Damn, if it doesn’t keep happening. We set our sights and give chase to something we expect will satisfy our longing – for what exactly, we’re not sure, but this might be it. After it’s over, and even if we managed to grab on and gulp down the promising thing, we feel more unsatisfied andContinue reading “Five Aspirations”
Tag Archives: human development
Waiting in Line
The human journey through life has only recently been a topic of psychological study. For thousands of years before that, its exploration was mythological, carried out not by objective research but subjective experience. Our modern tools of psychology have made possible a rational precision that was not available all those centuries and millenniums, but evenContinue reading “Waiting in Line”
Dangerous Passage
There is a dangerous passage in human development, where the individual must traverse a kind of psychic wilderness on his or her way to becoming an adult. Not all of us make the journey successfully. For any number of reasons, the challenge of separating ourselves from Mother (and all she represents archetypally) proves too much,Continue reading “Dangerous Passage”
Talking To Ourselves
For the past 100 years or so, we’ve been coming to terms with the idea that the meaning of life, the world we inhabit, and we ourselves are constructs of language. Not long ago we believed that meaning was “out there” to be discovered in external reality, like a hidden treasure buried in the natureContinue reading “Talking To Ourselves”
Homecoming
The process of becoming somebody – someone with a separate center of personal identity – is a long and complicated affair involving many others who are also undergoing their own individuation. We are busy trying to figure out the game as the game is shaping who we are. Actually, the process of becoming somebody hasContinue reading “Homecoming”
Virtues of the Centered Life
Western and Eastern approaches to spirituality differ in their accents on what to do with the ego – that separate center of personal identity that each of us cherishes as “I, myself.” The challenge in both cases is presented in the condition of duality, which is a consequence of separating into our own identity, knownContinue reading “Virtues of the Centered Life”
What We Really Want, and Why We Settle for Less
For many millenniums humans have been trying to figure out the secret to wellbeing. Various philosophies and numerous religions have arisen with answers, methods, and sophisticated programs said to be “the way” to this elusive goal. Before we get too far, we need to put some definition around the term “wellbeing.” What does it meanContinue reading “What We Really Want, and Why We Settle for Less”
Whole Picture, Whole Brain
I’ll start with a proposition, and then work it out in more detail below: The meaning of life is an ongoing construction project involving two parallel processes, communion and knowledge. Communion refers to an experience of no-separation, where your existence is felt as not just connected to but as “one with” the rest of it.Continue reading “Whole Picture, Whole Brain”
The Shining Way
Religion tends to be different from a mere philosophy of life in its claim to offer a way through, out of, or beyond what presently holds us back or stands in the way of our highest fulfillment. In the genuine traditions of spirituality, such a solution avoids the temptation of either an other-worldly escape on the one hand,Continue reading “The Shining Way”
The Human Path
Human beings are on an evolutionary arc, progressing individually and as a species toward a ‘self-actualized’ fulfillment of our unique nature. With all the criticisms I have already directed against the personal ego – that conceited blowhard who craves validation, praise, glory, and immortality – it might come as a surprise for me to acknowledge it as the legitimateContinue reading “The Human Path”
Tracts of Revolution 