the sensation of life
Robert Cooper, author of The Other 90%, says that we shouldn't think of intelligence as happening only in the brain in our skulls. He talks of the "heart" brain and the "gut" brain. Whenever we have a direct experience, he says, it does not go directly to the brain in our heads. The first place … Continue reading The Other 90%
[A] discovery of psychology is that the emotions are asymmetric, with the negative more powerful and long lasting than the positive. Schopenhauer also understood this: ‘the weakness of wellbeing and happiness, in contrast to the strength of pain’. The positive emotions are capricious day-trippers, but the negative emotions are imperialists – determined to invade, overwhelm, … Continue reading Asymmetric emotions
Sermon for Bradford Consultation: 19 November 2014 I was asked to preach on Luke 19.11-28 during the Eucharist at the end of the Consultation. Here are my notes. The nice thing about parables is that there is no one meaning. I offer you 3 interpretations. Parables with dire warnings are not threats from God. It … Continue reading Parable of the talents
Suddenly everything comes together. I know why I am here. I know the purpose of human life. There are moments when we – and I – manipulate, destroy, create, cure. But our true place in all this is so simple. To notice. To appreciate. That's all.Dyckman, Garvin & Liebert, The Spiritual Exercises Reclaimed, p.86 Other … Continue reading Simply to see
Meditate as much while on this journey as if you were shut up in a hermitage or in your cell, for wherever we are, wherever we go, we carry our cell with us; brother [sister] body is our cell, and the soul is the hermit who dwells in it, there to pray to the Lord … Continue reading Brother Body
Be not anxious! Earthly possessions dazzle our eyes and delude us into thinking that they can provide security and freedom from anxiety. Yet all the time they are the very source of all anxiety. If our hearts are set on them, our reward is an anxiety whose burden is intolerable… When we seek for security … Continue reading Adding to the Anxiety
"The beginnings of the intellectual movement whose fruits are, among many others, the establishment of the Order and the Glass Bead Game itself, may be traced back to a period which Plinius Ziegenhalss, the historian of literature, designated as the Age of the Feuilleton, by which name it has been known ever since. Such tags … Continue reading The Age of Feuillton
Born in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain, the Very Rev. Pedro Arrupe, S.J. (14 November 1907 – 5 February 1991) was the twenty-eighth Superior General (1965–83) of the Society of Jesus. Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes … Continue reading Falling in love
Being deaf, Beethoven could hear the music of the Universe, unheard by the rest of us. The String Quartet No. 14 in C# minor, Opus 131, played without pause, seems to gather the slow and steady rise of the sun, mixing it with the unyielding turn of the Earth around the fire in its center. … Continue reading Glimpsing Eternity
May all beings be at ease. Whatever living beings there may be; Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none, The great or the mighty, medium, short or small, The seen and the unseen, Those living near and far away, Those born and to-be-born — May all beings be at ease! Let none deceive another, … Continue reading The Buddha’s Words on Loving-Kindness