Hints and Guesses

We've lost the plot again!  Let's talk about The Apocalypse, which really means "to reveal." With so much anxiety and fear, is there a reason to be hopeful?  What does the destruction and renewal symbol have to teach us right now?  "No one ought ever love their suffering/but no one ever loves without its pain/as we die we come to wondering/if there was something we could not yet see/that winged Thing that merges with Earth's suffering/to make us what we would otherwise never be." (Rilke)

The last podcast created some controversy, so let's go further.  In this episode, I bring in some other voices on the subject of "know thyself" - I discuss the early adolescent tensions of authenticity and social acceptance from the work of Bill Plotkin, the traps of identification according to Cynthia Bourgeault, radical consciousness from Ken Wilber, and the Cosmic Dance of Thomas Merton.  Enjoy! 

Know thyself! The gifts and limits of the enneagram, from my experience. Enjoy.

This week, woman's soccer, Exodus, liberation, co-creating a better world and the gift of the sacred feminine imagination.  Enjoy!

Through the analogy of dreams and how they work on the ego, I argue that parables, because they're archetypal and symbolic, are meant to disrupt, disrobe and dismantle the ego - who we think we are in the world. This week, in my ongoing series on the Bible, I explore how parables can work on us.  They're not just clever stories with moral lessons that need to be deciphered or interpreted correctly.  Listening on this deeper level does not mean you need to believe the stories, or hold certain views about the Bible, or even believe in God.  It's more like we're being invited to open up to the characters, the emotions, the landscape, and images of a parable (or any mythic story for that matter).  This way of listening helps reveal the hidden contours of our own psyche - where we need to grow, where we're stuck, the leading edge of change for us.  Being worked by parables feels like, "Surprise!  You're not who you say you are, or who you think you are.  Change your life!"  Enjoy! 

Stuff I've been pondering - the soul's code and her aims, raising kids, our post truth culture, the underworld pool of memory, "what to remember when waking" (David Whyte), the un-lived life, "concealment of Being" (Heidegger), and the relationship between the past and a new imagination for the future.  Enjoy!

Episode 5 in losing the plot, my Biblical series.  I'm following the last podcast on Holy Week with a few musings on resurrection.  Did Jesus really resurrect?  What's the meaning intended by such a radical and complex image? Reflecting on the experiences of Paul and Mary Magdalene, some important patterns emerge that take us beyond the debates about belief and history.  Enjoy!

Back with another musing on the Biblical stories.  This episode is about Holy Week, the last week of Jesus life, the Sacred Fool, eating the Divine, and one of the more troubling and enigmatic teachings of Jesus to buy a sword.  Plus, Peter needs to eat his shadow in order to grow up.  Enjoy! 

This episode is about our cultural and "spiritual" obsession with safety, the human ego, translative and transformative religion, and whether or not the deeper path of soul and/or God is really all that safe.  Enjoy! 

Still losing the plot!  This week we work backwards from The Tower of Babel to Cain, a few of the darker stories in the entire Hebrew Bible. These ancient stories keep provoking, challenging, inspiring, alluring, much to my surprise.  What do you think?  Does the Bible still matter?