Category: Spiritual Exercises
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Realms of Experience Beyond the Natural
This from a reader: I was reading your post on Religious Belief and What Inclines Me to It and was struck by a statement you made at the end regarding "mystical glimpses, religious vouchsafings, paranormal experiences." By this you seem to confirm a developing series of thoughts I have had for a few years. As…
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Hitchens: No Understanding of Religion
Reading Christopher Hitchens' Mortality I was struck once again by how people like him have no understanding of religion at all. Lacking as they do any religious sense, they can only (mis)understand it from the outside as if it were just a set of strange doctrines. They don't seem to understand that the doctrines are "necessary makeshifts,"…
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Escapism
Escapism is a form of reality-denial. One seeks to escape from the only reality there is into a haven of illusion. One who flees a burning building we do not call an escapist. Why not? Because his escape from the fire is not an escape into unreality, but into a different reality. The prisoner in Plato's…
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Gratitude
Every day find something to be grateful for. It might be the regularity of nature. Without it, how would you make coffee? And then there is coffee itself and its wonderful taste. What a marvellous, yet harmless, drug! And then there are the thoughts that percolate up under its agency. There are so many of…
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Difficulties
Many difficulties are to be subdued where alone they reside: in your own head.
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True Detachment
True detachment requires a certain indifference to, and thus a certain detachment from, one's success or failure at achieving detachment. There is a paradox here inasmuch as one cannot be detached entirely from the project of attaining detachment. Otherwise there would be no difference between the seeker of wisdom and the worldling who is quite…
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Mass Media and Spiritual Deterioration
Sardonicus here explains why he left Facebook. Briefly, he left it because it had become for him an impediment to spiritual growth. I concur and generalize: inordinate consumption of any and all mass communications media militates against spiritual health for all of us. Mass media content is a bit like whisky: a little, from time to time, will…
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Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread: What Sort of Petition?
One question that arises in connection with an attempt to distinguish superstition from genuine religion is the question whether petitionary prayer is superstitious. The answer will depend not only on what we take superstition to be but also on the type of petitionary prayer. In an earlier installment I suggested that there are three grades…
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Moksha: Soteriological Riddles
Over lunch Friday the topic of moksha (release or liberation from samsara; enlightenment) came up in the context of Advaita Vedanta. Moksha is attained when the identity of Atman and Brahman is realized. My interlocutor wanted to know how such realization is possible. If I realize my identity with the Absolute, then I cease to exist as something…
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Gratitude: A Thanksgiving Homily
We need spiritual exercises just as we need physical, mental, and moral exercises. A good spiritual exercise, and easy to boot, is daily recollection of just how good one has it, just how rich and full one's life is, just how much is going right despite annoyances and setbacks which for the most part are…
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Monasticism and the Monks of Mount Athos
Back in April, 60 Minutes had a segment on the monks of Mt. Athos. It was surprisingly sympathetic for such a left-leaning program. What one expects and usually gets from libs and lefties and the lamestream media is religion-bashing — unless of course the religion is Islam, the religion of peace – but the segment in question…
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On Corporate Prayer and Institutionalized Religion
Paul Brunton, The Notebooks of P. B., vol. 12, part 2, p. 34, #68: A public place is an unnatural environment in which to place oneself mentally or physically in the attitude of true prayer. It is far too intimate, emotional, and personal to be satisfactorily tried anywhere except in solitude. What passes for prayer…
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Suggestions on How to Meditate
Some time ago I wrote a post entitled Meditation: What and Why? I was meaning to write a follow-up on the how of meditation, but didn't get around to it. But recently a friend asked for some practical suggestions. So here goes. I recommend first reading the What and Why entry. There I explain what meditation…
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Thought Check
More important than a 'gut check' might be a thought check carried out at regular intervals. Say to yourself: what is the quality of my present thoughts? Positive or negative? Ennobling or degrading? Useless or useful? Where are they drifting? What is their likely issue? Conducive to happiness or to ever more negativity and misery…
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The Ascesis of the Lower
It is useful to suppose oneself composed of a lower and a higher self. Much good comes from denying the former, good that accrues to the latter. Companion post: William James on Self-Denial.