual aspects of human life withered away under pressure from consumerist ways, especially in 'advanced' Western societies as the 20th century wore on. 

Atheism spread through societies as they urbanised. Science preached cause and effect, and if no cause could be found, then randomness and complexity were the answer. The implied physicalism of the Universe – everything is composed of matter. And by analogy, materialism came to mean the craving to buy stuff because that's become the meaning of life. If there's no God, no metaphysical dimension to the human experience, then what's left? Matter, and its acquisition, for the sake of indicating status. We work to buy, we buy to show off.

After a century or two of science's primacy that brought about huge improvements in the material quality of human lives, serious questions – doubts even – started to emerge. 

Scientific progress stalled. 

Theoretical physics of the past half-century has had but one major breakthrough – confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson. Beyond that? String theory? Going nowhere. Dark energy and dark matter? We don't know. A hundred years on from the foundations of quantum mechanics and there's still no consensus as to how to interpret quantum effects. And why does the universe appear to be so precisely fine-tuned for life? Then there's the question of abiogenesis – the leap from inanimate non-life to life that feeds and breeds. How did complex chemistry turn into simple biology?  Don't know (although some interesting progress has been made in investigating space gum from asteroid Bennu which contains all five nucleobases essential for RNA). 

But above all, the greatest mystery is that of consciousness. And it is in consciousness that my spiritual journey is grounded.

Consciousness is the bedrock. It is there; it is a real experience, that cannot be negated. No one can tell me that I'm not aware, that I'm not experiencing consciousness. Materialist-reductionist physicalists would argue that consciousness is either an illusion or a byproduct (epiphenomenon) of evolution, a thing our brains do. I would argue that consciousness is absolute, it is the fundamental property of the universe; without consciousness there would be no spacetime, no matter, no energy.

So – in the beginning was Consciousness. [Consciousness comes before thought, thought is articulated and communicated as word.] If we accept that in the beginning was Consciousness rather than its derivative's derivative, then we can take it as the ground zero from which to ask all further questions about the spiritual, the metaphysical, the supernatural nature of our reality. You are conscious, therefore you are. Let's start from there.

More tomorrow about consciousness tomorrow.

Lent 2025 Day 1

Lent 2024 Day 1

Lent 2023 Day 1

Lent 2022 Day 1

Lent 2021 Day 1

Lent 2020 Day 1

Lent starts tomorrow!

While I'll still be posting occasional local, weather or feline-related posts, they will be supplemental to the Lenten blogging cycle that starts tomorrow, Ash Wednesday. Lenten blog posts will continue for the next 47 days, until Easter Sunday, which this year falls on 5 April. For the record, jeziorki.blogspot.com has had over 113,000 page views in the past month, and as usual, I expect that audience to plummet (as it always does over Lent), with just a hard-core of readers remaining with me through to Easter as I focus on the spiritual aspects of human life. 

Each year's Lenten blogging cycle stands as a summary of what I believe, feel, intuit, experience about my spiritual quest – does it bring a better quality to life? Does consciousness survive biological death? If so, in what form? Is there a God? If so, how can we understand God? Through lived experience or through the written word? How can belief in God help us in our everyday life? How much spirituality do we need in a biological/material world? Is there one path to God or myriad paths? How can we even begin to understand the Infinite and Eternal? How can we square the Material with the Spiritual? 

More questions than answers; I set off on my Lenten quest fully appreciating that it is our destiny to remain curious.

This is also a time to reflect on what I've learned over the past year, how my own search has led to sharper definitions and more nuance, and a broader understanding of knowing what we'll never get to know. Looking back over previous Lenten blogging cycles, I sometimes see deep moments of insights, whilst at other times I see beliefs that I now find overly simplistic or just wrong. Worldviews shift over time as new intuition clarifies questions. 

I have toyed with the idea of using AI to help me at least order the Lenten posts, but having quizzed ChatGPT and Google Gemini about providing me with a structure around which to write daily content, the answers seemed too glib, too polished, too logical – and so my remaining Lenten readers can be assured that you will be getting writing that comes from me and not from a large-language model. 

This will be my 35th consecutive Lent, my 11th during which I have sought to focus on matters spiritual this my blog. Over the decades, Lenten observance have brought me bountiful rewards in terms of physical health. My Lenten sacrifices such as giving up meat and alcohol, and exercising have turned into good habits – I drink less, eat less meat, and do far more exercise than I did as a younger man. But the spiritual aspect of Lent has become increasingly important for me over time. And this is what the next 47 blog posts will set out to do – outline my current beliefs concerning the metaphysical aspects of life.

This time last year:
Afterglow

This time two years ago:
Metaphysics: woo-woo or fact?

This time seven years ago:
Skierniewice-Łuków line modernisation announced
[PKP PLK still getting round to sorting out the tenders...]

