Let’s start with an interesting scientific fact. You have 100 billion neurons in your brain, 40 thousand neurons in and around your heart, and 500 million neurons in your gut. We’re used to thinking of neurons as “brain cells,” but that’s a serious misnomer perpetuated by our brain. Neurons are not simply nerve cells, butContinue reading “More Than You Think”
Category Archives: Post-theism/New Humanism
In the Presence of Mystery
The biblical god lives nowhere but in the sacred stories of the Bible itself, and in the mythopoetic imagination of its audience. And while this might sound like atheism, it is far from it, for the simple reason that the fictional character of god is acknowledged as a metaphor of the present mystery of reality.Continue reading “In the Presence of Mystery”
Touching Reality (and Talking About God)
Religion is the more or less systematic way that humans express, develop, and apply spirituality to their daily life in the world. You may believe that you have no religion and that you are not “religious,” but I know better. Your particular way of connecting spirituality to daily life might not be very relevant orContinue reading “Touching Reality (and Talking About God)”
Touching Reality
The true longing of our spiritual life is to touch reality, to connect with what’s really real, and thereby to become more real ourselves: more authentically and fully human. This of course implies that to some extent we are not presently in touch with reality, and maybe not fully real. According to the spiritual wisdomContinue reading “Touching Reality”
A Mandala of the Spiritual Life
When you were still in the womb and for some time after you were born, you were entirely dependent on the provident support of your taller powers for the protection, nourishment, warmth, and loving attention you needed to thrive. Being helpless and defenseless, and having no sense of yourself as an “I” in relation toContinue reading “A Mandala of the Spiritual Life”
Learning to Trust Ourselves
At this same time four years ago I published a post that introduced what I called The Two Systems, referring to two sets of values and concerns that profoundly shape human culture and our individual lives. These two systems are like the Yin and Yang of Taoism, where the creative tension between them informs ourContinue reading “Learning to Trust Ourselves”
Christ Consciousness, Buddha Nature
In Would Jesus Join a Church? I reminded my reader that Christ was not Jesus’ last name, nor is it a title that belonged exclusively to him. We should think of it rather as an archetypal designation for one who has been “anointed” – ordained and commissioned to carry out the will of god. AnContinue reading “Christ Consciousness, Buddha Nature”
Would Jesus Join a Church?
Christianity has become a protected membership, where insiders are separated from outsiders by a wall of orthodox beliefs and moral judgments. In this post I will argue that membership is always about purity, separation, and exclusion. Purity may not be about ritual or dietary restrictions in most cases; at least this is generally true ofContinue reading “Would Jesus Join a Church?”
Homecoming
The process of becoming somebody – someone with a separate center of personal identity – is a long and complicated affair involving many others who are also undergoing their own individuation. We are busy trying to figure out the game as the game is shaping who we are. Actually, the process of becoming somebody hasContinue reading “Homecoming”
Safe Inside Our Truth
With what’s going on geopolitically around us these days, and of course right here in our own backyard, I am reminded once again just how dangerous convictions can be. If I’m short on tolerance, it’s shortest when I bump up against someone’s absolute, inflexible, and righteous conviction that their way is the “one and onlyContinue reading “Safe Inside Our Truth”
Tracts of Revolution 