If you live by your convictions, you are a prisoner (a convict) to your beliefs and have difficulty thinking outside the box (your prison) and being open to mystery, to the present mystery of Reality, to Reality, or just to what’s real. It’s important to you – we might even say it’s mandatory – thatContinue reading “Human Rising”
Category Archives: Philosophical Underpinnings
All the Way Through
Treatment for anxiety will be a multi-billion dollar enterprise this year, up from previous years and expected to continue its rise for the foreseeable future. We want the inner peace of a relaxed body and calm mind, but we settle – actually we pay a lot – for feeling a little less anxious, if itContinue reading “All the Way Through”
The Four Human Force Fields
At some point along life’s way we feel an attraction, or perhaps metaphorically we hear a calling from beyond the boundary of what we know and who we are. Paradoxically, the source of this attraction or calling is not “out there” exactly, but “in here,” deeper within ourselves, a Beyond in the midst of ourContinue reading “The Four Human Force Fields”
Living Religion
After rescuing spirituality from dysfunctional religion, its proponents have sometimes gone way to the other extreme, turning spirituality into a catch-all for anything mystical, metaphysical, magical and spoon-bending. In their rejection of religious tradition, institution, and orthodoxy, they “rescued” something of a shapeless blob of experience, which has been branded in countless ways and soldContinue reading “Living Religion”
Deep Within and All Around
One of the more obscure concepts in mystical spirituality to explain, and arguably the most important for understanding what it’s all about, is the Ground of Being. The Christian theologian Paul Tillich popularized the term in the mid-twentieth century, but it has been foundational to the perennial tradition of spiritual wisdom for nearly 3,000 years.Continue reading “Deep Within and All Around”
The Power of Myth
I keep coming back to the ideas of “mythic themes” and the “four ages of life” in this blog. They are in the background of just about everything else I think and write about. My ancestral heritage for this stream of thought includes Mircea Eliade, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Northrop Frye – all pioneersContinue reading “The Power of Myth”
A New Look at Family Values
Conservative politicians and preachers frequently say that the health of society is a symptom of marriage and family health. For them, marriage and family are the foundation of everything else. Class tension, racial strife, and tribal conflict are both the sign and fallout of dysfunction at that primary level. I’m not sure the politicians andContinue reading “A New Look at Family Values”
You and Your World
If I told you that your identity and the world around you are not really real, you’d probably dismiss me as another of those quacky hucksters who want to sell you some crock of bullshit. There are lots of them around, and you definitely need to hold on to your common sense as well asContinue reading “You and Your World”
*Click*
Existential disorientation is an apt name for our diagnostic condition as a species, what’s called “the human condition.” We wake up and find ourselves here, but we don’t really know where we are. We feel lost, homeless, in exile, stranded on a remote island, alone in the middle of everything. There is some comfort inContinue reading “*Click*”
Clarity and Brilliance
The “clarity” of a diamond refers to the absence of defects, of imperfections that would otherwise obscure its transparency to light. At higher degrees of clarity a diamond will take on a “brilliance” where the magnification of light through its various facets has the effect of shining or generating a radiance from its own interiorContinue reading “Clarity and Brilliance”
Tracts of Revolution 