This time eight years ago:
Entropy and anti-entropy in a constant-ruled universe

This time nine years ago:
Truth, spin, bullshit and lies

This time ten years ago:
How much spirituality do we need?

This time 13 years ago:
The Chosen Ones

This time 14 years ago:
Fixies in the snow

This time 17 years ago:
Just the ticket

Winter's return

This winter refuses to give up. Three days of thaw came to an end in the small hours of this morning, as temperatures fell below freezing again and a fresh snowfall covered the newly-frozen slush. Aesthetically this is more pleasing than the rubbish weather from yesterday. And more is expected - more snow is forecast for Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, and then from Sunday for the following week, right through to the 27th of February! 

Below: my house as seen from halfway down my orchard. Once again, my solar panels are covered in snow and producing zero energy.

During the thaw, all the snow on the Micra had melted away.  As it had become snow-free for the first time since late December, I tried starting the engine yesterday. There was still some juice left in the battery, but not enough to turn over the starter motor. Not surprising, given that the battery had endured a week of temperatures falling to below -20C and the car had not moved for seven weeks. So today, I removed the battery and brought it into the house to recharge. Now fully charged, I shall keep it inside in the warm and only return it to the Micra once the snow has well and truly gone, and the salt washed off the asphalt.

Below: Scrapper surveys the snow. He is now fully recovered after his run-in with a neighbouring poodle, although I can still feel the scars under his fur. Hopefully he's learnt his lesson and won't range that far again. Plus castration looms as soon as I can drive the boys to the vet.

Last night, all six cats stayed in. This morning all went outside to investigate the new snow, but Wenusia, Czester and Pacyfik came back in after a few minutes. The rest followed me down the drive and into the forest next door. 

Left: Arturus leads Céleste and Scrapper into the forest, following in my footsteps. After his poodle battle last week, Scrapper is content to act as rearguard rather than pushing himself to the front of the patrol. 

Once we reached our destination, the fallen tree stump, the three cats started playing, chasing each other and climbing up trees. After a while, they all dutifully followed me back into our garden and home for lunch.

Below: Céleste takes a look around. She remains so beautiful, petite and patient.

Below: tracks in the snow in the forest next door. ChatGPT swears blind that these are paw-prints of a stone marten (kuna domowa, Martes foina), whilst Google Gemini takes a contrary view, stating – without fear of contradiction – that these are the tracks of a red squirrel (Wiewiórka pospolita, Sciurus vulgaris). When I pointed out to ChatGPT that a squirrel has four toes on its front feet and five toes on its rear feet, it retracted the stone marten assertion and agreed with Gemini. This is why it pays not to trust one AI but to play one off against another to ensure you're not fooled by hallucinations or confabulations. Plus my own observations – I have had many sightings of squirrels from my kitchen window, but around these parts, I have never seen a stone marten. Or indeed a pine marten.

A large pot of Ukrainian barszcz was put on the gas, sufficient for three days' worth of main meal. Lent starts on Wednesday.

This time six years ago:
Cooperate/Cooperate, Defect/Defect

This time eight years ago:
The Becoming and the Magic that'll Re-enchant Us

This time nine years ago
Short-haul musings 

This time 10 years ago:
Mind, matter and life

This time 11 years ago:
Compositions in blue and white

This time 14 years ago:
Waiting for the change to come

This time 14 years ago
A wetter Poland?
[Turns out now, Poland's facing long-term drought.]

This time 17 years ago:
Heavy overnight snow

This time 18 years ago:
Changing Jeziorki skyline

Another thaw, but winter's not over

Forecast said rain later; I set off for my walk and encountered only fog. As dusk began to fall, the fog was beginning to burn off. The atmosphere, the klimat, of today's walk was quite magick. But the walking wasn't easy; deep snow, treacherous ice. Shorter steps, harder work; but the rare vistas made it worth while.

Below: by the time I reached ulica Spokojna, leading from Chynów to Piekut, the fog had thickened to the point where horizons disappeared. 

Below: barn, Węszelówka. Very hard going around here, no human footprints to follow through the soft, deep snow, criss-crossed with wild animal tracks.

Below: at the edge of Gaj Żelechowski. Note the red-brick wayside shrine. Turn left for Widok.

Below: fields west of the (as yet unasphalted) road from Machcin II to Dąbrowa Duża. Winter weather has halted work here and on the pavement by the station, but in the meanwhile – marvellous atmosphere as the sun begins to break through.

Below: I cross the main road from Jakubowizna towards Machcin as it runs through Adamów Rososki. Jakubowizna on the horizon is engulfed in fog. This was the only stretch on my walk in which asphalt is fully visible; it has been ploughed and salted. Driving on roads in this condition is not good for a car's undersides, which is why I'll not be using the car until the snow's finally gone.

