Reflections
On this page are displayed the latest twenty bookmarks of sites and online articles I have found particularly worth reflecting on. As they are retrieved automatically, they may not always appear. If a “no bookmarks are available” message is shown, simply refresh the page. If there are still no articles shown, the service may be experiencing a temporary technical issue.
- The New Mysticism and the Life after Death - Part II
The descent of God into the womb of the Goddess the Medieval alchemists described as the so-called coniunctio, the Holy Wedding or Hierosgamos. As we can clearly see, it is not a description of the sexual act between humans, because in the latter the penis enters the vagina and not the whole man into the womb of the woman. This difference shows us that all the sexual metaphors of this process – be it in Christian Gnosticism, in Medieval alchemy, in the Hindu and Buddhist Tantrism, in the dreams and visions of the Christian mystics, or in the spontaneous products out of the collective unconscious in modern humans – refer to this archetypal process. - The New Mysticism and the Life after Death - PT I
Mysticism represents an occupation with God or with the divine in oneself. A mystic is thus occupied with images and voices, which come out from the inside - Mind-Forg'd Manacles: Self-Imprisonment and Self-Liberation in Blake's "Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
"One of William Blake’s most radical departures from the conventional Christian theology of his time is his implicit denial that salvation comes through the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross. In explaining this denial, it is not enough to simply say that Blake’s rejection of the doctrine of original sin made Christ’s sacrifice unnecessary. Instead, we must examine the root of Blake’s rejection of original sin in his portrayal of the human condition. For Blake, the oppressed state in which human beings find themselves and from which they require liberation are mental prisons of their own creation. This theme is scattered throughout his works, but particularly resonates in the phrase “mind-forg'd manacles”" - Accurate Translation of the Tao Te Ching
The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things
Thus, constantly without desire, one observes its essence
Constantly with desire, one observes its manifestations
These two emerge together but differ in name
The unity is said to be the mystery
Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders - Tao and the Aperspectival World
Gebser maintains that it was in the Renaissance that the awakening of oneself as an autonomous self reflective individual through our free independent critical Reason becomes a universal consciousness. And this self consciousness itself was no other than the human Reason. In opposition to and precisely against such autonomous self the world was now represented. In order to represent the world in this manner, the photographic perspective was most appropriate to such a self conscious individual autonomous ego (=Reason). - Interbeing
Philosophically speaking, the entire cosmos exists in every part of cosmos. The point of Buddhism is to transform this insight from an abstract philosophical idea into a lived reality that becomes the basis for everyday life. To achieve this transformation, a person must transform herself. More precisely, a person must learn and then experience the truth that our ordinary notion of "self" is a fiction. If no thing has independent, self-subsistent being, then neither does what we call our own self: "Life is one. We do not need to slice it into pieces and call this or that piece a self. What we call is a self is made only of non-self elements…We have to discard all distinctions between self and non-self." We have to experience everything, including what we call the self, as a manifestation of the sum total of all processes, a web of relationships woven into a much larger—indeed, infinite—web. - The Embodiment of Love
We are each expressions of a fundamental reality, an essence that some call God, some spirit, some consciousness, some love. It doesn't matter what you call it. It doesn't care. It is beyond names. But it is real, and thus we all belong to the same family. My blood is the same as yours, my heart is the same as yours, my body is the same as yours. We seem to stand apart from each other, but our essence is one. We only seem to be different, but we are all parts of a whole. - 10 Mental Blocks to Creative Thinking
You create your own imaginary boxes simply by living life and accepting certain things as “real” when they are just as illusory as the beliefs of a paranoid delusional. The difference is, enough people agree that certain man-made concepts are “real,” so you’re viewed as “normal.” This is good for society overall, but it’s that sort of unquestioning consensus that inhibits your natural creative abilities.
So, rather than looking for ways to inspire creativity, you should just realize the truth. You’re already capable of creative thinking at all times, but you have to strip away the imaginary mental blocks (or boxes) that you’ve picked up along the way to wherever you are today. - Theosophical Perspectives on Science
The celestial laws are here underfoot and our treading upon them does not obliterate or vulgarize them. . . . The stars send their influences, the earth renews itself, the brooding heaven gathers us under its wings, and all is well with us if we have the heroic hearts to see it. – John Burroughs - Theosophy and the Arts: Theosophical Topics in Depth
You cannot see beauty outside unless you have beauty within you. You cannot understand beauty unless you yourself are beautiful inside. You cannot understand harmony unless you yourself in your inner parts are harmony. All things of value are within yourself, and the outside world merely offers you the stimulus, the stimulation, of and to the exercise of the understanding faculty within you. -- G. de Purucker - Harmony of Religions
Truth is one, but it comes filtered through the limited human mind. That mind lives in a particular culture, has its own experience of the world and lives at a particular point in history. The infinite Reality is thus processed through the limitations of space, time, causation, and is further processed through the confines of human understanding and language. Manifestations of truth—scriptures, sages, and prophets—will necessarily vary from age to age and from culture to culture. Light, when put through a prism, appears in various colors when observed from different angles. But the light always remains the same pure light. The same is true with spiritual truth. - Taoist Chant, Mantra, and Invocations
Taoist philosophy is now well documented in English through the many translations of primary works such as the Tao te Ching of Lao Tzu, the Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, Wen Tzu, and so on. Certain types of meditative practices, chiefly inner alchemy practices involving the circulation of energy through various channels in the body, have also been popularized in the West by teachers such as Mantak Chia. And the use of Qigong (Chi Kung) energy exercises for health and longevity is now available in videos and books by teachers like Kenneth Cohen.
However, the religious side of Taoism, including ritual practices and chanting, is still almost completely unknown in the West. - Resurgence • God is not Dead
The evolution of consciousness is taking us towards a greater capacity for processing the meaning of our lives and the world around us.
A paradigm shift in science is taking place. This shift is taking us from a divisive, God-denying, matter-based science to one that integrates science and God or spirituality. This new scientific paradigm rests on solid theory-based quantum physics and solid evidence-based empirical data, not on fanciful ideas. And like all creative endeavours, the paradigm shift has come with a surprise: that science itself has to operate within a spiritual metaphysics. - Contracting and Expanding
[W]e can find peace within ourselves if we remember to trust the universe. We can look to the natural world for inspiration as we see that all beings surrender to the process of being born. In that surrender, and in the center of our own hearts, is a willingness to trust in the unknown as we make our way through the opening. - What is a Truly Universal Spirituality?
To what extent is it desirable and possible to distill the spirituality from a religious tradition, receiving what is most pure and essential while leaving behind the dregs of cultural relativity and historical bias? In a sense this is a task that must be done by every generation: restoring the essential message, the living impulse, the spirit of a tradition.