Spirituality for Living

The monk is passionate, passionate in ascetic seeking. The zealot is also passionate, passionate in persecution. Some believe the monk is trained to forget his physical humanity, and to focus on the mind and that is not passion but doctrine. I would disagree. There are surfaces and there are depths. Monks live in their own “chosen” world [...]

There were two broad schools of thought in Chinese belief; naturalistic and legalistic. The Taoists were an example of the naturalistic school using nature and allegorical stories to focus on observations of the way the world works in general. Confucianism was more humanistic. Confucius focused on ethics and human concerns with the basic premise that [...]

Life seems naturally contiguous. Thought and mood and action and reaction, there is no break in that cycle that I can see. Like we are all dancing to the same mad piper in the middle of a fairy ring made of the dust of individuality and self respect. This song is picked up without much [...]

The idea of the matriarchal society is strong in a lot of cultures. Matriarchy by spiritual and not military leadership and the two coexisting. In the Yezidi culture (the non Islamic Kurds), women are not made to wear veils by anything but law as supposedly Satanist as they are. As the Ophistes were seen, they [...]

My own “mentality” is considered defective, but other people give what they don’t care about more often than what they do. For example, those who give money because they can, and it doesn’t really matter to them, are often pulled off center by it. They start wondering at the meaninglessness of things. It doesn’t benefit [...]

The Native American culture has differing origin/creation stories.  They all generally believed in a great spirit and the animal spirits were considered elders. Humans were seen as young in the world, but to their view animals were spirits, not necessarily confined to looking as they seem to obviously, and the line between human and animal wasn’t [...]

Does superstition play a part in Bushido? In a sense, any tradition is a superstition. Does any belief survive? Because that is the literal meaning of superstition.
Does any form of Bushido persist in modern Japanese society, or is it all historical? Actually yes. It doesn’t exist unmodified, but it is how the “do” disciplines got [...]

There is a difference between a ‘natural’ law and a connived one. The natural laws arise even without human doing, but include us, and they are a part of our natures. Contrived rules tend to create resistances, they rely on denial of select elements of reality.
We know instinctively? Yes we do, and the natural rules [...]

Anyone care to give an example of what they might want to attract in their life?
Sincerity? If you want to attract sincerity use symbols of truth, justice, balance. Like a scales, the sign of Libra, or a photo of an innocent, a puppy dog or a young child.  Whatever seems strongly linked to sincerity. People [...]

Many spiritual groups don’t welcome dark feelings or dark sentiments in their functions. We don’t have this prejudice on Reflection Island, and our Spiritual Darkness class is to give that its place in our awareness. I would like to start by offering the floor to anyone who would like to share some element of darkness [...]

Intimacy is opening yourself up to hurt, and a lot of people make use of that. Actually, I would disagree with that. I tend to be very intimate with animals. I pay them a lot of attention. People see it as me just liking animals, and that’s a truth but not the whole truth. In [...]

Authoritarianism. Men are brought up that they are to be the authority. They are supposedly the ones to discipline the kids. I will be totally honest. I don’t like telling anyone to do anything. We claim to be a democracy. Well, biological fact is there are more women than men. So why are the presidents [...]

Sikhism is a religion that started at about the same time as the Protestant movement did in Catholicism. It takes influences both from Islam and Hinduism, and it’s original lineage was preserved by a short lineage of Gurus before it was encoded in their religious text.
Please forgive my lack of mastery of the language, but it [...]

I do like the idea of accepting the literal facts of gender difference without additional prejudice. Men don’t need to be emasculated, women don’t need to be intimidated, yet we do both. In the States, if a man gets married he’s seen as having “gotten a wife”. I often mock my male friends for how [...]

Stoicism did have ’enlightened’ Stoics.  The goal of a Stoic was to become a Sage. A Sage was someone who sees reality clearly, and is troubled by nothing.  He is thus empowered to impart this knowledge to others, as well as always being able to take the right action.  They did in a sense have monks who engaged [...]

We have not one drive, but two. A will to self preservation and fear, but also a will to power. Courage. A motivation to engage the world. Some soldiers do actually want to see the battle won, and we in our civilian life are not taught to really back up our desires, our goals, or values. [...]

You can internally think about ‘doing the right thing’ with every little thing that you do, or that happens. It’s exhausting. Exhausting and crippling. Who has succeeded by conscience alone? Anyone? And those who complain of never succeeding, are they people of weak conscience?
What is conscience but learned values/ideals? Exactly, and is that judgment such [...]

We are honored to have Maia Avedon share her native Hawaiian culture.  She shares tales of Hawaiian values of spirit, mind and body. Today she offers us ‘The Shark Story’.
Join the group ‘One World, Many Paths’ to attend events in real time and subscribe to One World Pod.
Enjoy friends,
Dragon Intuitive

Zionism is both political and spiritual. It has been going on for a long time, and it even translated into other cultures.  In America it became manifest destiny.
Zionism is ultimately the idea that God has promised land, and that it’s ones sacred duty to either take it or preserve it. The belief in an otherworldly heaven [...]

A lot of people look at darkness as a negative. I’m not one who does. Nor am I. This is why we have the discussion group on spiritual darkness in Second Life. It’s to learn from this side of the truth also.
When others refer to driving back the darkness, I know they mean the unwanted [...]