We should be cautiously open to the spiritual and non-rational, and skeptical of the more invisible magical thinking—what we might call “magical reason”—pervading secular thought and experience in modern society. Science and technology are fo...
To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration. In such desecratio...
He felt what a murderer must feel, when he sees the body he has robbed of life. That body, robbed by him of life, was their love, the first stage of their love. There was something awful and revolting in the memory of what had been bought at this fea...
...what science cannot explain is the psychic effect of this 'mother of all plants,' the sense of the numinous and the spiritual world it reportedly opens up. Those who drink say that each ayahuasca journey is unique. They say that the spirit of the ...
I don't understand why people insist on pitting concepts of evolution and creation against each other. Why can't they see that spiritualism and science are one? That bodies evolve and souls evolve and the universe is a fluid package that marries them...
Palestinians and Israelis were connected by a fatalistic dialectic, whose movement was punctuated by violence and directed towards an apocalyptic conclusion. One might argue that this dialectic enveloped a land, mythical and actual, spiritual yet ear...
Inasmuch as I am a spiritual man, I do believe in God - I think that He created an order for the world; I believe that, in constantly bombarding Him with requests for miracles, we're also asking that He unravel the fabric of the world. A world of con...
Philosopher, orator, apostle, legislator, warrior, conqueror of ideas, restorer of rational dogmas, of a cult without images, the founder of twenty terrestrial empires and of one spiritual empire: that is MUHAMMAD. As regards all the standards by whi...
It would seem probable that the attachment of such a one is of a tender and profound character; indeed, it is possible that in this class of men we have the love sentiment in one of its most perfect forms—a form in which from the necessities of the...
Long before there was ever a King James Version of our Bible, there was a gospel truth...and long before doctrines and denominations, the preeminence of the gospel was already ripe to harvest. Before man had ever thought about creating symbols to rep...
He knew perfectly well (even if he wasn’t inclined to admit it) that the material body had a spiritual aspect. He knew that “spirit,” however explained, was real, because of his own undeniable experiences—which, though he might suppress them,...
we begin to see that we are spiritually linked with people halfway around the world, and with those who lived hundreds, even thousands of years ago. We begin to see that we emerge from, and are the expressions of, a single consciousness that is limit...
It is rare to find an established community of Christians that encourages radical expressions of following Jesus. The natural conservatism of institutions is deeply rooted in the desire to survive, and that desire colors and limits the way they read ...
On the Path of the Wise there is probably no danger more deadly, no poison more pernicious, no seduction more subtle than Spiritual Pride; it strikes, being solar, at the very heart of the Aspirant; more, it is an inflation and exacerbation of the Eg...
When spiritual seeking becomes too complicated, its exercies too elaborated, its doctrines too esoteric, it becomes also too artificial and the resulting achievements too fabricated. It is the beginners and intermediates who carry this heavy and unne...
Your calling is to be faithful to God where you are, and in doing this all work is sacred, spiritual, and worthy of your full attention and energy. When you get to work, you are not entering a secular environment as much as you are bringing the sacre...
If the heights of our joy are measured by the depths of our gratitude, and gratitude is but a way of seeing, a spiritual perspective of smallness might offer a vital way of seeing especially conducive to gratitude
I am so fond of tea that I could write a whole dissertation on its virtues. It comforts and enlivens without the risks attendant on spirituous liquors. Gentle herb! Let the florid grape yield to thee. Thy soft influence is a more safe inspirer of soc...
If we are called to attention by God’s Life and Holy Spirit, then the ‘spiritual life’ is not a pleasant option we might like to pursue when we have space and time; it is that which is now creating its own space and time within us, and to negle...
Houdini, the magician who debunked magic, could not bear to see the great rationalist [Arthur Conan] Doyle enchanted by ghosts and frauds. And so he did what any friend would: He set out to prove spiritualism false and rob his friend Doyle of the onl...
The basements of the churches I've loved reveal the foundation of the spiritual life to be not belief so much as engagement with the mystery lurking at the base of all things. We build a framework on top of mystery because we need someplace to live, ...