Below: late in the day, the sun starts to break through the mist. I follow the trail made by countless wild animals (mostly wild boar and deer).

Below: cottage on the edge of Jakubowizna. To the left, an abandoned cherry orchard that has gone to biennial bearing; this year should be a good one.

Left: out of the orchards and scrub, into the old Lasy Państwowe plantation. 

Many trees still bear the 'LP' logo sprayed on their bark, indicating that they had been earmarked for felling; fortunately the 2024 elections spared the trees by replacing the state forestry operator's management – a bunch of party-politically motivated and rapacious exploiters of natural resources – with more sustainability-minded people.

Below: I follow deer tracks, expecting to see more. In through the young plantation, taking me on a route I had not taken before.

Below: back to the familiar; heading out of the woods the usual way.

Below: a few minutes after sunset, a few hundred paces from home.

Paces walked today: over 15,000. But much harder work than over snow-free terrain! The current thaw will last until Saturday morning, not enough for a total melt-down; and then the frosts will return, accompanied by more snow. 

Bonus photo: a 6Dg (modernised SM42) shunting loco in Railpolonia livery running light approaches the level crossing on ul. Wolska, Chynów. Most likely headed to Radom, its movement scheduled around passenger timetables.

This time last year:
Machcin's wetlands icy but dry

This time two years ago:
Right-of-way cobble
[a victory for local pedestrians!]

This time four years ago:
Sunshine, I need the sunshine

This time nine years ago:
Consciousness outside the body

This time 12 years ago:
Sustainability and the feminisation of business

This time 13 years ago:
Lent kicks off (somewhat earlier than this year)

This time 14 years ago:
Feeling at home on the ice

This time 15 years ago:
Wetlands in (a milder) winter

This time 18 years ago:
Railway miscellany

Beautiful wintery Chynów

The clouds rolled away, the frost came back, the sun shone on the snow. Beautiful. Scrapper's on the mend but still in the house; his brothers are continuing to show solidarity by staying in at home with him. So only Céleste and Wenusia (below) want to step out with me and go for a walk in the forest next door. Here we are in the front garden.

The forest next door. My cats see this very much as their territory. We have our routine here; to the fallen log, then onto a stump close to the fence between my garden and the forest, and then back home.

Below: Céleste and Wenusia on their way back, following me home from the forest.

The cats all in the house, I set off to the other end of Chynów, to do some shopping at the Dino supermarket opened in 2022. I've not been here for a long while, but good to see a wider range of products on offer, reflecting increasingly sophisticated consumer tastes in rural Poland. Across the road from Dino is Hotel Chynów; the view smites me with a mid-century Midwest motel vibe.

"Club Tropicana, drinks are free..." Is this the Seychelles? Are we on a Caribbean beach? No. This is the field between Chynów out there to my left and Lasopole to my right. Half past two in the afternoon and the sun is low in the sky.

Cutting back from Dino across the fields behind Chynów, heading towards the cemetery. Hard work in the snow. Every other footstep goes through the icy crust and into the deep snow beneath, yet not all, with the ice supporting my weight every now and then. A strange sensation.

Below: I am on the Czarna river. Is it iced over or is it just bone dry? When the snow finally melts the outcome for Mazovia's water courses will be positive.

Below: Main Street, Chynów, population 1,100. Home to three supermarkets.

Below: ulica Wspólna, looking towards Jakubowizna. The brick house on the left is the local veterinary surgeon. Yes, yes, I know. Castrate the cats. As soon as I can get the car out of the drive.

A lovely walk. Including the forest, a total of ten kilometers, 12,800 paces; two hours in the sun.

This time last year:
The XII Canonical Prospects of Jakubowizna in Winter (Without Snow)

This time seven years ago:
Fairness, simplicity, taxation and a sustainable society

This time eight years ago:
Polish beer cans in the UK: new shit has come to light

This time 10 years ago:
Lent, a time to cleanse and reflect

This time 12 years ago:
It was 50 years ago today... Beatles arrive in New York

This time 14 years ago:
Adventures in the Screen Trade – the truth about Hollywood

This time 15 years ago:
The sad end of Andrzej J.

This time 17 years ago:
Today's dose of wintery gorgeousness

This time 18 years ago:
First intimations of spring

Scrapper's scrape

I was getting ready to go to bed – an early start planned for the morning, listening to MJDJ's Yours Sinsouly show on West Wilts Radio as I always do when at home on a Friday. A commotion on the kitchen windowsill. It's Scrapper. I open the window... he steps in, dripping blood.

 I check him out; two wounds – one above the right shoulder and another behind the left shoulder. First aid – I reach for surgical spirit (spirytus rektyfikowany 95%) and swab both wounds. After a short while the bleeding abates, and Scrapper seems calm. What happened? My first supposition is that he ripped himself on loose strands of wire as he tried to get under the fence to the forest. 

