Not Separate!

    "There is something in all of us that seeks the spiritual … 

     The spiritual is inclusive. It is the deepest sense of belonging & participation. We all participate in the spiritual at all times, whether we know it or not. There’s no place to go to be separated from the spiritual, so perhaps one might say that the spiritual is that realm of human experience which religion attempts to connect us to through dogma & practice. 

    Sometimes it succeeds and sometimes it fails. Religion is a bridge to the spiritual — but the spiritual lies beyond religion. Unfortunately, in seeking the spiritual we may become attached to the bridge rather than crossing over it."      Rachel Naomi Ramen MD

 

    More and more brave, intelligent adults are freeing themself from religious & secular orthodoxies, evolving & awakening into their authentic, mature, spiritually-independent Self. 

     “We write here in conversation with Rilke and each other, opening to a ‘wiser way’ than is more generally offered in our hectic, demanding societies, where individuality is so highly praised and our inevitable interconnectedness is so poorly understood. It might well enable you to ground your life in what the ancients knew as the ‘transcendentals’: ‘the true, the good, and the beautiful.’ Those are the collective attributes we find singly and learn to live socially. 
     Rilke suggests in one of his early poems that ‘you are the future.’ You! 
     Is it the ‘you’ of the divine one Rilke often addressed simply as ‘Lord’ but equally call ‘neighbor’ or ‘friend’? Is it the ‘you’ of the poet himself? Or the ‘you’ of the reader? Rilke refused, characteristically, to define whom he is addressing. For in the deepest things in life, the truest things of the heart, the most enduring things of the soul, these three are not different. Not distinct. Not separable. 
    You are the future.”
     Mark S. Burrows, Stephanie Dowrick. “You are the Future. Living the Questions with Rainer Maria Rilke.” Monkfish, 2024.

    It's fascinating to frequently hear a wide variety of spiritual experiences in which the experiencers are completely surprised by their experience, that it was nothing at all what they expected. Indeed one may be at a complete loss to identify the source of a powerful, authoritative voice, that neither quite sounded as if it were God, nor themself. 
    And many decades later, the awe remains ... and probably there is no difference, no distinction, no separation between Self and God.

    We CAN pull up our big adult spiritual pants and
stop externalizing the Divine!

 

"Every Day, Think As You Wake Up, 
Today I Am Fortunate To Have Woken Up, 
I Am Alive, I Have A Precious Human Life, 
I Am Not Going To Waste It 
I Am Going To Use 
All My Energies To Develop Myself, 
To Expand My Heart Out To Others, 
To Achieve Enlightenment For 
The Benefit Of All Beings, 
I Am Going To Have Kind Thoughts Toward Others... 
I Am Going To Benefit Others
As Much As I Can."

H.H. The Dalai Lama

 

Courtesy of Buddha Doodles  www.buddhadoodles.com

"Houston, we've had a problem"

    I once read that our pace of life is too fast for the marrow of our bones. This, to some of us, is deep, aboriginal wisdom. 
    However, in our materialist society, including & perhaps worst of all in our institutes of higher learning, most are clueless about wisdom, spirituality etc. 
    At the same time, "The one who dies with the most toys wins," though initially meant as a joke, has become most peoples' unconscious guiding principle.

    “Hindu definition of hell: more, faster.” Iain McGilchrist “Approach the Sacred: Offer Gratitude, Dwell in Humility, Speak Truth and Let the Mercy In.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irMtnSpjcyA

    Literary scholar, psychiatrist & author Iain McGilchrist and theologian & author Chris Green discuss the problems humanity faces today, foretold in Hermes Trismegistus' ancient poem:

“Nothing will be left to tell of your wisdom 
but old graven stones. 
Men will be weary of life 
and will cease seeing the universe 
as worthy of reverent wonder. 
Spirituality, the greatest of all blessings, 
will be threatened with extinction 
and believed a burden to be scorned. 
The world will no longer be loved 
as an incomparable work of Atun, 
a glorious monument to his primal goodness, 
an instrument of the divine will 
to evoke veneration and praise in the beholder. 
Egypt will be widowed. 
Every sacred voice will be silenced. 
Darkness will be preferred to light. 
No eyes will raise to heaven. 
The pure will be thought insane, 
and the impure will be honored as wise. 
The madmen will be believed brave, 
and the wicked esteemed as good. 
Knowledge of the immortal soul 
will be laughed at and denied. 
No reverent words worthy of heaven 
will be heard or believed.”         Hermes Trismegistus

