Before Easter, I escape death. I feel sort of Jesus’y.

Back in the late 60's, the decade, not my age, I looked like Jesus often is depicted. This photo was taken (unposed, I should add) by a friend who had sponsored a gathering where I led a group in some yoga postures and meditation. Not exactly Christian, though my yoga teacher called his ashram "Christananda." Anyway, I share this information to establish an admittedly tenuous relationship between (1) the Christian celebration of Easter tomorrow, which marks Jesus' resurrection from the dead three days after his crucifixion, and (2) my recent celebration of a benign skin biopsy test, the "good news"…

Dogs as ministers. Finally, a religious practice that makes sense.

Today's Portland Oregonian has a religiously-themed story that I actually read: "Four-Footed Ministers program employs a canine to connect to the divine." As far as Portland resident Jerilyn Felton is concerned, it’s no coincidence that the word “dog” is “God” spelled backwards. Felton coordinates a dog-ministry program called the Four-Footed Ministers Pastoral-Care Program at Maryville Nursing Home in Beaverton.  She designed the program while pursuing her doctor of ministry degree at George Fox Evangelical Seminary. Felton believes that the presence of dogs can help foster a connection to the divine. The physical connections the residents make by interacting with the animal…

What is meant by a “fake” guru?

A few days ago I wrote a blog post called "Kumare: truthful movie about a fake guru." Here I want to do some additional pondering about what it means to be fake.  This is a subject of more than theoretical interest to me. Back in my college years, 1969-70, I studied yoga and meditation with a long-haired, charismatic teacher who looked a lot like the movie's Kumare (even though my teacher was Greek, and Vikram Ghandi, who became "Kumare," is Indian.) My weird story of how I switched from the first guru to another guru can be found here. l…

Kumare: truthful movie about a fake guru

"How do you know I'm not a fake? Maybe I just have the gift of gab." There's a guru in India whom I'm familiar with, Gurinder Singh, who used to frequently say this. Maybe he still does. At the time I was associated with the organization Gurinder Singh leads, his disciples would look upon those statements as a sign of some sort of humility/ Zen'ish koan/ anti-mystical mystic utterance. Which, interestingly, is almost exactly what students who flocked to a genuinely fake guru, Kumare, a.k.a. New Jersey-born Vikram Ghandi, felt when at every yoga class he taught he told them…

Wow. I’m (finally) polite to some Jehovah’s Witnesses.

My Buddha-nature must be coming along nicely. This morning I was the most courteous I've ever been to the Jehovah's Witnesses who periodically ring our rural doorbell. And I had some reasons to be my usual blunt, ascerbic self. The blueberry-filled whole wheat pancake I usually have for Sunday breakfast had just been put on a plate, butter and syrup applied. I was hungry. Hearing the doorbell ring, my wife said "Who could that be at this time?" It took me about two seconds to make what turned out to be a highly accurate guess.  I opened the front door…

Spiritual Naturalism appeals to my churchless non-soul

Thanks to an email from Alex Szeto, I learned about Spiritual Naturalism. After reading some articles on the website of the Spiritual Naturalist Society, I haven't found much that I disagree with.  But given my often-disagreeable nature, I'm sure if I dug deeper, I would. Which wouldn't bother Spiritual Naturalists, because they embrace science, reason, and such, not rigid dogma, blind faith, and unarguable thou shalt's.  "What is Spiritual Naturalism?" included a nice description of what "spirituality" can mean to someone who doesn't believe in God or the supernatural. Naturalism is a view of the world that includes those things which…

Why Taoism beats Zen on being non-religious

I can understand why someone who isn't religious wouldn't feel any need at all to embrace a philosophy that has some churchy aspects -- such as Zen Buddhism and Taoism.  However, I enjoy reading books in both genres, and am heavy into Tai Chi, which expresses Taoist principles in movment. It seems to me, along with others much more knowledgeable about Eastern philosophy than I am, that Zen minus Buddhism equals Taoism.  (More or less, at least. We're not talking mathematical precision here.) Buddhism adds in a bunch of religiosity to Zen, which would be more closely related to Taoism…

Taoism’s small and great awakenings

Wake up!  We here in the United States will say that to someone who is figuratively sleeping. Meaning, if they don't understand something obvious, something they're clueless about but should be clued in to, waking up is what we want them to do. Taoism also talks about awakening. In a way that is both similar and different. Hans-Georg Moeller explains Taoism's (or Daoism's) small and great awakenings in his book, "Daoism Explained."  It's one of my favorite Taoist books. Moeller has a fresh way of looking upon Taoism's way of looking upon things. He argues convincingly that many Western interpreters…

Video of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the secretive guru

One of the most strangely secretive gurus in the world is Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the leader of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (headquarters are in Beas, India).  His predecessor, Charan Singh, had no problem with being photographed in both still shots and videos. However, Gurinder Singh prohibits cameras from being used in his presence, even in public places.  I witnessed this myself when I was serving as a security volunteer at a RSSB meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii. Prohibitions of that sort, though, can be gotten around. Here's a You Tube video, "Babaji Gurinder Singh Dhillon -- I Just Wanna Hide," that…

Being totally into what we do makes us godlike: kamiwaza

I've finished Seth Godin's book, "The Icarus Deception," that I blogged about before in Here's something to be afraid of: fear.  I didn't find it astoundingly inspiring or informative. However, it did reinforce some notions I already hold, and said some old stuff in some new ways. And I did learn some new things. Had never heard of the Japanese word kamiwaza before. Godin writes: Superman. Thor. Moses. Athena. George Gershwin. Thomas Edison -- they each represent part of what it is to be human; they are inside all of us. We know we are capable of this -- to…

In this moment, be the mystery of existence

Thirty-five minutes until the Beanery coffeehouse closes. One sixteen ounce of coffee to consume while composing a caffeinated blog post. I accept the mission.  Now. In this moment.  To say something about one of my favorite chapters in one of my favorite books: "God in the Moment," in Luther Askeland's marvelous Ways in Mystery. I've highlighted this chapter so many times, there's fewer non-colored lines than colored. Blogged about this chapter before in my very early blogging days, when I wrote "Still trying to set my hair on fire." Re-reading it, I was pleased to find that when I was…

Weirdness: editing a book I wrote that I no longer agree with

This afternoon I decided that I've got to get serious about finishing my re-write of "God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder," a book I wrote in the early 1990's that has been out of print for a long time — since the publisher went out of business.

