Presence over Prestige
Authenticity over Perfection
Quality within Quantity
My name is Adrian Michael Paulsen, and I’m a modern renaissance man. In my current professional life I am a software business analyst and technical writer. I have a Master of Public Health degree from Southern Connecticut State University and an undergraduate degree in English and Mediterranean Studies (i.e, Classics).
I cultivate an engagement with writing, photography, music, the visual arts, holistic health, architecture, urban design, history, languages, mathematics, philosophy, software design, data science, public health and community activism. Above and within all this I prioritize flourishing for myself, my family, and the larger world.
My original passion was for pursuing the life of the spirit. In my teens I prepared myself for a life as a Roman Catholic priest, and to that end I studied Latin and Greek and Hebrew language, literature and culture. But nearing high school graduation I felt called to discover and understand the profane world in preparation for the holy life – so I joined the United States Marine Corps Reserves, believing this would ultimately strengthen my calling to serve Christ and his flock. But instead the opposite occurred.
During my time in the Marines on my first year of active duty I began reading the Taoist classics and the Platonic dialogues. Somewhere between my contemplation of the Tao and Plato’s ideal forms, I realized I no longer believed in the exclusive claims of the Catholic church to know the essence and will of God. So I left the Church and under the influence of thinkers such as Sri Aurobindo, Krishnamurti, and C.S Pierce have sculpted a skeptical state of belief that favors taoistic, holistic, mystical and also pragmatic postures of faith and practice. I believe in the possibility of enlightenment, of global flourishing without holding too firmly to the specific elements of my beliefs. I remain open to the challenges of science, philosophy and lived experience and am willing to bend in the winds of reality, logic and experience. But I am not willing to surrender to solipsism or nihilism.
My engagements with music, philosophy, etc., run at a level deeper than the economic level. I do not live to work or live to create, yet nor do I simply create to live. I am not empty when I have completed a work of art or a project close to my passions. I am a filled vessel even when I have emptied my portion into the river. I try to let the Tao guide and sustain me: the nameless path of full essence that is accessible to all humans open to this presence.
The path to my flourishing is sustained by a balance and equipoise in wuwei (to borrow a taoist phrasing from the Lao Tzu) – doing through non-doing. This is as much a state of mind as it is a flow of actions.
As such I reject the modern premise that for a human to thrive one must root one’s activities in uni-dimensional facades of economic engagement. I am no more or less a poet or philosopher than the next person with a soul, a mind, a life to call their own. We can be authentic and perfectly imperfect together but also alone.
Poetry can lead to introspection, introspection can fire the will; music, art, quality analysis and substantial reasoning can inspire people to face the world anew, recall their past mistakes with clarity and forgiveness. The divine fruits of homo sapiens can lead our souls to accept that the fight for flourishing and justice is not dead – but the fight still requires warriors sustained in the equipoise of rest and work, leisure and exhaustion, experience and fresh eyes and hands.
So I am keenly aware I am not alone in facing this spiritually corrupted and materialistic world, a system dominated by aspiritual pursuits of profit and power through technological innovation, brute administrative, legal and military might without due regard for the life of the human spirit and the spirit of our ecosystems.
I confidently embrace an ancient and yet seemingly new view of the world as pre-eminently FOR the spirit continuously becoming flesh – and the flesh continuously discovering and expressing spirit.
Please join me in this ongoing pursuit of enlightenment and flourishing – and I will share in the joys and the sorrows, the fruits of our collective spiritual labors to achieve and give voice to the dream of human flourishing.