Iain McGilchrist: 

      "I believe that we are engaged in committing suicide: intellectual suicide, moral suicide and physical suicide. If there is anything as important as stopping us poisoning our seas and destroying our forests, it is stopping us poisoning our minds and destroying our souls. 
    Our dominant value – sometimes I fear our only value – has, very clearly, become that of power. This aligns us with a brain system, that of the left hemisphere, the raison d’être of which is to control and manipulate the world. 
    But not to understand it: that, for evolutionary reasons that I explain, has come to be more the raison d’être of our – more intelligent, in every sense – right hemisphere.
    Unfortunately the left hemisphere, knowing less, thinks it knows more. It is a good servant, but a ruinous – a peremptory – master. And the predictable outcome of assuming the role of master is the devastation of all that is important to us – or should be important, if we really know what we are about. 
    Even if we could, by some miracle, reverse the course on which we are set, unless we change our way of thinking, of being in the world – the way that is destroying us as we speak – it would all be in vain. This is why I have written the last long book I will ever write: 'The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World.'"            Iain McGilchrist https://channelmcgilchrist.com/home/

 

Chris Green: 

“I think we have to face two facts for sure. One is, in the tens of thousands of years that human beings have been on this planet, we’ve accumulated wisdom for living a certain way. And over the last two or three generations in our ‘developed world’ we’ve broken with that wisdom. For good or bad, we’ve discarded much of that wisdom. And we don’t have any wisdom to replace it. So even if you think this is progress, even if you think this is where we should go, you have to at least admit that we’re going forth into a future that we think is going to be better, but we don’t have accumulated wisdom to work with. And no matter what else you think, you have to reckon with that. What are you going to do with parenting, marriage, work, prayer, politics, if you can’t rely on accumulated wisdom? Where is that going to come from? You’ve got to reckon with that. 
    The other is, and they’re related of course, is we’ve also broken with the rhythms of Nature. So again, what we’ve accumulated over these generations of human beings is a way of living in harmony with Nature. We no longer do. So we’re out of rhythm with Nature – quite literally – and we’re breaking with received tradition. So what are we going to do then? 
    Even if in your wildest fantasies about human progress, you want to say, ‘We’re going to make a better, more human future,’ how are you going to do it, if you’re out of rhythm with Nature and you’ve broken with received tradition? I think all of us can get to those questions, no matter what our politics.”

Iain McGilchrist: 

“And I’d add, ‘Broken with God,’ and I’m sure you’d agree with me. And just incidentally, the three things that the psychology literature shows are most important for people are 
    1) the sense of fellow feeling with other human beings with whom they share values. Now those values probably come from a tradition, from a culture. And they can trust them because they know how they think and they can share their meals, their houses. They can call on one another for help, and they respect one another. That is number 1. 
    2) Closeness to Nature – not ‘the environment’ which is some technical term for something that surrounds us. But Nature is inside us and we are in Nature, and we come from it, and we go back to it. 
    3) And this is actually the most powerful effect on physical as well as mental and spiritual health, is the connection with something sacred or Divine in your life. If you don’t have that, the evidence shows that we suffer in every respect.

So those things are, if you like, the wisdom. They were part of the tradition that knew this. Now people nowadays, misunderstand a culture and misunderstand a tradition.

