Essay 5

July 17, 2022

     The fifth essay in Our Highest Possibilities continues with the nature of mystical experience, its connection to intuition, and begins to explore how each of us can find ways to experience these dimensions more fully.

     There is no doubt that many saints, sages, philosophers, scientists, artists, and athletes have reported mystical experiences. But so have many “normal” people, people like you and me. Mystical experiences can arise in an instant in anyone, sometimes with no warning or expectation. For instance, an ordinary guy named Muz Murray was on vacation in Cypress, looking at the sea in the afterglow of sunset, when suddenly, without any warning, everything changed. In an instant, the world was new:

“I was shown that every cell had its own consciousness which was mine. And it seemed … that the whole of humanity was in the same condition: each “individual” believing in his or her separate mind, but in reality still subject to a single controlling consciousness, that of Absolute Consciousness Itself.” Continue reading “The Mystic in Each of Us” →

Essay 3

June 16, 2022

The third essay in the series, Our Highest Possibilities, involves the difficulty of knowing what is true in a world that has come unmoored from the foundations that have been the basis for peoples’ lives and civilizations for centuries, even millennia:

Searching for Truth

Essay 2

June 3, 2022

The second essay in the series, Our Highest Possibilities, involves a crucial step we must take if we are to get in touch with that which is truly important: Stepping Outside.

A poem by Jalaluddin Rumi:

For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself.
From within, I couldn’t decide what to do.
Unable to see, I heard my name being called.
Then, I walked outside.

One question this raises: What did he walk outside of?

When I am looking out at the world from within my individual point of view, it is usually the “me” that I was enculturated to identify with, an individual separate from other individuals and from the world. This is my normal identity, the person I seem to be to myself during most of my waking hours. The traditional way to describe this person I think I am is “ego self,” and the best short definition I can give of ego is “everything I think of when I think of myself.”

Most of us identify with this image of who we are a great deal of the time. When we do, the ego is the center of awareness as well as our identity. There are, however, times when we are outside this identity. Ralph Waldo Emerson explored this “outside” throughout his life:

“We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams.”

“The great nature in which we rest is that Unity, that Over-Soul, within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other.”

“Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of Universal Being circulate through me.” Continue reading “Stepping Outside” →

May 9, 2022

Every project, discussion, investigation, or attempt at understanding begins with what you think and believe at the beginning. Every single thing you do from this point forward in your life begins with the assumptions you now hold. Each of us lives within a vast framework of assumptions, and even the most scientific of endeavors rests upon a scaffolding of assumptions that will have a dramatic effect on the outcome.

If this is true of science, it is even more true of inquiries that involve things that cannot be precisely measured, including all philosophical, psychological, and spiritual investigations. And it is especially true when dealing with questions about how to live one’s own life.

My earlier books and essays discus these key ideas at some depth. If you would like to explore these ideas and assumptions more fully, or discover how I came to them, you can do so there. Continue reading “Everything Begins with What You Think You Know” →

Three Core Issues on the Spiritual Journey

This is a deep dive into three issues I have been trying to understand for a long time in my spiritual journey. In recent years, two teachers have been especially helpful with these questions: Tsong Khapa (1357-1419), the Tibetan Buddhist monk and teacher, and Meister Eckhart (1260–1328), the Christian theologian, philosopher, and mystic. This essay will focus on Tsong Khapa, and a later edition will deal with Meister Eckhart.

Since I do not read Tibetan, and have scant knowledge of their vast literature, the thoughts presented here will rely primarily on ideas shared by Robert Thurman. He was Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University until his retirement in 2019, held the first endowed chair in Buddhist Studies in the West, was the co-founder and president of the Tibet House in New York, and was the recipient of India’s highly prestigious Padma Shri award in 2020 for his work in the field of literature and education. Thurman started his personal Tibetan Buddhist practice in 1962 and was ordained as a monk by the Dalai Lama in 1965, thus probably becoming the first American Buddhist monk in the Tibetan tradition. Through the years, Thurman and the Dalai Lama have remained close friends. Continue reading “Tsong Khapa on Time and Timelessness” →

This book was written in 1989-90 and used in my first workshops for many years. It deals with the Hero’s and Heroine’s journey, focusing especially on the psychological insights of Carl Jung, as well as the ideas of Joseph Campbell and Helen Luke. In the tradition of these three authors, I take the ancient story of Odysseus as a symbol for the journey we all must make if we are to find meaning and fulfillment for ourselves.

