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morality

On how to stay celibate

As a life long celibate (by most definitions) I thought it might interest some of you to get a few tips Yes, this is largely a tongue in cheek post, as I’m sure most of you are NOT celibate. Celibacy has a respected history in both Buddhism and Roman Catholicism. Like most people today I [...]

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Ideals, moral issues and psychology

Ideals are tricky things: on the one hand they help us aspire to being something better than we are, which is a good thing. On the other hand, when we can’t live up to them the result is not so good. Because, if you don’t live up to your ideals you start feeling guilty, beating [...]

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The tragic volunteer

I’ve been a volunteer for years. It was a way for me to learn basic human skills like working with people as well as a way to stay in touch with some aspect of society when I was out of a job. It looked good on my resume and so on. So I’m not saying [...]

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KH, Koot Hoomi and Katinka Hesselink

Yes, that’s tongue in cheek headline. For those not ‘in the know’, Koot Hoomi was one of Blavatsky’s Masters. With his friend Morya he wrote a lot of letters that form some of the earliest theosophical literature. The Masters, or Mahatmas as they are often called, often abbreviated their names. This has become something of [...]

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Free will, culture and responsibility

There is a consistent stream in our culture that everything is determined by circumstance: genes, conditioning, wealth… But most aside from genes, all those are the product of people acting on each other. The free will debate can also be framed as a responsibility debate. Who is responsible? If there is no free will, does [...]

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Is spirituality a lifestyle or a quest?

I have been pondering recently the difference between spirituality as a life style and spirituality as a quest. Consider the following Blavatsky quote (the modernized English is mine) from The Voice of the Silence, The Seven Portals: Before you stand on the threshold of the path; before you cross the foremost Gate, you have to [...]

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Moral lessons from the economic crisis & some political critique

I don’t usually start my blogposts with video, but William K. Black seems to me right on the money about a number of issues: capitalism, regulation, the economy and how the world should move forward. The reason I’m posting it here is mostly because of the end of it. He talks there about what can [...]

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Good and Evil – useful categories?

The comments on my post about the question whether the universe is morally neutral have come full circle: they mostly center about another question: are people morally neutral? Is humanity morally neutral? This is a good question. For a long time the sciences said that humans are in fact usually selfish – even the most [...]

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The origin of evil – the great mystery

I asked you, my readers, yesterday why some people insist that the universe is morally neutral. The question means in normal words: why do people believe that evil is as inherent in the universe as good is? I let my own thoughts on the matter be for the moment, but this post may just be [...]

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On being our best self – letting in the Higher Self

As I learned about the Enneagram on Monday, I found that in that system there is one piece of terminology that is shared with theosophy: that of the Higher Self. The Higher Self is one of those hard to express things that get experienced, but are hard to put into words. When words are found [...]

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