Part of living a flourishing, courageous life is learning to embrace our limits and limitations. A lesson I seem to re-learn often...and again this week!

The Four Stages of Spiritual Development from M. Scott Peck is a paradigm for understanding how we grow, change, and mature spiritually. But there are obstacles standing in the way of our maturity. In this episode, we explore the core temptations that beset us at each stage of our development, with notes on how we overcome them.

Deconstruction is the process of taking apart a belief system in order to investigate its validity and truth, often in response to a crisis or a period of disorientation when our faith or beliefs no longer seem to work. In this episode, we explore M. Scott Peck's simple but profound schema for understanding spiritual development which, in turn, can help us understand and aid our own deconstructive processes. Ultimately, understanding his schema can help us become vibrant, courageous, and joyful human beings.

Critical race theory, until recently a fairly obscure academic enterprise, has become a mainstream topic of debate, conversation, and attack. In this episode, we explore what CRT is, why it has become a battleground in our polarized society, and how we can transcend reactive polarization with thoughtful engagement.

We all have a longing to feel good and pure, but the reality of our humanity is inner conflict and continual contradiction. We have dark and light impulses; we have tendencies to both generosity and selfishness. In this episode, we explore how we are changed from the inside-out: not through attaining through will power some level of manufactured purity, but in learning to hold all of our contradictions with acceptance and humility. And we explore practices to help us live into this flourishing life.

Even if it gets suppressed or ignored, we all have a longing to be good and to do good. This collective longing can express itself in the shape of purity culture—sociological movements in which people strive to be pure, with sexuality and sexual purity often at the forefront. In this episode, we explore the evangelical purity movement of the 1990s and also purity movements more generally. Specifically, we explore how lasting change happens, and how we can escape the false gold of purity culture by pursuing real transformation.

Do we see desire as good or as something warranting our suspicion and judgment? In this episode, we explore the role of desire in Western history and, specifically, the different conceptions of desire within Greek and Hebrew thought. Far from being a mere academic exercise, understanding how desire has been framed in history can help us understand our own relationships to desire. This is paramount, because only when you are willing to address your core desires can you truly live into a flourishing life.

In this second episode on Internal Family Systems, we explore how to integrate our exiled parts. Ultimately, integration happens through conversation—through naming, labelling, and talking about the exiled parts of us, and by learning how our unwanted behavior is the very thing pointing us to the legitimate needs and desires which must be addressed if we are to live a flourishing life.

A consistent practice of gratitude will change the structure of your brain and transform the way you see the world. In this episode, we explore the gratitude ladder—a simple rubric for giving thanks no matter the challenges or circumstances you may be facing.

No bad parts. That's the mantra of Internal Family Systems thinking, which explores the notion that each of us is made up of various parts (including exiles, managers, and firefighters), each with a different function, within our personality. This episode explores Internal Family Systems with the goal of helping you become self-aware and a fully integrated human being. And it's about how each of us changes our behavior through a life of awareness, non-judgment, and compassion.