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You are your Soul Mate, Rick Singer

[guest post] Within your own house dwells the treasure of joy, So why do you go begging from door to door. Chinese proverb As human beings we are consistently involved in an endless search for something external to fill the void within us. We search for the perfect partner or our Soul mate, with the [...]

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Selfish, unselfish, ‘love yourself’, love your neighbour

We’ve all heard it before: you can only love other people, if you love yourself. People saying that are generally speaking not the kind I personally take very seriously. However, as one reader told me in response to my last post (on my Dutch blog), I sounded just like them for a bit. I guess [...]

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Paradoxes of Giving

I’ve pondered for a while the psychological paradox that democrats give less to charity than republicans, that those who eat environmentally friendly food are similarly ungenerous, on average. I’ve not written about this issue before, because it’s so easy to be judgmental about it … Those goody two shoes people aren’t so good after all… [...]

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Alzheimers and spiritual growth

A reader asked (in Dutch): As a social worker in a nursing home I had a conversation last week with the wife of a gentleman living on our psych-ward. This lady appeared not to need the most common forms of support in dealing with the loss of her husband through dementia. She didn’t need information [...]

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Conflict resolution and controversy

I remember my grandfather (J.M.S. Baljon) as the keeper of his study, as a gardener who taught me the basics of that craft – and as an ambitious chess and bridge player. When I went to study religion studies at Leiden University, I knew I’d be meeting some of his old students and colleagues. He [...]

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What’s the goal of the spiritual path?

I got three books in the mail this week… Two from Quest publishing, the Theosophical Publishing House of the TS Adyar in the US, another from an author herself. All three are about what one might call ‘the spiritual path‘. Two are highly personal accounts of people on the Fourth Way of Gurdjieff, one was [...]

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Michael Mirdad interview

As promised, here’s some questions I had for Michael Mirdad, author of ‘You’re Not Going Crazy…You’re Just Waking Up! The Five Stages of Soul Transformation Process’, and his answers. 1. You say that nearly every process of learning is ultimately about understanding and experiencing greater levels of unconditional love (p. 14). What do you mean [...]

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The karma of disease and health

The relationship between karma and disease is a controversial one. There is the common sense view that since disease is unwelcome, it ‘must be’ bad karma. On the other hand there is a long tradition of theosophical thought saying that bad karma doesn’t exist. I was reading up on a related topic this summer and [...]

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If you see the Buddha, Kill Him – an old Zen koan

Perhaps that’s how I can best explain my ultimate rejection of Jiddu Krishnamurti’s teachings. I’ve studied his work, learned a lot from it, and have since moved on. I’m saying this because yesterday someone approached me on facebook because I had written negatively about Jiddu Krishnamurti. She sent me some video’s that I thought, honestly, [...]

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"Love is the opposite of fear" ?

What is love?” “The total absence of fear,” said the Master. “What is it we fear?” “Love,” said the Master. (Anthony de Mello) Do you all agree? Is Love is the opposite of fear? Dozens of blogs and articles online say this. Personally I don’t think it’s that simple though. I think various emotions can [...]

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