Trinities

I’ll start off the debate on trinities in various religions with a very simple (sceptical) observation: I very much doubt it makes sense to pretend the various trinities in various religions can be equated. Father-Son-Holy Spirit is the Christian trinity and it says something about the relationship between the divine and each individual, as well [...]

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sort of perplexing

The following passage seems to go against basic Buddhist thought- at least what i have heard- that there is no “self ” outside of the 5 skandhas, and what we experience as “self”  is nothing other than a coalescence of the stuff’s of the five skandhas, perhaps mixed with a bit of avidya. but here is [...]

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To Be or Not to Be

Katinka, Chris and I have been discussing in the last few posts about the value of our personality, our psychological self, and so on. I need to use the theosophical terminology in order to express more or less accurately my understanding of this topic. I’d say that kama-manas (the personal mind, identified with this particular [...]

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Radical Uniqueness

Two recent posts by Pablo and Katinka have addressed a similar idea. I’d like to talk more about the idea of crucifying our material selves. Generally, I’m curious about the range of attitudes towards not only the physical body, but the embodied self, the personality, the ego (which also relates Katinka’s distinction between self-confidence and [...]

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Self Confidence or Letting go of Self?

Psychologists, especially amateur psychologists, emphasize self confidence as a major predictor of success and happiness. On the other hand, spiritual traditions like Theosophy, Buddhism and Sufism stress the fact that our personalities are a major source of trouble and we should let them go. Can those two views be connected? Sure they can. They target [...]

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A Good Day to Die.

The underlying theme of Easter is death and resurrection. And today, “Good Friday” Christians commemorate the crucifixion and death of Jesus at Calvary . That name, “Good Friday” is a very interesting and philosophical one, quite far in spirit from the current message of Christianity about Jesus’ death. Why is it called “Good Friday” and [...]

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Practical versus Theoretical spirituality (or theosophy if you will)

The spiritual path: only practice or only reading?

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Everyday Ecstasy

I live in Chicago where we have endured a particularly lengthy and brutal winter. Weeks and weeks of bitter cold and grey, unremitting winds that freeze the tears on your face. Today was the first real break. It would still feel cool to my southern family, maybe even to me in in October after a [...]

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Forgiveness

There is a discussion group that meets every Sunday night at Olcott, the National Headquarters of the Theosophical Society in America. During a discussion last week, someone brought up forgiveness. This is one of those words we use frequently, but whose meaning is rarely explored. It occurred to me then that I didn’t really know [...]

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Religion versus Spirituality part 2: How to reconcile commitment and scepticism…

I’m getting into the sociology of modernity, for my bachelors paper. Anthony Giddens is one of the primary sociologists in that field. He wrote: The problem for us – those who wish to see a cosmopolitan world prosper – is to reconcile commitment and skepticism. (From Conversations with Anthony Giddens: Making Sense of Modernity, p. [...]

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Pecha Kucha

Last week I attended Vol. 4 of Chicago Pecha Kucha (pronounced PEH-CHUH ku-CHUH). Essentially, it is an evening of presentations where each presenter gets to share 20 slides and has 20 seconds per slide. Someone gets up, has six minutes and 40 seconds to do their thing and then it is on to the next. [...]

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Youth and wisdom

Chogyam Trungpa wrote: We have the idea that an enlightened person is supposed to be more or less an old-wise-man type: not quite like an old professor, but perhaps an old father who can supply sound advice on how to handle all of life’s problems or an old grandmother who knows all the recipes and [...]

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Religion or Spirituality

Religion has a bad name in alternative circles. It’s associated with the Christian church and all it’s crimes (real and perceived). Religion is associated with dogma, stifling rules that don’t fit our day to day lives and worse of all: authority. A preacher to tell me what to do in my personal life? Never! In [...]

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Letting Go and Visualizing where you’re going

I’ve been struggling with understanding The Secret for a while now  – in fact before the hype started. Part of my struggle is that I hear people say to (to me) opposite things. On the one hand there’s the idea that we are responsible for our own life. If we truly clean up our act, [...]

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Interfaith Presentation

In November of last year I was invited to represent the Theosophical Society at the 17th Annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Service at St. Procopius Abby in Lisle, Illinois. This is a lovely event hosted by the Benedictine monks of St. Procopius Abbey. Representatives from nine different faiths came to this sublime hall to talk about their [...]

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dropping labels

There is an Intelligentsia cafe near my work. They have the best coffee in the city. I frequently go there for lunch, to read, write, to take a break from the chaos of my office. They have a consistent staff of really interesting young people. They look like the cast of some hip, undiscovered indie [...]

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What is a spiritual experience? Part I

This question has been on my mind lately. That we even talk about certain experiences being spiritual reveals a mark of otherness. For most of us, only rare moments earn the denomination. Yet one of the most consistent claims proceeding from examinations of such experiences is the fundamentally spiritual nature of total reality, the oneness [...]

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first entry – a clearing

Welcome to the Theosophist blog. A common and useful trope in spiritual literature is the idea of an opening, a sacred space into which you can invite . . . whatever. Heidegger, in his later works, talks about the clearing required for Being to disclose itself. There is also the story of the professor who [...]

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