Spirituality for Living

Yes, I have changed. I have reached a personal crisis, and it is here that I have had every idea or belief reduced to a bottom line. My instinct is fear.  Now I have transcended that fear and thus transcended my old self, but I didn’t get it from being a good boy and believing [...]

Control is human obsession and human nature. The idea of control that most people embrace is also a delusion. We control to keep things static. We control in denial of what is available to us. We abstain from embracing the now because it would deny us control. In denying the reality of our perception, we deny [...]

Resentment is an effort to address what has passed, and you cannot influence. It keeps you very much trapped in ego, and keeps you from maintaining much of what you value and want to keep in life, let alone new things.
Resentment is an effort to undo something in your past. Something you can’t undo. Even [...]

Finding peace. We all try to do it. It is a long standing objective in philosophy and religion both, if not the oldest. Yet we seem to have a haphazard grasp of it at best. A big part of this is we seek it elsewhere. It’s forever elsewhere. Peace on earth, peace with other nations, [...]

Pride is not a vice. I always laugh at the ascetics who speak of pride as if it were some great evil, but if you undertake any action with the conviction that it is right, there is an element of pride to it. The idea that your action is right, the idea that you can [...]

In the shadow, the human mind will create “bad” things“, but the bad things are things arising from our nature, the same as those parts of ourselves we praise. But being parts of the one whole truth of who we are, often that shadow mirrors everything we consider worthy, every virtue we claim stemming from [...]

I am often surprised at how dualistic peoples minds are; love this, hate that, this is good, that is bad, this is spiritual, that is dirty. There are creeds today that though they profess to espouse unity, encourage us to deny/ignore/reject parts of our being.
A lot gets lumped in under ego, but ego is a [...]

Generosity isn’t the opposite of greed, and people mistake this. Generosity isn’t a noble learned virtue, and the whole concept of these “higher ideals” has seemed very damaging to me. Generosity is a form of symbiosis, and acceptance, and perhaps even willingness to enhance the exchange process. Even science supports this.  The species that dominate [...]

Envy creeps into our daily thinking, but no situation more so than intimacy. Close friendships, family, romantic relationships. Envy denies intimacy, and if you need any gauge of how much envy affects our mind, look at the divorce rate.
I think it’s worse with romantic relationships, from my personal experience. Oh, I agree. It comes from possessiveness, but [...]

Stress re-enforces habit big time. I daresay some people are so accustomed to their stress habits they forget they are stressed.
As in a twitch, or as in running away? The whole spectrum, facial tick, running away, uncontrolled rage, self-harm, and that is not a rare habit really. For every virtuous behaviour we have been taught, we [...]

In Stoic philosophy the way of a reasonable life is foremost, and they value universal reason over human reason. They say that poor moral conduct is an error of ignorance, but they don’t define morality in a religious sense.
They do have a sort of dualistic view of the world, but it isn’t materialistic. They see [...]

The cynics accept that there were Gods. They were especially fond of Hercules actually, and from their point of view they were on a mission from Zeus.
Did they think of nature as God? Basically they did, and that we should stop wasting Gods time. That was their thought. To the point of view of a cynic, [...]

Our Spiritual Darkness class at One World, Many Paths is a bit less formal. It‘s more about being able to share the darker side of our spiritual lives without judgement and maybe receive some support. As usual advice is cheap, so any offered is not meant to offend.
So maybe for a bit of darkness, doubt/insecurity maybe? Ever [...]