Word of the Day: Specious

blue leaf's revelation
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

Some of my Taoist Coven members and I have slipped into the celebration, revelation, and just plain silliness of proclaiming the spontaneously arising, “Word of the Day”
I thought it might be nice to share.

Today’s word is “specious”
Now, a dictionary will tell you that it means:
plausible but false;
"a specious claim";
"spurious inferences"

But, the dictionary doesn’t know that as Word of The Day, “specious” has arisen from the subconscious of a rather wacky Taoist Coveness thus insisting upon a bit more depth.
Perhaps the dictionary definition is somewhat rather specious in and of it’s own self.

Google on:

There seems to be something called the “Specious Present”

An idea to deal with the problem that we can apparently only be aware of what is present,
and what is present must be momentary
(otherwise it would include the future or past and not be all present),
yet anything real must exist for at least some time:
so how can we be aware of anything real…
Introduced by E.R. Clay and quoted William James (1842-1910) in The Principles of Psychology (1901).

The specious present is a short period… allegedly presented to consciousness as all present at once,
though in reality never more than one moment is present at once
(hence the 'specious').

Well, I never knew.
1901 and William James.

All I know is that many of us are trying to stay present in the moment.
We have made it into a spiritual exercise that we can wrestle with and fail.

Maybe we need to realize there is long standing argument that that is all there is.
Will that make it any easier?

And how interesting that when we accept this point of view of being in the present, we really have to question what is Real.
Will that make it any easier to smile? To cease the struggle? To laugh? To love?