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!”
Tag Archives: grounding
A World Worth Imagining
That little plant in the illustration to the left is rooted in a Mystery of deeper oneness named Being. It is also connected inside a Web of higher wholeness named Universe. If our plant knows any of this, it is not at some epistemic level of knowing, using logic and rational thought to construct aContinue reading “A World Worth Imagining”
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”
Four-Square Spirituality
Ego sucks. I don’t mean that as a judgment, but as a simple statement of fact. I happen to believe that our separate center of self-conscious identity – ego (Latin for “I”) for short – represents a transformational breakthrough in the evolution of human consciousness, and we need it to get around in the world.Continue reading “Four-Square Spirituality”
Samsara and the Liberated Life
The “human condition” is diagnosed differently depending on where in time and place you happen to be. Some traditions regard humans as having fallen from some state of paradisal perfection, separated from what we once were or one day might be. Others invoke metaphors of brokenness, corruption, dislocation, or captivity – hostage to diabolical forcesContinue reading “Samsara and the Liberated Life”
Helping Each Other Fly
Whereas all other animal species on Earth evolve naturally toward the mature and fully self-actualized ideals of their distinct genotypes, the fulfillment of human potential requires a mediating system of inventions and conventions known as culture. Without culture humans are incapable of realizing the full potential of what lies within us. And yet, it isContinue reading “Helping Each Other Fly”
Making Community Work
Most of my blog posts on the topic of community make a case for seeing it as a social organism, as something that emerges, grows, flourishes, and dies, just like other living things. I typically focus my reflections on how not to interfere with or undermine its organic process, suggesting that we see ourselves moreContinue reading “Making Community Work”
3-Dimensional Leadership
In the discussion around leadership, a good deal of attention is given to behavioral, ethical, and relational qualities that effective leaders possess and demonstrate. Great books and programs on excellence in leadership are abundantly available, and some of us are retrieving them from the shelves just now when good leaders seem harder to find. I recently coinedContinue reading “3-Dimensional Leadership”
Personal Myth and the Anatomy of Character
The diagram above illustrates my newly refined definition of religion, as a cultural system that links together (from the Latin religare) individual consciousness (or psychology, represented in the purple triangle) and the larger order of existence (or cosmology, represented in the dome overhead) by means of sacred stories (or mythology, represented in the moving waveContinue reading “Personal Myth and the Anatomy of Character”
Tracts of Revolution 