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The freedom of the experience of our lives

The ultimate freedom philosophers talk about, especially existential philosophers, is not so much the world, but our experience of the world. In the words of psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom: Nothing in the world has significance except by virtue of one’s own creation. There are no rules, no ethical systems, no values; there is no external [...]

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How hard is it to discuss free will?

I have loads of notes waiting to be turned into blogposts on the topic of free will, which is why I decided to write a series of posts about the topic. But first I want to note an observation about the comments to my first post in the series last week. First off: neither the [...]

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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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What annoys me in others is what I need to look at in myself?

It’s very common basic spiritual and psychological advice that ‘That which annoys me in others is a mirror of what I need to look at in myself’. (@verna_maruata) Well, I thought I’d look at that a bit more today. I think it’s probably true: what annoys us in other people is likely to be something [...]

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Sorrow, stress and spirituality

My mom said good bye to her day job last week. She’s a psychotherapist and had invited a Dutch professor, Dr. Ruart Ganzevoort, who talked about men, spirituality and trauma. (One of my moms specialties was working with men and lately, traumatized men). It was a very interesting lecture and brought home to me something [...]

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Desire & spiritual development, some thoughts

Desire has a bad name in certain spiritual circles – but in others it’s hailed as the fundamental source of all spiritual growth. In that debate I’ve always stood in the first group, but from reading I.K. Taimni’s ‘The Science of Yoga’ (a commentary on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali), I see that it’s really [...]

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Blavatsky a medium? about consciousness, channeling and more

Warning: this is going to be a rambling post. I’ve got too many thoughts singing through my head about this – and they aren’t organized into anything clearcut yet. Let me start by sharing a fascinating book I’ve started reading yesterday: Consciousness: an introduction, by Susan Blackmore. I read fast – so I’ve already started [...]

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States of consciousness: from divine to normal

[Warning: a lot of technical language in this piece.] My usual Friday piece about Blavatsky is based on The Key to Theosophy. ‘The Key’, as theosophists call this book, is the one book by Blavatsky with a traditional linear setup. In other words: the ordering of the subjects is like you would expect in an [...]

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The science of gossip – some moral consequences…

Gossip has a bad name, but we all do it. I mean really – when an authority figure messes up regularly, people will talk. I have done that, I expect I will do that in future. It may be annoying to that authority figure, but what they do and say has tremendous impact on other [...]

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