To deal with culture first. We think it’s okay that we just destroy a culture. The industrial revolution started this, because it took people who had been living in a certain village perhaps with their ancestors for a thousand years, and they knew that place, and their ancestors were buried in the churchyard and all the rest. And they took them into a city, and put them in inhuman circumstances in a factory, and that helped them to lose their culture, unless they clung to the church. So it did have the effect that a lot of these people sort of thought that the church is the thing that can save us. 
    But their culture is also very important. And we now think that it’s perfectly okay to have something called ‘multiculture.’ Well there isn’t. What there is is kindness and compassion between people in a community, but if you choose to live in a certain community, you must become part of that community. You can’t just say, ‘Well, we’re going to be an indigestible lump.’ If you want to be an indigestible lump, then I’m sorry. My answer is don’t do that here. You have to do that somewhere where you can be digestible. All these things I’m saying are things you’re not allowed to say anymore. But I do think they’re right. And I’m not being critical of other groups in our society. I think they contribute a lot and some of them have great virtues of course. It’s not about good and bad. It’s about a culture needs to thrive, and it can only do so if it is cohesive. So that’s the first thing." ****
    **** Chris Green (later) tried to clarify: “… this is what I hear in you, if we care about equality, then we have to think rightly about difference. If we care about the stranger, and we care about making room for those who have come to us in desperation, we have to think about stability in culture. I will sometimes say to my friends, my students, those I’m pastoring, that in order to actually show hospitality, you have to have a home. You have to have a place that’s yours, that has a certain rhythm, that has walls and doors, doors that lock. You have your way of living that you can then open up to those who are (newcomers). But hospitality is not possible if you have no doors, no windows, no walls, no locks. If you don’t have a life that’s yours, there’s nothing to invite people into. 
    So I think if we could think oppositionally a little bit, if we would just start to think like that, we would realize precisely because we think all human being are made in the image of God and should be given equal rights and goods, precisely because we care about that full equality, we have to be able to rightly name and honor difference, and so on down the line. If we can just shift the terms of the conversation. And if we can’t shift the terms of the conversation, we’re going to keep having rage battles in which we’re denouncing each other in meaner and meaner ways. But somehow we’ve got to shift the mode of our conversation. I think oppositional thinking is a way to do that.” 

 

Iain McGilchrist continued: "People think, ‘Oh, we can’t be dealing with culture – that’s the past.’ But hang on. We are the descendants of literally millions and millions of years of history. We can’t just suddenly in three generations throw all that away. The history is there in us in any case, even if we don’t think about the valuable cultures that we have grown and brought into being over the last couple of thousand years. 
    But the other one is tradition. Tradition is a living, flowing, changing thing. It is not a moribund, ossified, never-to-be-changed anything. So a tradition is what enables you to change. Without a tradition, you make big mistakes. You say, ‘Oh, we’re going to break with everything in the past and we’re going to say it was all wrong, and we’re going to destroy it.’ And then you’re going to be faced with, ‘Where are you going to find it all?’ You think you’re going to re-invent thousands of years of wisdom, your puny little self in Manchester in 2025? No, you’re not. It’s a recipe for suicide to not learn from the distillation of the wisdom of the past. 
    Now that doesn’t mean that nothing can change. It means the opposite. It means that things now have a steady ground on which they can change. (((**** Echoes what Chris Green was pointing to re: the host needing to feel grounded, 'at home' before being able to host to newcomers, who always feel stressed / 'displaced' even when simply moving across the street.))) And if you look back over the last couple of thousand years of Western history, as I have done and have written about, what you see is that societies change very much in their ways of thinking, their priorities, and so forth. But they didn’t have this let’s rip up tradition attitude, at least not mainly. 
    Until some of the reformers had it I’m afraid, and that was a problem I think for a while. And then, one of the children of the enlightenment has been (the notion) that the past has no relevance, because the only thing that matters is logic. But I’m afraid logic will leave you barren when it comes to all the important things like love, the awesome nature of the natural world, the beauty of art, of music, of architecture, of myth, of narrative … These are the ways in which the great truths can be conveyed. 
    Myth has come to mean an untruth. But actually in its origin, it meant the big truths in the classical Greek era ‘mythos’ was the only way in which the big truths could be conveyed, because they can’t be construed in everyday language – the kind of language that’s suited to making a dishwasher manual. Partly because of course things are necessarily dipolar. Myth brings together opposites; confounds our everyday language. And therefore a story will bring this to life for you.

But ‘logos,’ from which we get logic, was thought the petty kind of understanding, that a lawyer would use in court – ‘No he owes you 30 shekels, and you owe him …’ whatever. Logos is fine for that. But for understanding the big truths, we need something else. 
    It just reminds me that Neils Bohr, who after all is considered the father of quantum physics said, ‘The opposite of a great truth is another great truth.’ This is obviously not true at the trivial level. I often say, ‘I either did have milk in my coffee this morning or I didn’t.’ I’m not suggesting that there are two ways about it.

But when it comes to the really big issues that matter, that give meaning to life, purpose to it, direction to it, these are areas in which the thing and its opposite have to be negotiated. And the best way that this can be done is in poetry, narrative, myth and in ritual.”

Chris Green: 

“And all of those are, in part, ways of creating the room where things can emerge."

