Overcoming a Dysfunctional Litter
You can’t cheat an honest man. — W. C. Fields The huge variation among the modern day descendants of New Thought–collectively known as New Age spirituality–is inevitable, given that New Thought draws from so many different disciplines and philosophies. And given the human tendency to dumb things down, literalize them, and interpret them in the [...]
I was browsing around online, looking for topics to write about, and I came across this quote: “We tend sometimes to think that there is an either/or choice among these… Either we concern ourselves with “higher” matters of love, community, and doing well by others (good!), or we concern ourselves with the ”low” business of [...]
…this state is not something you can bring about. This nondual state, this state of One Taste, is the very nature of every experience before you slice it up. This One Taste is not some experience you bring about through effort; rather it is the actual condition of all experience before you do anything to [...]
I think the last post I’m going to do about A Guide for the Perplexed is going to be about art. I have never really “understood” art very well, although aside from watching some episodes of Sister Wendy I’ve never really tried. I’ve always intuited, though, that it wasn’t just about pleasing the senses, that [...]
One of the most interesting sections in A Guide for the Perplexed is about convergent and divergent problems and how they relate to our perplexing human state. Convergent problems have solutions that are verifiable, repeatable, and stable. The example Mr. Schumacher used in the book was bicycles: after many attempts at a two-wheeled vehicle, a [...]
A Guide for the Perplexed starts out talking about maps. The first thing to know about maps is that they are, by their nature, incomplete; that is, it is impossible for a map to contain all the information about the territory they are describing. For this reason, it is very important to select good maps [...]
The reason for my sea change concerning religion and spirituality is a little book I recently read called A Guide for the Perplexed, by E. F. Schumacher. It was recommended to me by a reader who had some interesting things to say about this topic (thank you!). It is a small book, barely 140 pages, [...]
Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.–Alan Watts For as long as I can remember, I have made a distinction between religion and spirituality. I have seen religion as man-made, for those seeking comfort over truth, and I have seen spirituality as all-encompassing and awe-inspiring, [...]
There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man’s lawful prey.–Ruskin As we who live in mostly free, mostly Christian countries come up for air after the season that drowns us in materialistic excess, [...]
The basic point of tantra is interest and awareness in every activity we are involved in throughout our life, in every moment.–Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche It may seem ambitious to think I can summarize the point of life in 1,200 words or less. But really, I don’t think it is. The point of life is actually [...]