Hero’s Journey

Let’s get “mythological” for a few minutes. You are the hero on a journey to find your true self. (Why you would have to go anywhere to find your true self is not something you pause to really think about.) On the way, you enter a bazaar where all kinds of costumes are available forContinue reading “Hero’s Journey”

Can You Believe It?

It’s amazing to think that humans are the only species on Earth that will kill and die not just for territory, food, mates and offspring, but even for our beliefs. Indeed the greater proportion of damage and death caused by humans over our relatively short history has been for the sake and in the nameContinue reading “Can You Believe It?”

Idols, Pacifiers, and Demons

In a post entitled Out of Depression I proposed a kind of psychospiritual developmental map, composed on the foundational theory of human intelligence as comprised of four distinct “threads” – visceral (VQ), emotional (EQ), rational (RQ), and spiritual (SQ). This “quadratic” (fourfold or four-dimensional) intelligence is complex in nature, with each thread engaged with itsContinue reading “Idols, Pacifiers, and Demons”

Understanding Spiritual Frustration

One of the great ironies, which is quickly metastasizing into a tragedy of catastrophic dimensions these days, is in our certainty that taking control and pinning things down will solve the major problems that beset us. By major problems I don’t only have in mind the national and global challenges of poverty, racism, and theContinue reading “Understanding Spiritual Frustration”

Bringing Up a Racist

If you really want to raise your child to be a racist, referring to someone who regards skin colors and ethnicities other than one’s own as inferior, untrustworthy, and in more extreme cases even subhuman, then it will help to know something about how such beliefs get established. It won’t work to sit your childContinue reading “Bringing Up a Racist”

Sophia Perennis 2.0

If we think of religion as a tree, then we can appreciate how its essential nature is rooted in mystical experience, channels this experience into an organizational structure, and expresses it outwardly in the distinctive virtues of ethical life. In a condition of systemic health, religion serves the vital function of integrating these mystical, institutional,Continue reading “Sophia Perennis 2.0”

Reality, Truth, and the Things We Believe

The favorite location of ego is in the silo “observatory” of our logical mind – in the head, in other words. This is the place where self-consciousness takes, or can take, its perspective on reality, engaging in the work of constructing and maintaining a world, which in this context refers to the construct of meaningContinue reading “Reality, Truth, and the Things We Believe”

From Wonder to Conviction

In the title of this post I have summarized the path of humanity to our final extinction as a species on planet Earth. It won’t be for a lack of convictions that our self-destruction comes, but rather due to an incapacity for wonder. I might also have titled this post “An Apology for Wonder,” whereContinue reading “From Wonder to Conviction”

Secure in Delusion

One of the charming yet potentially devastating traits of our species is in the way we lose touch with what’s real, even preferring illusions to what’s right in front of our face. And yet, the condition of fully believing our illusions – called delusion – creeps over us so gradually that we actually have noContinue reading “Secure in Delusion”

Out of Depression

The most significant accomplishment for any human being is to become fully human. That may sound redundant to some, and like a downgrade to others, but those who are most in touch with the human adventure have long insisted that we are still a long way from the evolutionary ideal of our species. And they’veContinue reading “Out of Depression”