Six Years Ago Today: Where the spirit lives

Bilingual dream work

By Ralph Earle

[Originally published on August 28, 2014.]






How we struggle to frame our dreams
in language not entirely familiar, dreams
of finding the way by car to the gathering,
or rolling secretly off a train
headed to the wrong town.

Thor's Day: Where the spirit lives

Bilingual dream work

By Ralph Earle








How we struggle to frame our dreams
in language not entirely familiar, dreams
of finding the way by car to the gathering,
or rolling secretly off a train
headed to the wrong town.

Thor's Day: Something to it?

The King of Spades?

By Ed Rogers

There has been much ado about religion on "Thor’s Day." While here and there I have added my two cents, I have tried to stay out of the sure thinking that goes on by those for and those against.
    Is there a God? The non-believers say NO. The true believers say YES. I say I don’t know.
    I do not believe there is a God as depicted by the Bible, but that does not exclude the possibility that there could be something out there or over there that could be called God.
    The sixties were a time not only of upheaval, but also of searching. Young people were looking for their own truth. Having been lied to most of their life, they turned to drugs, religious cults, Ouija Boards, mediation, Indian folklore, and psychic powers...At least, these are the ones I tried.

Spirituality, a preface to

A couple of weeks ago, I concluded my post, "All in or All out," with the statement:

I do have at least one remaining question. It has to do with the distinction between religion and spirituality. As a noble doubter, I felt that I could "be spiritual" even though I found it ridiculous to try to "be religious." The question is: Now that I've opted for being all out when it comes to religion, is spirituality still an option for me, and what does that mean?

The initial, easy answer to the first part is yes. Any conscious being can "be spiritual"—for the simple reason that a conscious being is spiritual, and essentially so, I think.

The Greek word psyche ("breath," "life," "soul," "spirit") reveals the philosophic roots of consciousness as spirit. Introspection, as a branch of psychology dealing with one's own consciousness, can be understood as the study of spirituality, primarily of one's own personal spirituality.

In future posts I will attempt to elucidate this in order to understand better what I mean by it. I will also, of course, report on how satisfactory such a "study" of my own consciousness is in fulfilling my personal need to express my spirituality. I even want to discover how such a pursuit can answer my need to be connected to the world, to other creatures, to the Cosmos, for one need traditionally filled by religion is just that need to be connected. (The word religion, after all, has as its root meaning "to bind" or "be bound." Think of the words ligation, ligature...Perhaps my main gripe with religion has been its usual focus, as practiced in America, on being bound up with dogma and closed-minded, dogmatic people.)