Just as soon as I make a case for the necessity of religion, it’s time to insist on our need to transcend it. If my atheist friends squirm at my insistence that we all have a religion – a system of beliefs, attitudes, values and practices that links the separate ego back to reality – my friends whoContinue reading “Journey Back to Reality”
Tag Archives: spirituality
Unfinished Business
I guess I write a lot about what I feel is most urgently needing our attention these days. Current events are interesting because they’re in the news and on our minds, but popular engagement with the news of the day tends to skim the surface of what’s really going on. It’s not nuclear proliferation, terroristContinue reading “Unfinished Business”
Matter, Life, Spirit
One of the challenges we face as we advance deeper into a secular and global reality is how to redefine the terms ‘spirit’, ‘spiritual’, and ‘spirituality’ so they can have relevance to life today. While they carried metaphorical meaning in a mythopoetic reality, and were converted into a supernatural and metaphysical realm above or apart fromContinue reading “Matter, Life, Spirit”
Mental Bypass in Religion
How did something with its origins in a mystical intuition of reality’s essential oneness become such a violent force of division in the world? If religion began as a system of symbols, rites, and sacred stories with the purpose of linking the business of daily life back to the grounding mystery of being, where didContinue reading “Mental Bypass in Religion”
Reality Shift
A somewhat naive understanding of human evolution and individual development assumes that with each advancing stage, former ones are simply outgrown and left behind. We know, however, that this is not how nature evolves. Earlier and more primitive structures are not abandoned, and neither do they merely lie inert beneath the exciting progress higher up. InsteadContinue reading “Reality Shift”
Opening the Present
Spirituality is about living mindfully in the here-and-now. Of course, there is nowhere else we can be, but we all know how easy it is to live mindlessly in the present. Most of us are less quick to admit how much we prefer to live outside the present moment – rummaging through the past or chasing after theContinue reading “Opening the Present”
A Spirituality of Religion
The separation of spirituality from religion is a best-selling topic these days, particularly as religion continues to impress us with its tendencies toward conviction, bigotry, and violence – and complacency. More and more people are either dropping out or quietly declaring themselves “spiritual but not religious.” In previous posts I have tried to make a caseContinue reading “A Spirituality of Religion”
Ethical Calculus (and the Next Election)
I’ve made the argument – whether successfully is for my reader to decide – that the question “Who am I?” is rather superficial when compared with the question “What am I?” Of course, my ‘who’ is much more interesting since it involves my unique personality: my individual preferences, idiosyncrasies, quirks and convictions – all those things thatContinue reading “Ethical Calculus (and the Next Election)”
The Paradox of Education and the Search for Its Soul
Civilization is a race between education and catastrophe. – H.G. Wells A paradox is something that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth. Its apparent self-contradiction can generate a tension so strong that it snaps and collapses into a dualism of either this or that, this versus that, this but notContinue reading “The Paradox of Education and the Search for Its Soul”
Creative Spirit and the Invitation to Life in Its Fullness
Matter reacts. Life adapts. Spirit creates. With that, I have summarized the 14-billion-year cosmic process in three stages and just six words. I’m using the term ‘stage’ here less in its temporal sense than as a way of identifying distinct levels of complexity in the evolutionary architecture of our universe. True enough, energy first fused into matter, then stirred toContinue reading “Creative Spirit and the Invitation to Life in Its Fullness”
Tracts of Revolution 