    Dr. Iain McGilchrist and Dr. Chris E W Green “Approach the Sacred: Offer Gratitude, Dwell in Humility, Speak Truth and Let the Mercy In.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irMtnSpjcyA 

 

    “… people who have a deep conviction and belief in a transcendent reality are better able to disconnect from the idea that the body and its ails are ‘all there is.’ 
    By connecting to a higher power – however one experiences this or chooses to define it – we bring forth our inner sense of innate wholeness. We are able to see ourselves as spiritually perfect, even when suffering ill health. This promotes our ability to reconnect with our implicate patterns of health.” 
    M.J. Abadie. “Healing, Mind, Body, Spirit.” Adams Media Corp, 1997.

    

The EXCELLENT FULL interview from which the above was quoted:

 

Hope, Courage, Patience, Perseverance

    "I believe that there’s an intelligence, a spiritual power that I don’t understand. I call it God because I don’t know what else to call this great spiritual power. It gives me strength. 
    I’ve also had amazing times alone in nature when for a moment you forget you’re human. Your humanness goes away, and you’re part of that natural world. It’s the most amazing and wonderful and beautiful feeling .....
    Traditional faith will have you believe in a loving God, and when I look at what’s happening on the planet, I think if there is a God like that, is he playing with us? Are we living in some great experiment? How can you believe in a loving God when you see the horrors that are perpetrated against nature, against animals, against each other? I sometimes think it is like an experiment which has culminated in this strange, confused creature that is human beings, and we seem to be lost. Who are we? What are we? Why are we here? I don’t know what the meaning of life is. 
    The meaning of my life is to give people hope because without hope you give up."  
    Jane Goodall PhD 1934-2025 

    There's a lot to unpack in Jane Goodall's heart-felt words. So what does she mean by "amazing times alone in nature when for a moment you forget you’re human"? 
    I understand that momentarily forgetting you're human refers to going beyond or deeper than your surface identity of name, address, history, likes / dislikes, virtues / neuroses etc, and opening up to / remembering our primal intimate Oneness & Source.      

    Goodall clearly contrasts what many of us see as human civilization blindly rushing towards self-destruction, with her sense that there is still hope, because human beings are also capable of experiencing, nurturing & sharing awe, wonder, & beauty. 

    Iain McGilchrist has been clearly explaining how human society's current tendency is "left-hemisphere-dominant" - seeing the world in a very pragmatic, abstract, detached, transactional manner: seeing only lumber when looking at a great forest, seeing only mining opportunities when looking at a majestic mountain, seeing only harvesting of fish, oil & natural gas when looking at the great oceans - focused only what they can quickly grab for short-term gain for themselves. Some, much like the tobacco industry a few decades ago, flatly deny that this way of seeing is "perpetrating horrors against nature, against animals, against each other." Many CEOs, populist politicians / dictators, billionaires, etc CAN BE clever, AND YET display no evidence at all of wisdom. 

    From a neuroscience perspective, McGilchrist would say that we are able to see things in balanced way when the left-hemisphere's exclusive emphasis on grabbing, controlling & surviving is not running the whole show. One way to facilitate this balanced, healthy, holistic perspective is being alone (and at peace) in nature. Then we more easily appreciate the right-hemisphere's way of seeing the world: appreciating our intimate inter-connectedness with everyone & everything, love, beauty, truth, the arts, mystery, spirituality, meaning, metaphor, humor, paradox, etc - AS WELL AS - the practical, limited role of the left-hemisphere. To have a clearer understanding of these two, ideally complementary ways of seeing and being in the world, I highly recommend one of McGilchrist's excellent interviews, eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuqz0MO9mX0

    To paraphrase Einstein, our (left-hemisphere dominant) way of seeing / level consciousness that got us into this dire mess CANNOT possibly lift us out of it, into a better future. Our exclusive left-hemisphere ways: estranged, adversarial relationship with our own hearts, each other & Nature is what's so painfully unnatural & unsustainable. 
    Chronic fear, anxiety & anger has for too long, been drowning out our patience, wisdom & kindness. We desperately need to cultivate a FAR wiser balance.

    So can we gain some freedom from chronic fear & anxiety - when "being well-adjusted to a toxic situation is no measure of health"? 
    Well, we know that our executive function is easily shut down when we're stressed - ie stress tends to impair good judgment. 
    We also know that many are able to operate under high-stress life-or-death situations with amazing calm & competence: fire-fighters, police officers, paramedics, surgeons, psychiatrists, air traffic controllers, pilots, military personnel, martial artists, etc. 