I wake this morning and check to see how Scrapper is. He is up, but moving slowly and in pain. The bleeding has stopped; no pool of blood under where he slept.

I take a clean cloth, spread it on my bed, and lay Scrapper down onto it, gently close the bedroom door and feed the rest of the cats. 

Time, then, to go outside and do a reconnaissance to understand what had just happened... Conditions are perfect. The temperature is just above freezing, there's plenty of snow on the ground. 

I venture north of the house – nothing. East – nothing. But heading south towards the solar panels, I see specks of blood spattered upon the path that has been trampled down into the deep snow. I follow the trail as far as the fence with the next house down the road. The line of red spots goes across the fence and into the neighbours' back garden. I loop round into the access road on the other side of their garden, picking up the bloody trail on the snow. Spots about 1 cm across, with a separation of about 35 to 50 cm. The trail goes over a second fence, across the access road, over a third fence and into the next garden. 

Here, among the trees, I can see plentiful blood and a mess of paw-prints. Signs of a struggle. The family's poodle announces his presence, barking in the distance. He must have been here last night defending his territory against a feline interloper – Scrapper.

The fact that Scrapper was able to clear three fences and make it nearly 100 m and get up to the windowsill suggests no broken bones.

Today it was all rest, rest and treats. Milk from a bottle (bought in case any kitten was abandoned by Wenusia). And lots of attention from his brothers. Significantly, while Czester, Arcturus and Pacyfik were on hand to lick Scrapper's wounds and groom him and generally be with him, neither mum nor sis showed any interest. Solidarity, brothers!

I am writing in the early evening, and Scrapper seems to be better. Raising himself up to look around, relishing the treats he's being offered, feeling safe and secure in the room in which he was born. Czester is particularly attentive, watching after his oldest sibling and cleaning that wound. Neither wound is bleeding; I feel the flesh; it feels OK. A week indoors, like Wenusia after her sterilisation, and I judge he'll be as right as rain.

This time last year:
Cold and windy along the Vistula

This time two year ago:
A to Z of my online world, ten years on

This time three years ago:
Intensity of Consciousness

This time four years ago:
I have measured out my life in coffee spoons

This time ten years ago:
Make do and mend

This time 12 years ago:
The A-Z of my online world

This time 14 years ago:
Life and Death in the Shadow of the El – A short story, part I

This time 15 years ago:
Transwersalka in midwinter

This time 16 years ago:
Work starts on the S79/S2 (completed autumn 2013)

This time 18 years ago:
Crazy customised Skoda

Deer-stalking in the fresh snow

Much less cold last night, with a minimum of -5°C rather than -23°C, but with fresh snow. A light fall continued into the early afternoon. Fresh snow means walking is harder, not having any human footsteps to follow. But I can see animal tracks. Cats and dogs at first, but as I get further away from Jakubowizna pet paws are replaced in the snow by the prints of deer, hare and wild boar.

Carrying on northward towards Grobice, I catch numerous deer darting across the track, out of the wood and into the orchards. Maybe in total eight to ten individuals. Top: two young males, second from top, two older males.

I follow the herd west through the orchards, across another farm track and into the forest beyond. Turning south, between the fallen trees and brush, I can see a couple of individuals moving away from me... I continue stalking the herd, 70-300mm Nikkor zoom affixed...

The herd loops towards Jakubowizna, swinging back east at the end of the forest. I reestablish contact.

Below: two juvenile females cross the firebreak from plantation forest towards the wood on the other side. It's stopped snowing now.

Below: a juvenile male leaps follows on behind. 

I cross the road to follow the path dividing Machcin II from Gaj Żelechowski that heads to Chynów. I have caught hares in my lens a few times here, but today, no sign of them, other than paw prints. Below: more snow starts to fall. Roofs of houses in Gaj Żelechowski across the field.

Below: back home, it looks like the Micra won't be moving anytime soon. Long-range weather forecast shows a slight (+1°C to +2°C) thaw from tomorrow to Saturday before the snows and frosts return until the foreseeable future (18 Feb).

UPDATE 6 February 2026: three more photos (taken in sequence) showing the dash of three deer (two females and one male) across open land between two orchards.

This time two years ago:
Am I a bore? Are you a bore? What is a bore?

This time three years ago:
Town and country in the snow

This time eight years ago:
"Forget about doing 10,000 paces a day!"
[Science now says the more the better.]

This time nine years ago:
Ukraine – fight or flight?

This time 11 years ago:
Room with a railway view

This time 14 years ago:
More than an Iluzjon

This time 15 years ago:
Oldschool photochallenge

This time 16 years ago:
Warsaw's wonderful nooks and crannies

This time 18 years ago:
Viaduct to the airport at ul. Poleczki almost ready