“Never in any case whatever is a genuine effort of the attention wasted. It always has its effect on the spiritual plane and in consequence on the lower one of the intelligence, for all spiritual light lightens the mind.” 

The Epistle of James is the most practical book of the Bible. Every word in the epistle is directly relevant to contemporary living, offering lessons about life drawn from life—topics such as riches and poverty, speech and anger, faith and works, patience and hope.

We continue our meditations on Evil and Hatred.  To go deeper, to face these realities, we must become stronger.  How do we do that?

Burklo’s book refocuses Christianity away from doctrine and belief to knowing God through mindful practice and the compassionate action that follows from an enlarged perspective.

This is an important book because it provides clear evidence that spiritual practices work. Imagine if the members of Congress meditated before the start of each session.

Practicing Mental Illness is a guide to using meditation, movement and meaningful work to help manage affective disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder and anxiety. Not a typical book on mindfulness, it acknowledges where mindfulness practices as taught today can be helpful, and where methods and teachings in popular mindfulness can be very damaging to people with mental illness.

The practice of contemplating the Stations of the Cross, depicting the final hours of Jesus’ life, is a very old one. Many Catholic churches have gardens or sanctuaries in which the stations are situated.  Each of the 14 stations marks a point along the way to Jesus’ death.

Do you love who you are becoming?  Are you enjoying the giddy delight of tumbling down the flume?  Because in your delight in becoming, the Knower within you will transform your relationship to time, and usher you into the eternal now – the kin-dom of heaven on earth – where there is nothing to grasp, and everything to love…

I teach meditation as an adjunct therapy for mood disorders, and I get a surprising amount of pushback from a sizeable group of people. Many of these people have a strong faith in God and are skeptical of therapies that we in mental health see as only helpful.

In this episode of Humankind, David Freudberg traveled to a Buddhist Monastery in rural Vermont, to hear the profound wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh, a soft-spoken Vietnamese monk, who tries to cool the fires of global conflict by advocating compassion, loving speech, and deep listening.

In the shadow of COP26 we are meditating on the powerful role that Deep Ecumenism can and must play in the future of the planet.  To get the most out of individual humans and our diverse communities, we must include the spiritual dimension.  That is where the fire of excitement and passion, sacrifice and visions, is lit and stays lit.

Many of us wrestle with fear, despair, insecurity, and loneliness in this time of sustained global crisis. I worry for the future of the human family and life itself. But these times are also an invitation.

How does one begin the journey of personal transformation?

We cannot be separate from God or from each other. Yet, we can spend much of our lives imagining that this is the case.

It’s a tough task to be spiritually mindful in the midst of the chaos in a world where most of our moments have been seized by a mindless environment. A framework is needed to accomplish purposeful mindfulness throughout the day while attending to our necessary obligations, ideally leading to mental, physical, spiritual health.

Wisdom not much different than what St Benedict, a founder of Christian monasticism, observed about the contemplative life:  “Always we begin again.” Or what the 20th century Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, wrote about prayer:  “We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners.”
 

Meditations for the Awakened Christian offers 30 daily meditations pertaining to social justice, equality, and divine love.

If one chooses to interpret the story of Jesus fasting in the desert symbolically, the story becomes an allegory of transformation.