    Common knowledge would incorrectly tell us that our level of stress is directly proportional to the degree to which we lack total control of our present situation. 
    Actually, our level of stress is mostly based on catastrophizing ie anxiously, vividly imagining the worst possible future outcome, which very rarely if ever materializes and / or being stuck re-living the past.
    The secret of the "grace under pressure" exemplified by fire-fighters etc is staying in the reality of the present moment and responding appropriately. Clearly, knowledge, training & practice in knowing what to do in challenging present situations is a basic necessity ALONG WITH knowing how to remain present, focused & grounded ie Mindful.

    Mindfulness training IS PRACTICING staying in the reality of the present moment and responding appropriately. It's best started under stress-free conditions eg being peacefully alone in nature, or in your own home away from distractions. Start by sitting, standing or lying down and remaining still, for a set period of time eg just 5 minutes at first, with eyes closed, and just quietly observe what goes on, mainly inside of you. 

    "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."  Blaise Pascal, French philosopher

     With patience, a bit of courage, and a lot of perseverance, a sustained regular practice will result in you being able to remain surprisingly calm, grounded & wisely responsive (rather than impulsively reactive in a way that everyone will later regret) to even the most serious challenges. You will also learn humility & empathy for yourself & others, because you will remain perfectly imperfect. Interestingly & a bit annoyingly, after decades of practice, you too might find major challenges surprisingly easy to accept, while small, meaningless events might still provoke you briefly. 

    So this is a life-long practice, with continual growth in wisdom, and less & less sabotaging interference by neuroses & traumas. Your quality of life, and the quality of life of those around you, will definitely progressively improve well beyond your current understanding.

“We are not isolated individuals. 

We are cells in the body of humanity, and what we do to one another we do to ourselves. 

The new story is one of interdependence, shared purpose, and sacred relationship with all Life.” 
Nancy B. Roof PhD 1929-2025

 

Another World is Possible www.kosmosjournal.org

Suffering - a MUCH Bigger Perspective

    “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” Joe Klaas

    "Man is not destroyed by suffering, he is destroyed by suffering without meaning." Victor E. Frankl

    “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” Viktor E. Frankl, "Man’s Search for Meaning" 

 

     “Dear ones, you who are trying to learn the miracle of love through the use of reason, I am terribly afraid you will never see the point.” Hafiz

    "The small man builds cages for everyone he knows. While the sage keeps dropping keys all night long for the beautiful, rowdy prisoners." Hafiz

    Most feel the need for strict boundaries to feel safe from life's uncontrollable changes. Prisoners are known to re-offend just to get back into the tightly structured life of a prison. It takes deep self-reflection to become aware of the invisible, yet tightly constraining prison walls - cages - others have built around us, as well as ones we've built for ourselves & carefully maintain, as if these could protect us. The only thing they "protect us" from is growing up - especially spiritually!
     
    Below are excerpts from Tami Simon's recent interview with author & philosopher Christopher Bache, who shares his personal journey through psychedelic exploration and academic research, revealing how these experiences have shaped his understanding of the soul’s evolution. Together, they discuss how embracing the possibility of reincarnation can transform our relationship to suffering, purpose, and each other.

    Tami Simon asked why anyone would choose a life that had so much suffering in it?
    Christopher Bache: "I don’t want to make light of any suffering. I get very angry when I hear people pronounce how suffering works, or make large metaphysical pronouncements on it. 
    I think we have to be very respectful of suffering, and yet at the same time, hold out the hope that this suffering has significance, that this suffering is meaningful in a larger landscape. 
    I take great encouragement as I studied the past life therapeutic literature, and I watched therapists basically following a present pain in a person’s life and letting it unfold into a deeper story that has been moving through several lifetimes up to this lifetime time. 
    People have been able to take their pain to its source in which it’s anchored in experiences that they don’t remember having, but because they come from another lifetime, and in that remembering, it provides a freedom and a release from suffering in their current lifetime. So when you see that happening over and over again, it supports the conclusion that this suffering is - I don’t want to say intentional,*** *** but it’s accepted as a circumstance of learning." 
    *** (Watch Natalie Sudman's talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8lQs1MccoU)
    *** (During meditation retreats, I've had a couple of experiences of such intense pain that I assumed it couldn't possibly be just my own 'stuff' I was processing, but that I was surely helping to process all of humanity's 'stuff.' It's essential to state that I was well aware that simply getting up from sitting meditation would instantly have ended the pain ie working through this was entirely voluntary, transcended the personal AND as soon as I recognized the fact that I was no longer alone & it was no longer just about my small, separate self, but about everything - Self, the suffering immediately ended, leaving only joy & ease. 