This document is the whole book. To retain all the forrmating, footnotes, spacing – which is hard to duplicate on line, you can download the book in PDF format.  Quest Manuscript PDF

December 19, 2021

For several years our country—and the world—have been going through ever-increasing difficulties: political turmoil, Covid, economic disruptions, mounting climate problems—all increasing the level of polarization, resentment, blame, anger, frustration, loneliness, and despair. It is hard to see what will come of all this.

In the face of these difficulties, these things I know:

1. If there is a way through to a better place in our relations with each other, it will be through an increase in understanding, respect, and consideration for others.

2. If there is any chance to create a better world, the path will be through kindness, compassion, and love.

3. No matter the state of the world around us, each of us has the capacity to increase kindness, compassion, and love within ourselves, and to share those energies with others.

4. Each of us can find a place of peace inside ourselves to organize around, no matter the state of the world. The greatest souls have been forged on the anvil of difficulties, and the great exemplars of humanity have been shaped and molded in the fires of trial and tribulation.

5. As long as we seek only to make our own lives better, we will fail. We are inextricably connected with others and to the greater whole. Without a connection to something larger than our personal ego concerns, life’s trajectory is inevitably downward toward meaninglessness and death.

Continue reading “Compassion and Service” →

November 24, 2021

Happy Thanksgiving!

As I watch the sum come up on this bright, cold, morning, I want to wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving and a bountiful day, and week – and rest of your life.

There are so many problems in our world today I seldom take the time to remember all the blessings. So many people through history have lived through times that were much worse: terrible wars, famine, lack of basic necessities, starvation, and on and on. I have read a good bit about the Civil War this year to remind myself how fortunate I am—we all are today.

For anyone who wishes to be more thankful for what they have, however, it won’t happen by chance: You will have to choose it. As Samuel Johnson said:

“Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation.”

At the end of his play, Twelfth Night, Shakespeare has only one final message: Continue reading “Thanksgiving 2021” →

There is a radical difference in how the 4^th wave of Covid is being experienced—between those with immunity vs. those without immunity.

1. Those without immunity are 20 times more likely to get Covid (using the statistic that the vaccines are 95% effective)

But 20 times is very conservative. Only about 0.1% of the people who have been vaccinated in the U.S, have had a symptomatic breakthrough case of Covid. Very few of those who have had Covid are being reinfected, so most all the cases in June and July occurred among those without immunity.

2. Those without immunity are about 100 times more likely to have a really serious illness when they get Covid, compared to a similar population.

An Associated Press analysis from May suggested that “breakthrough” infections in fully vaccinated people accounted for fewer than 1,200 of the more than 107,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations. That’s about 1.1%. During this time period, about half of the adults in the U.S. were fully vaccinated, so these two numbers come from roughly equal population size groups. If you included those with immunity from having Covid in the numbers, the dangers to those with no immunity would be much higher. Continue reading “Two Worlds of Covid” →

The twelfth essay in The Ultimate Journey concerns the 4 primary motivations from which we each live, and the choices we make about those motivations. At the end are a few more recommended books.

The heart of what I am trying to convey in the Ultimate Journey is that you have a choice about the motivations from which you will live—and your choice will have dramatic effects on your life and the world you experience. Many people make their choices unconsciously, but doing so is problematic, especially as one gets older.

There are, of course, a thousand things we are motivated to do—eat, sleep, create art, make love, make war, watch movies, make money, buy clothes, serve those in need, build houses, talk to friends, shop, travel, write books, fight, argue, engage in social media, seek fame, run for office, and on and on. We spend a great deal of the time of our lives deciding which of these to do, and when. Continue reading “12 – Your 4 Primary Motivations” →