The principal discipline of spirituality known as meditation is the practiced skill of living mindfully in the present moment. The here-and-now, or what is sometimes perceptively called “now/here” or “nowhere” since it can’t be located or held onto, is inhabited only by a very few. The rest of us spend our time out of touchContinue reading “Taking Leave of Reality”
Category Archives: Timely and Random
Getting Off
Humans have been seeking happiness ever since self-consciousness threw us out of the garden of simple need satisfaction and into the quest for personal fulfillment. Inside the garden, reality was experienced as a provident web of support. Outside, we are on our own – or so it feels. Our human condition – separate, self-conscious, andContinue reading “Getting Off”
The Teachers We Need Now
What’s the difference between teaching a student and training a parrot? This isn’t the setup for a joke but actually a very serious question. To train a parrot you need to repeat a word or phrase that you want the bird to imitate, over and over again until it starts to articulate what sounds closeContinue reading “The Teachers We Need Now”
The Heart and Hope of Democracy
Let’s begin this meditation on the heart and hope of democracy with you identifying yourself with either the Blue or Red sphere in the diagram above. Then let’s pretend that all of your life you’ve been training to be the best Blue or Red you can be. From an early age your tribe was activelyContinue reading “The Heart and Hope of Democracy”
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”
Your Psychic Reading
Please, have a seat. I am about to reveal what’s going on in your life – not just around you, but to you and within you. Many things will fall into place and the path ahead will be made clear. When I’m finished and you realize that my reading was on the money, you canContinue reading “Your Psychic Reading”
Who Tells America’s Story?
Our present era of “fake news” has introduced the American public to a key premise of constructivism, which is that meaning is constructed by human minds and always perspective-dependent. What we call “news” is someone’s perspective on what happened and what it means. Until now we have counted on the news media to tell usContinue reading “Who Tells America’s Story?”
Romancing the Inner Child
Jesus is said to have held up the model of a child in helping his audience appreciate what is required to “enter the kingdom of God,” by which he did not mean an afterlife in heaven but the liberated life here and now. Preachers have been exhorting their congregations to be like children ever since,Continue reading “Romancing the Inner Child”
Idols of Orthodoxy, Part 2
You probably saw this coming. In Idols of Orthodoxy I took my reader into the phenomenology of symbols; not an interpretation of this or that symbol – although we used as our example the American flag – but of how symbols themselves are experienced. With that groundwork in place, now we can address a symbolContinue reading “Idols of Orthodoxy, Part 2”
Idols of Orthodoxy
Religion is notorious for confusing its representations of God – our conventional nickname for ultimate reality – with the present mystery which, as they say in the Orient, is beyond names and forms. These representations, falling inside the general category of symbols, typically have their origin in experiences that can’t be definitively rendered in language.Continue reading “Idols of Orthodoxy”
Tracts of Revolution 