The Disappearing God by Mirabai Starr
When I was fourteen, my first love was killed, and I turned to God.
It was not some beneficent father figure I was looking for. I had a grandpa who smoked a pipe and taught me complex vocabulary words and another who sang me Irish ballads, replacing the name of the beautiful heroine with my own. But my parents were radical intellectuals who made fun of the divine. They ridiculed devotion. For them, religion was the opiate of the masses: Grandma’s empty ritual of lighting the Sabbath candles and murmuring in perfunctory Hebrew before settling down in front of the television with the National Enquirer and a glass of sherry; the silly, sad grasping of people too boring to stand up and change the world.
“NO MORE WAR” by Amoda Maa
War is a symptom of the divided mind. And the divided mind is what governs most human beings. It is an unconscious state, in which there is no recognition of the indivisible reality of pure consciousness that underlies all seemingly separate individuations. It is a primitive state of ego-consciousness that thrives on comparison and the dichotomy of victor and vanquished, victim and perpetrator, subject and object. In this divided state, we go to war with other nations, other ideologies, other religions, other opinions, other life forms. We even go to war with the present moment, rejecting it, resisting it, trying to fix it or change it or run away from it or take possession of it. In the unconsciousness state, everything — even the natural flow of life — is a threat, something to be overcome so that we stay in our comfort zone or stand on a pedestal of superiority or specialness.
“How is Love the Ultimate Reality?” by Bryce Haymond
Many people want to know the ultimate nature of the universe, the ultimate reality. Many seek it through science. But mysticism and contemplation may offer the Way that actually realizes that One, which is Love.
A verse in the New Testament reads,
God is Love (1 John 4:8, 16)
It’s repeated twice in the same chapter.
But what does it mean? We usually think of love as some kind of sentimental thing, merely an emotion that we feel with or towards other people. How could it be anything more than this?
Tao Te Ching (Chapter 4) — a Commentary by Galen Pearl
Tao Te Ching – Chapter 4 (commentary)
This short chapter, one of my favorites, and one of the most enigmatic, attempts to describe the indescribable Tao by using three images.
Tao is empty, yet in use is inexhaustible
The first is an image of emptiness, like a hollow bowl or an empty vessel. The emptiness of the Tao is not a barrenness, but is dynamic with potential. This image also has a connotation of a welling up, as an inexhaustible spring bubbling up from the ground.
“The Old Woman Weaving in a Cave” — a Native American Story
This is a centuries old Native American myth about an ancient woman who lives in a cave. People far and wide know of her existence, but the cave, and thus the woman have never been found. Her partner in this story is a very old black dog that caringly watches her every move. The old woman’s focus and passion is operating an ancient loom — patiently weaving a sizable and most beautiful of garments. She never leaves her task except to occasionally walk over to the fireplace to stir a kettle of “very special soup.” Interestingly, whenever she walks away from the task at hand (the garment), the old black dog, unhurriedly and determinedly pushes himself upwards and then heads towards that remarkable garment.
I’ll leave the rest or the story for you to read and interpret…