    “The true significance of (any of) Buddha’s radical instruction ‘Just sit’ cannot be realized except in the context of the vow to save all living beings.” Reb Anderson. “Warm Smiles from Cold Mountains. Dharma Talks on Zen meditation.” Rodmell Press, 1999.

    Neither *** or *** above make sense, and may even be met with anger, while lost in separate-self concern ie left-hemisphere dominant perspective.
    However, the shift that occurs from personal suffering to the realization that this must be universal human suffering & willingness to somehow help humanity relieve this IS ALSO the shift from exclusively left-hemisphere to a balanced right-hemisphere dominant way of seeing & being.)

 

     "And then we would ask, why would we ever want to learn? What do we have to learn from those horribly, depleted or compromised lives? And I think we have to make a transition of thinking like a human being and start thinking like a soul or thinking about our lives from God’s perspective, because things that may look meaningless from the human perspective, from the individual life perspective, can be saturated with meaning at a larger metaphysical level, a larger spiritual level. 
    And sometimes I think, for example, some people have voluntarily taken on pain memories, which are not part of their personal karmic lineage sometimes. In my psychedelic practice, I found that a lot of the work I was doing, a lot of the purging of negative karma was not personal. It was collective. And I think many of us are actually living lives, which are serving the release of trauma from the collective psyche, which goes beyond simply healing the personal psyche.
    So I think we have to learn to think in a much more expanded framework to even address suffering.
 

    Ian Stevenson PhD, at the Division of Perceptual Studies, University of Virginia, is considered the Charles Darwin of Reincarnation research. He's had 11 books published documenting 3,000 detailed studies of children from around the world who have spontaneous memories of previous lives. And he was able to document, verify or falsify their memories. That just turned my mind around. And then later, as I began to move into my own self-exploration, both in the LSD work and also with hypnotherapy, I encountered a number of my own former lives and worked with them. So at first it was an intellectual encounter with Ian Stevenson’s work, then later, a personal experiential encounter.
    Despite the very compelling research, it's hard to accept reincarnation first of all because the effects of reincarnation are subtle. The ending of a life at death is definitive. The beginning of life at birth is kind of clear, but the carryover, the continuities of reincarnation are subtle. 
    But I think the most important reason that it’s hard for many of us to see it is because basically science is the religion of our era. And science in its early stages has been wedded to the concept that 'matter is the only thing that’s real.' There is nothing in the universe that we can’t explain by reducing it to its material substrate. And this belief basically suggests that our mind is generated by our brain. And when our brain disappears, our mind disappears too, like a light bulb that goes out. And so with this belief that everything is material, that there is no independent spiritual universe, and that our mind reduces to brain, then we basically undercut any possibility of allowing the existence of reincarnation because reincarnation assumes a parallel dimension of spiritual reality. 
    And that makes it hard for (dogmatic materialists) to even look at the evidence seriously, because they have such countervailing belief systems."

    Tami Simon: "Once seen, reincarnation changes everything. Even now as we’re going deeper into the interviews in this series, I’m noticing the impacts that it’s having on how I view my life ... a level of relaxation that’s starting to come in that previously was unknown. And I’m curious how this taking on of a reincarnation view instead of, as you call it, a one timer’s perspective, how it’s changed things for you?"

