I can absolutely guarantee that after a short orientation, you will be able to find yourself on the map illustrated above. Now, whether you build on that discovery and successfully find your way to the fulfilment of your human journey, also known as self-actualization, salvation, and the liberated life, is entirely your choice. You mightContinue reading “Our Human Adventure”
Tag Archives: consciousness
The Three Stages of Spiritual Power
One theory of meditation sees it as a portal to peak experience and enlightenment, providing access to transcendental dimensions of being and consciousness. People spend decades perfecting the mindset and techniques that facilitate these breakthroughs, dedicating great amounts of time to the discipline of meditation. Another theory sees meditation as a conditioning routine for meetingContinue reading “The Three Stages of Spiritual Power”
Save the Baby!
Just as we can think of the lifeforce, which remains a mystery to science, as something that animates the myriad living forms in existence, we might also regard the countless forms of religion throughout human history as so many expressions of another mystery, called spirituality or spiritual life. And just as when the lifeforce “goesContinue reading “Save the Baby!”
All and Nothing
It took a couple of centuries into the first Axial Age of the higher cultures (800-200 BCE) for the shocking realization to set in. In sixth-century Persia it came together in Zarathushtra’s idea of apocalypse, which regarded the world as a richly embroidered veil of illusion that must be pulled aside in our quest toContinue reading “All and Nothing”
Free From the Cage We Made
Perhaps the greatest irony of the human experience – and this goes back now thousands of years – is how chasing the prize of personal identity ends up putting us in a cage. The slow rise of ego (or self-) consciousness over the millenniums of human history brought with it a growing insecurity due toContinue reading “Free From the Cage We Made”
E Uno, Plures. E Pluribus Unum.
When Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson agreed on the phrase “Out of many, one” (in Latin e pluribus unum) for the Great Seal of the United States, their idea was of the new nation as a manifold unity of individuals. America’s diversity would be the secret to its success – particularly as thatContinue reading “E Uno, Plures. E Pluribus Unum.”
How Things Seem
Reality is our code-word for What Is. If something is, it is real or has reality. We often speak of Reality as what stands beyond, or on the other side of, our veils of meaning – of what’s on our minds or only in our imagination. But what if there were no human minds orContinue reading “How Things Seem”
True Story
On one side are believers, who read the story of Jesus’ incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection as an account of revealed journalism. Everything in the narrative happened just as described, to the exact detail. How not? It’s the Bible, after all. On the other side are atheists and the general population of nonbelievers, including devotees ofContinue reading “True Story”
Necessary Delusion
Check this out. Everything around you includes you in its higher wholeness, and what is within you grounds you in deeper oneness. Harmony and communion are the special terms designating these distinct dimensions of Reality – around and including you, within and grounding you. The concept of harmony requires you to be centered in yourself.Continue reading “Necessary Delusion”
Spiritual Fitness and Our Human Future
Just as we might go to a gym to work out, or into the hills for a hike, we have a basic understanding that improving our fitness requires immersing ourselves in environments where the activity is sufficiently strenuous but not too much to manage. Of course, if we never exercise, our muscles will lose toneContinue reading “Spiritual Fitness and Our Human Future”
Tracts of Revolution 