It’s always presumptuous and frequently dangerous to assume that your experience, perspective, and path in life constitute a norm against which that of others might be meaningfully compared. Not long ago, thinking in terms of types and standards of normalcy was widely used as a method for understanding ourselves and each other. Nowadays, however, theContinue reading “A Storyline of Faith”
Tag Archives: grounding mystery
Under the Hat
According to the worldwide spiritual wisdom tradition known as the Perennial Philosophy or Sophia Perennis, the one thing each of us must realize is that we are not who we think we are. Who is a term attaching to a personal identity, which is all about playing a role on the social performance stage. TheContinue reading “Under the Hat”
Seeing the Truth
When you were just an infant, your experience was, in the words of William James, a “blooming, buzzing confusion.” You had no language and hence no discrete categories of thought to label, classify, and organize your perceptions. Everything just swirled around you, bombarding your senses from every side. It was fascinating – and frequently overwhelming.Continue reading “Seeing the Truth”
5 Floors
Ego is just your “I,” the center of self-conscious experience that locates and manages a personal identity in the middle of everything. It’s not what is wrong with you, or the “obstacle” on your path to liberation, enlightenment, and wellbeing. In fact, none of those long-sought goals of salvation would be possible without your ego.Continue reading “5 Floors”
Once More Into Religion
Many people think that religion is about believing in god, going to church, doing the right things, and getting to heaven when you die. Every one of those elements has been contested through the centuries. Whose god? What church? Which things? Where is heaven, if not just above the clouds or over the moon? NeedlessContinue reading “Once More Into Religion”
Crossroads
Part of me really wants to believe that human destiny holds something more in store for us than just more of the same. I mean, more than just strapping ourselves inside spaceships and taking our problems somewhere else. Human destiny will entail going beyond ourselves somehow, but populating some distant planet isn’t likely to bringContinue reading “Crossroads”
The Wonder of It All
What our planet of nations needs, almost more than anything else right now, is a shared image of existence – a sacred mandala that can guide a deeper contemplation of the universe and of our own human nature. If we had such an understanding of ourselves and all things, I am sure that most ifContinue reading “The Wonder of It All”
A Glossary of the Spiritual Life
It is common to assume that since religion is such a complicated topic, spirituality should be as well. The sprawling variety of deities, symbols, rituals, sanctuaries, traditions, customs and beliefs across the landscape and history of world religions might lead one to conclude that the spiritual life of humans is just as variegated. We mayContinue reading “A Glossary of the Spiritual Life”
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!”
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”
Tracts of Revolution 