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”

A Way Through the Mess

In the degree we each lack peace within ourselves, the power dynamics between us will be misaligned, dysfunctional and mutually damaging, allowing for very little possibility of love lifting us beyond our differences into selfless goodwill and genuine community. The worldwide spiritual wisdom tradition known as Sophia Perennis holds a communal vision for humanity, saved,Continue reading “A Way Through the Mess”

Set the Tiger Free

The Human Spirit in us needs freedom, and what it seeks or aspires to is inner peace, perfect love, higher purpose, and deeper meaning. Think of the Human Spirit as a wildly creative force of genius that empowers our awakening, liberation, and fulfillment as a human being – to become fully human and fully alive.Continue reading “Set the Tiger Free”

The Mythology of You

There’s a part of you that really wants to be somebody special. Admit it. We all do – at least all of us did for a good part of our life. It’s the Hero Journey that figures so prominently in world mythology, which Joseph Campbell interpreted brilliantly in his seminal work The Hero With aContinue reading “The Mythology of You”

Saved From What Isn’t Real

“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.” Albert Einstein Imagine that the triangle illustrated above represents and contains all of existence. InsideContinue reading “Saved From What Isn’t Real”

All the Way Through

Treatment for anxiety will be a multi-billion dollar enterprise this year, up from previous years and expected to continue its rise for the foreseeable future. We want the inner peace of a relaxed body and calm mind, but we settle – actually we pay a lot – for feeling a little less anxious, if itContinue reading “All the Way Through”

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”

Being Human

Our health, happiness, and fulfillment as human beings are based in, and therefore dependent on, how deeply we understand ourselves. By that I mean something more than what we think of ourselves, or what general theory of human nature we happen to hold. Understanding is by definition a deep (“under”) position (“standing”) that accommodates aContinue reading “Being Human”

Arriving at Last in the Kindom of Spirit

Depending on whether you query conventional religion about the way of salvation, or ask your question of the Sophia Perennis (the transcultural tradition of spiritual wisdom), you’re likely to get very different answers. Religion will speak in dogmatic terms of what you need to believe and what you need to do in order to qualifyContinue reading “Arriving at Last in the Kindom of Spirit”

Life as it is

In his important work The Denial of Death (1973), Ernest Becker made a case for seeing much of Western culture as a series of “immortality projects,” where we have worked collectively to hide from ourselves (deny) the bald fact that one day we will die. Great and small people alike have invested themselves in projectsContinue reading “Life as it is”