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”
Tag Archives: Jesus
Against Democracy
The mainline tradition of Christian orthodoxy represents the cumulative efforts over several centuries to translate the mythological milieu of early Christian experience into a dogmatic system of fixed beliefs. Quickly, and increasingly so over time, these beliefs came to operate as the framework of a Christian worldview, in addition to serving as standards and requirementsContinue reading “Against Democracy”
Five Aspirations
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”
1-3-5-4
We are living in a time when dangerous and death-dealing ideologies (belief systems) are threatening to pull our world apart. In one way or another, these ideologies share a common lineage by attaching themselves to the “wild card” factor of ego consciousness. Some regard ego as supreme, whether we’re speaking of the personal ego ofContinue reading “1-3-5-4”
The Four Priorities
A theory of human psychology and development will be more valuable to the degree we can use it to make sense of our individual experience. Classical scientific objectivity must be counterbalanced by subjective truth, in not only explaining our topic dispassionately from a distance but also in helping us better understand what being human isContinue reading “The Four Priorities”
Spiritual Direction
Spiritual formation is a process whereby the sentient life of the body rises into a center of self-conscious personal identity, or ego, which provides the individual with an elevated center of intention for taking in a larger perspective on life, connecting with others in meaningful ways, and contributing creatively to the wellbeing of community. InContinue reading “Spiritual Direction”
Understanding Spiritual Frustration
One of the great ironies, which is quickly metastasizing into a tragedy of catastrophic dimensions these days, is in our certainty that taking control and pinning things down will solve the major problems that beset us. By major problems I don’t only have in mind the national and global challenges of poverty, racism, and theContinue reading “Understanding Spiritual Frustration”
Coming Together
Everybody is asking for my grand unified theory of everything. Well, actually no one is asking. Hell, hardly anyone reads this blog, to be honest. But I keep polishing my lens and clarifying a theory that brings everything inside a single frame. That’s the supreme triadic principle of wisdom after all: (1) All is one,Continue reading “Coming Together”
Your Life In (Maybe) Five Steps
Just before you got going on this journey of life, you were whole and complete in your essential nature as a human being. Even though it would take a lot of experience and many years for you to really appreciate the dual capacity of your consciousness, in opening outward to the sensory-physical realm around youContinue reading “Your Life In (Maybe) Five Steps”
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”
Tracts of Revolution 