Marianne Williamson speaking on the Spirit of America. A viewer's comment: "This may be the most powerful spiritual and social justice speech delivered since Martin Luther King's. I Have a Dream."
- By Alan Cohen
Jewish theologian Martin Buber said, “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” The ego’s destinations are always material. The spirit’s destinations run deeper. We believe we are here to get somewhere physically, while we are really here to get somewhere spiritually.
None of us will ever forget where we were on 9/11, or how we learned about the attacks on our country. Our hearts, and our innocence, were shattered on that awful day.
Mystics very often see the links of all things – not only between all humans, but between humans and nature, and sometimes they feel a total immersion with the Ground of Being that upholds the universe and every living being. More and more, modern science stresses the same reality, and that apparent divisions are a socially conditioned illusion.
- By Will Johnson
No one can give you a specific technique for how to surrender. You have to find out for yourself what surrender is, and the way you respond to the felt current of the life force as it makes its way through the conduit of your body will be unique to you. Your dance won’t look like anybody else’s...
- By Alan Cohen
What goes on in the external world cannot change who we are or affect our true nature. No matter what happens to our body, personality, relationships, career, finances, or worldly politics, external events cannot affect who we are at our core. Our divinity remains intact.
- By Jared Wadley
People over 50 who attend religious services and pray privately may notice better memory performance, researchers report.
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The unicorn is an enduring image in contemporary society: a symbol of cuteness, magic, and children’s birthday parties.
Unconditional love is loving people freely, fully and openly, with no expectations, demands or restrictions. It gives total acceptance and respect and does not criticize or judge. Unconditional love is constant and is not turned on and off as in conditional love.
In this essay I will explore another view of what modern people can draw from the ceremonial approach to life. This alternative is not a substitute for the rational, pragmatic approach to solving personal or social problems. It is a reunion of the ceremonial with the pragmatic built upon a profoundly different way of seeing the world.
In the Kabbalah of the Jewish tradition, the soul is not something that needs curing from some affliction so much as needing tikkun, to be repaired. It is said that if one person truly knew how to fix the soul by celebrating the Divine Presence in life, then that person would repair the whole world.
- By Paul Brunton
Mysticism has been associated in the popular mind mostly with monasteries, retreats, ashrams, caves, and similar places where novices and would-be yogis foregathered. Thus it came to be looked upon as a way of escape from the domestic difficulties, business troubles, and emotional disappointments that seem so inseparable from human existence.
Like a mirror, your soul reflects the pure light of the Divine. But over time every mirror becomes dusty—caked and encrusted with the negative conditioning of material reality. Eventually, without attentive upkeep, it may become so grimy that it reflects little to no light. This is when we feel depressed, materialistic—even mean and violent. We see the mud and not the mirror. We identify with the grime, not knowing that just below it the mirror is there, ready to reflect the sun and shine if we only give it a chance.
Modern neuroscience has now found that altruism brings us happiness in addition to being a stress reliever. This mirrors Buddhist teachings. Through our meditations and practice of loving-kindness and compassion, we gradually come into an experiential sense of our basic goodness.
Once you decide to see only love, you can relinquish judgment and see people for what they are. In the end, everyone benefits, including you. As it says in A Course in Miracles, “You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourself and your brothers totally without judgment.”
"When I have a problem and I dance, at the end the problem is gone!" Ultimately, I am convinced that it is the connection to one’s sense of the spiritual that infuses dance with the power to heal and transform.
For someone on the spiritual path, one of the most beautiful discoveries is that everything becomes inwardly simpler and simpler as she or he progresses in their quest. The complexities of social relations just vanish in the discovery that the essence of every being is divine.
- By Mathew Guest
High rates of mental ill health among students, including some tragic cases of suicide, have highlighted the vulnerability of many young people facing the pressures of higher education while away from home for the first time.
Within all of us, there’s a light that shines like a lantern’s bright flame. We may call it love, divine energy, or an expression of our Source. No matter what name we give it, that light never goes out.
- By Lee Harris
This planet needs as many of you as possible to create the consciousness shift now occurring. And how you feel it! It can feel beautiful, wonderful, joyous, humorous, light, fun. It can also feel torturous and wretched. The shift involves a whole spectrum of emotional states.
Scrolling through news of the Notre Dame fire on social media feeds was like watching a real-time archive of grief in the making, as people expressed their dismay and sorrow at the damage wrought.
- By Marc Lesser
These two practices, seeing similarities and offering kindness, are incredibly rich in terms of building inner resources and incredibly valuable for loosening our fears and biases and allowing us to see that we are all one tribe, one family — the human family.