I wonder if we do not all have this as part of our history: a feeling that we are inadequate? That we would have been better as someone else? That, […]
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Meister Eckhart and the Ways
Meister Eckhart (c.1260-1328) said that “Whoever is seeking God by ways is finding ways and losing God, who in ways is hidden. But whoever seeks for God without ways will […]
Read more“There Are Old Patterns of Thought” (Thursday 17 November 1988, Part III)
The questioner was Polly, who said that she wanted to struggle with negative emotion, remembering what was said about how once the negative emotion had been expressed it was too […]
Read moreWhat Is Mysticism?
Introduction Before I came across Gurdjieff, and I was very young at the time, only eighteen, I was attracted by the idea of a mystic union with God. I had […]
Read moreBennett on the Relationship between Sex and Spiritual Development (Part Three)
The second chapter of Bennett’s short book Sex: The Relationship between Sex and Spiritual Development, titled “The Sexual Act”. It begins out by denying that the “primary function” of the […]
Read moreBennett on the Relationship between Sex and Spiritual Development
A number of years ago I read Bennett’s short, 74 page book, Sex: the Relationship between Sex and Spiritual Development. I was impressed by it then. I made a number […]
Read moreThe Strange Death of Europe
Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity and Islam (Bloomsbury, 2017) is an intelligent, stimulating and important book. It really is about the “strange death” of a continent: […]
Read moreAltars and Alterations (Part II)
Further to recent discussions of the proper form of layout for Maronite churches, I chanced across the splendidly illustrated and recent book by Nicholas N. Patricios, The Sacred Architecture of […]
Read moreHatred
Meaning and Etymology First, what does the word mean? The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary says that the root, ”hate,” has the primary meaning of “to hold in very strong dislike,” […]
Read moreSentimentality: A Disease of the Feeling
Sentimentality is a disease. Orage said that it is “an escape of emotional gas but not through the centre for which it was intended” (Gurdjieff’s Emissary, 455). That is, the […]
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