    Christopher Bache: "Yeah, well, there are lots of spinoffs on that question. It does change everything. And as you live within a Reincarnational worldview, and kind of think through it, live through it and apply it to your life circumstances, it deepens. And so what stands out in the early years is different from what stands out in the later years. 
    It all hinges upon an understanding that we have a vast quantity of time in which to live, develop & grow within the universe. We aren’t simply a 100-year project adjacent to the universe’s multi-billion year project. But we are actually ancient beings who have been reincarnating for millennia, hundreds of thousands of years. 
    And as such, we are part of the universe’s extensive development. As a philosopher, that means a great deal to me because when I look at the magnificent photographs coming out of the Hubble or other space telescopes, and see this magnificent universe massive & vast in its depth and beauty, if I only live one time through, I basically a part-time player in this, a sideshow in this universe. 
    But once we understand that the intelligence within & behind nature has found a way not only to evolve whole species as we think in evolution, but to evolve individuals within certain species, as in human beings. Then I think we have a new starting point. It’s a new starting point. 
    It changes your understanding of your identity because it’s beautiful and it’s important, uh, as our individual body mind awareness is. Our ego is, it’s just one facet of the diamond that the soul is. There are other facets we can encounter, we can meet, and which we will become, uh, part of this larger diamond as we die or even as we wake up. 
    On this planet, it changes your relationships to your children, so you stop seeing them as somehow an extension of your genetic & your wife’s genetic heritage. You begin to see that your genetic matrix is a nest, which catches an incoming soul. And so the child that you’re holding may be thousands of years older than you are in a soul perspective. 
    And so I don’t see children as children anymore, and I don’t see old people as old people anymore. I tend to think in terms of souls and there are some children who are very old souls and some adults who are very young souls in, in their foolishness. So it’s a fresh starting point. Always paired with reincarnation is the concept of karma - cause & effect, and that there is a cause and effect that derives from the choices that we make.
    Extended in our extended lives that those choices carry over and set up the conditions within which I’m living in this lifetime. And then when you explore the data more carefully, you learn that there is a great deal of evidence that suggests that we choose the life that we are born into. And that makes an enormous difference because when we look at our life, and it may be a life of pain & suffering, it may be of unexpected hardship, it may be a life of ease. (Do read at least "The Bus Stop Conversation" - by Sue Morter, in: http://www.johnlovas.com/2023/01/the-nearly-unforgivables.html)
    To understand that we chose this life at a time when we knew more than we know now. We chose this life that tends to deepen our commitment to working with the conditions of this life, trusting in a deeper intelligence that brought us into these circumstances. So to me it, it’s, it’s an absolutely fresh starting point in philosophy. 
    Your whole philosophical insights diverge between one road, which says we only incarnate once, and another road, which says, no, we incarnate many times. They go in very different directions."
     "Christopher Bache: Deep Time and the Birth of the Diamond Soul — Sept 23, 2025"
     Audio (at 34-38min): https://resources.soundstrue.com/podcast/christopher-bache/?utm_source=%5BKL%5D%200-180%20Day%20Engaged&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=N250928-Bache%20%2801K60R1QNHVRW70WEMVXPM2EMZ%29&tw_source=Klaviyo&tw_profile_id=JsSQsZ&tw_medium=campaign&_kx=oubFt43NAjNBb0_NppHaGCF951bovtuCAx1o4i41Tys.JMDgaq
    Transcript: https://resources.soundstrue.com/transcript/christopher-bache-deep-time-and-the-birth-of-the-diamond-soul/

    Curiosity & open mind / heartedness seem to be key even in, and perhaps especially during, the most severely challenging times.

    “... man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes – within the limits of endowment and environment – he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.”
    Viktor E. Frankl. “Man’s Search for Meaning. An Introduction to Logotherapy.” ed 3, Simon & Schuster, 1984.

    “What is a poet? A poet is an unhappy being 
     whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but 
     whose lips are so strangely formed that when 
     the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound 
     like beautiful music.” Kierkegaard, Either/Or

     Each one of us is a poet.
    Every one of us carries a heavy load.
    And each of us is called to make beautiful music.

    "When a system is far from equilibrium, 
     small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos 
     have the capacity to lift the system 
     to a higher order." Ilya Prigogine - physical chemist and Nobel laureate 

    “The real question is: Are you willing, whether your experience is tranquil, turbulent, ecstatic, tragic, opulent, or austere, to give yourself wholeheartedly to what is truly alive in you?”
    Amoda Maa. “Embodied Enlightenment. Living Your Awakening in Every Moment.” Reveal Press, 2017. HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED WISE, VALUABLE BOOK

    “What is Buddha’s (OUR) work in the middle of the cold? Have a dialogue with the cold, a dialogue with emptiness. Stare at the cold, stare at the not-you. If you look at it long enough, it will look back at you. The cold mountains will smile.” Reb Anderson. “Warm Smiles from Cold Mountains. Dharma Talks on Zen meditation.” Rodmell Press, 1999.

 

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