Suffering is a terrible word in our popular culture. Indeed, we would say that most of the spiritual traditions and philosophies exist, so that we escape suffering, whether it is called suffering or pain or sorrow, we have notions like enlightenment, or peace or transcendence, which are meant to escape from suffering or to eliminate or delete suffering from our lives. And who doesn't want to have a life without suffering.
Read MoreThe popular proposition of the times that we live in is that human beings are social animals. And therefore, the best way for us to thrive and to be healthy is that we are in company, whether that is in the form of having a partner or a family, or being part of a community, a village, a town, a city, state, a nation, or being part of like-minded groups that share ideologies and values, but we are really told that it is in company that we thrive and that we are doing well. Indeed, sometimes even our very sense of belonging is about belonging, whether we belong in a relationship belong in a family belong in a community, or belong to a political entity, but we are told that even our very sense of belonging comes from something about being in a company or having a position or having a connection to a company.
Read MoreThe mind must “understand” to find meaning. As we live in mind-led consciousness, we assume that understanding is the universal approach to Reality. Archetypal wisdom traditions propose creativity as an experiential expression of Reality which has nothing to do with “understanding”. One of the important wisdom invocations of this entirely different way of encountering Reality is the archetype of Water.
Read MoreFor those of us who are engaged in spiritual inquiry, self inquiry, exploration of expansive states of consciousness, or even artistic and creative practices, we know that it's not really a place for analysis, those analytical capabilities of our mind, which are very useful to us in almost all of the other domains of our life, including in more personal areas like psychology and therapy, when it comes to the domain of those areas of the soul, or consciousness, or even creativity, or those areas of considering and enquiring into our divine or sacredness, it does not serve us well, the very those very frames of analysis. They don't serve us well.
Read MoreSometimes spirituality becomes an escape from the daily grind. Every day, for most of us, we have these routines, which are very mechanistic. Who doesn't have to deal with bureaucracies, with computer updates with paying bills, with routines to support family members, whether it's taking children to school or to their activities, taking care of people that are not well in the family, and all these very ordinary things which constitute this daily grind of our lives. And sometimes spirituality becomes the way in which we can replenish ourselves, nourish ourselves, nurture ourselves away from the daily grind.
Read MoreIt's very common in archetypal traditions to invite a contemplation of ancientness. And it can take different forms in different traditions. So for example, in some traditions, this is the worship of ancestors or forefathers, or it could be in the form of deities that represent an ancientness. For example, there is the goddess Dhumavathi in Indian archetypal tradition, who is presented as an aging body, a goddess inhabiting an aging body, who walks around at the margins of time in lonely deserts, and who is feared and revered, in equal measure.
Read MoreLions and Tigers have always been associated with ancient goddesses. You have, for example, goddess Sekhmet in Egypt, the lion goddess, who herself comes from a long ancestry of lion goddesses. And you have Goddess Durga in India, again coming from an ancestry of goddesses who were associated with tigers and lions. In fact, in some of the earliest goddesses in that are found in India, you see images of the goddess standing between two tigers, holding them on either side of her by the scruff of their neck.
Read MoreOne of the dominant demands of our mind is that we must have a plan. There's always this question, “So what's the plan?” And without a plan, the mind is very uneasy and uncomfortable. It may even start cooking up its own plans and templates or apply whatever plans and templates that it knows.
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What is it that we “seek” or yearn for? What is it that we express as Divine, enlightenment, union, and wholeness? What is this knowledge that we chase as the answer to our feeling of incompleteness within?
Read MoreIsn't it true that we all crave for authenticity in our search for why are we here? What is the purpose of each one of our lives? For a lots of us the yearning to express our being in an authentic way or to yearning to express that authenticity of our being is central to finding that connection to meaning and purpose. Those of us who can excavate this authenticity and to be able to actually manifest it, because of course, authenticity only becomes real, when it is actually expressed and manifested, then we can feel that moment where it feels like something has landed.
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