An incredibly exciting find in Turkey rewrites everything we thought we knew about the earliest human civilizations.
via Turkey: Archeological Dig Reshaping Human History – Newsweek.com.
In particular, this paragraph brought a wondering smile:
Schmidt's thesis is simple and bold: it was the urge to worship that brought mankind together in the very first urban conglomerations. The need [...]

Written fifteen years ago, Mr. Robbins’ remarks in Esquire Magazine are worth revisiting today.

You Gotta Have Soul
by Tom Robbins

Mental Bungee-jumping may not be your sport of choice, but there’s a cerebral ledge that sooner or later each of us has to leap off. One day, ready or not, we glance in a mirror, cuddle [...]

In this next section on the essay adapted from “The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West,” by Professor Mark Lilla of Columbia University, we examine the impulses that separated man from God, and secular politics from religion.
Section II: The Great Separation.
For those who study the evolution of human consciousness, this could as [...]

“God in his infinite freedom continuously creates a world that reflects that freedom at all levels of the evolutionary process to greater and greater complexity,” he wrote. “He is not continually intervening, but rather allows, participates, loves.”
This is one of the very best summations of my thoughts and intuitions on the subject. The universe simultaneously [...]

A review of Shahram Shiva’s Lovedrunk. In a phrase: Rumi served light and sensous over well-crafted Middle-Eastern grooves. Well worth adding to the soundtrack of your life.
Disclaimer: I’m not a professional reviewer. No one pays me to write this stuff. Metaphors For Life is an affiliate of CDBaby.com but not of the artist or label [...]

Or, how modern colleges and universities are finding ways to integrate interfaith dialogues into a post-modern curriculum.
Last November, the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA played host to “faculty, staff and administrators from 10 colleges and universities across the country” who gathered to discuss and develop their ideas about the integration of spirituality and [...]

A dear friend of mine in British Columbia sent me this link today. He knows of my interest in [tag]quantum physics[/tag] and [tag]string theory[/tag] (a layperson’s interest, obviously — though I’m always delighted by how these two speculative sciences end up sounding so much like [tag]spirituality[/tag] and [tag]mysticism[/tag]) and indeed, I found a lot to [...]

From The International Herald Tribune:
KATMANDU, [tag]Nepal[/tag]: Paintings of [tag]Buddha[/tag] dating back at least to the 12th century have been discovered in a cave in Nepal’s remote north-central region by a team of international researchers after being tipped by a local sheep herder.
A mural with 55 panels depicting the story of Buddha’s [tag]life[/tag] was uncovered in [...]

Apparently, [tag]Dan Brown[/tag] and his [tag]Da Vinci Code[/tag] are no longer the last word in the encrypted secrets alleged to be in [tag]Rosslyn Chapel[/tag].
Rosslyn Chapel holds a musical mystery in its [tag]architecture[/tag] and design. At one end of the chapel, on the ceiling are 4 cross-sections of arches containing elaborate symbolic designs on each [...]

Of what use is it, I wonder, to speak of [tag]mindfulness[/tag] to a generation that grew up multitasking? Can the quiet, subtle peace of complete surrender to the one task at hand possibly compete in allure with the bright, glittering, ubiquitous sideshows that divide attention, again and again, into minutiae?
I don’t know. These are the [...]