Years ago I edited the book significantly. My preachiness bothered me. Of course, at the time I wrote it, what I said didn't sound preachy to me. Hey, it was the truth!

So this evening I spent 90 minutes or so on proofreading and editing instead of on writing my usual Church of the Churchless blog post. It was a pleasingly weird experience. Whenever I read what I wrote in this book, even de-preachy'fied, I'm struck by how differently I look upon life now.

Which is a good thing. I feel like I've evolved into a more genuine way of understanding my place in the cosmos. Still…

There are moments when I read what my true-believing self wrote and think, "Ah, back then it was sort of nice to be so sure about God, soul, spirit, life after death, and all that stuff."

Why, you might wonder, would I want to re-publish a book that I don't really believe in any more? Well, several reasons.

Some other people will find my arguments more convincing that I find them myself nowadays. In fact, there's a chance I was on the right track before, and the wrong track now. I put a lot of work into researching and writing this study of how "ageless mysticism" relates to the "new physics." And I wouldn't mind getting some royalties from Amazon to support my senior citizen longboarding passion and caffeine addiction. 

Until I get the revised version of God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder back in print (both paper and electronic forms), I'll probably spend less time writing original posts for this blog. Maybe I'll continue to share excerpts from the rewritten book.

Feel free to laugh at me. I do so myself. Here's how the introduction reads now. Can't recall how different it is from the original. Perhaps not much. I made more changes to other chapters.

Spirituality is liberal, religiosity is conservative

Thanks to Steve for letting me know about a study that confirms what seems intuitively obvious.  People become more politically liberal immediately after practising a spiritual exercise such as meditation, researchers at the University of Toronto have found. "There's great overlap between religious beliefs and political orientations," says one of the study authors, Jordan Peterson of U of T's Department of Psychology. "We found that religious individuals tend to be more conservative and spiritual people tend to be more liberal. "Inducing a spiritual experience through a guided meditation exercise led both liberals and conservatives to endorse more liberal political attitudes." Here's a…

Think less, sense more. Stress relief made simple.

Here's some good advice from Daniel Bor, a cognitive neuroscientist, in his book "The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning."  After enumerating some oft-heard ways to reduce stress (get enough sleep, exercise regularly, etc.), Bor says: But eclipsing this list in the fight against stress is one simple mental exercise: meditation. This is often written off as being too esoteric and not sufficiently scientific, but it's been shown to profoundly help virtually any mental ailment, whether the person has a psychiatric condition or is merely suffering from the stresses and strains of…

Compassion starts with yourself: be kind to your own crap

Last night I watched part of a video that Netflix suggested I'd like to stream to my TV -- "Louis C.K.: Live at the Beacon Theater." I enjoyed his style of ironic/cynical comedy. Often he reminded me of me. Like when Louis C.K. said that he believes in being kind to people. He gets pleasure out of knowing that he believes this. Doesn't mean that he actually does kind things, compassionate things, caring things. He just enjoys the feeling of believing that these would be good things to do, were he ever to do them. I can relate to this.…

It’s wrong to say “those who know, say not.” There, I said it.

I really liked my response to something a commenter on a recent post said. This isn't terribly surprising, since I usually like what I say. After all, there's not much point to saying stuff that makes me feel "I shouldn't have said that." Occasionally that happens. Usually, though, what I say is something I want to say. So like most people, I've got no problem with saying. There's a time to say. And a time not to say. Thus I replied to the commenter this way: david r, how can you be sure that "Those who know, say not. Those…

The illusory self loves to make up stories

Who are we? Is there both an "I" and a "me" inside my head? Where do my stories about myself come from? Is it possible to live without a coherent life story? Great questions. So it didn't take me long to reply to this email with a "Sure, Alex, I'll put up a post about the video." Hi Brian,I'm writing from the Institute of Art and Ideas, where we organise a philosophy and ideas festival called HowTheLightGetsIn in May every year. All the debates at the festival are filmed and released over the course of the following year and I thought a…

There’s more, and less, to reality than we believe

We humans are mavelously anthropocentric creatures. Of course, our two dogs are marvelously caninecentric creatures. All they know about the world is what their dog brains are able to perceive.  I don't get the feeling, though, that Serena and Zu Zu feel that their way of looking upon reality is the only way, or the best way. Whereas lots of people do. One exception: when they're engaged in an intense sniffing project while we're on a walk and I tell them, "Come on, let's go!"; their bemused look at me speaks What an idiot -- why isn't he as interested…

The secret truth gurus don’t know (but scientists do)

In my life I've flown in both directions: toward mysticism as taught by gurus, and toward scientific understanding as taught by scientists. For a long time I felt like it was possible to meld the best of both worlds in an even-better combination. Now, though, I feel like whatever mysticism claims to offer needs to be assessed from within the world of reality known to science. Understand: I'm not saying that scientists are anywhere close to knowing what life, the universe, consciousness, and All That is all about. Mysteries abound. Maybe they always will, since it seems that most of…