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"You're always unhappy!" What a great line ... uttered by a great Teacher. It reminds me of Teresa of Avila, I think it was, who said, "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered prayers". And was it she too who said, "Be careful what you ask for in prayer. Yo...

Bhakti, nice to read you here again! Two thoughts raised by your excellent observations. 1) Consider the possibility that if your “outer” (what you call “my life” and “my world”) is in Truth a manifestation of the “inner”, then the need for assistance and compassion and so on which you or any of us ...

Two points - Prompted by this discussion, the other day I revisited "Crossing The Threshold of Hope", and I was surprised by (I guess I had forgotten) the chapter on Buddhism. As I read it again, I come away with the feeling that either JPII did not understand Buddhism or I don't understan...

... and, thirdly, his -- and the church's -- policy on homosexuality. There, my view as a seeker is that homosexuality as such is essentially a non-issue. Speaking from the Christian perspective, as far as I know there is no mention of homosexuality or heterosexuality or any other kind of sexuality ...

I found the passage to which I refer; it appears on page 6 of the hard copy version of Crossing The Threshold of Hope . There, John Paul says, Have no fear when people call me the "Vicar of Christ", when they say to me "Holy Father", or "Your Holiness", or use titles si...

This week’s “thought” (at Here’s A Thought ) articulates in a few lines what, in my opinion and experience, is the simplest spiritual practice and most powerful path: Remember God. The quotation is from the Gita , in this case the translation by Swami Nikhilananada of the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Cen...

A friend of TZF recently sent us this link to an article suggesting that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. I am familiar with most of the material in the article, but its presentation there is impressive. The thrust of the article is that one would expect that anyone who performed as many miracles, i...

Art, you wrote, "there is a love betwen us that comes not from any agreement in philosophy, but from the very nature of the One, and I will look forward to sharing with you and Nancy as dear friends in the future". Here, too, I agree absolutely! Nothing that has transpired in this thread o...

I receive a daily email from Wordsmith that often includes an interesting quotation. Today's is the following item from Thomas Szasz . I have to confess that it speaks directly to me. Too often, I rebel against having to learn something because of a perceived injury to my self-esteem; and only later...

In the “Christ In You” thread (on the second page, about two-thirds of the way down), I wrote, Virtually all Teachers in virtually all traditions insist that a seeker must have a Teacher . Ruminating that idea today, this image arose: In the final act of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, there is a ...

Earlier in the "Christ In You" discussion, w4tvq suggested that the difference between his perspective and mine (and perhaps others’ here) is the difference between Fundamentalism and New Age, which in turn led to the interesting (and fun) consideration in this thread of those two terms. N...

In the “Christ In You” thread, reference was made to the labels “New Age” and “Fundamentalist”. As regular visitors to TZF are probably aware, I’m not fond of labels, and in fact, when I do use them, I try to remember to footnote them in some way so that others will know what I mean by them. (I supp...

To use the lawyerly term, Art, I think we’ve arrived at irreconcilable differences. There’s no question we are both looking at the same thing with the same intense devotion, earnestness, and aspiration; but our sense of it is so very different. If anything, this discussion proves the infinitude of G...

Art, I know you will forgive my going way out on a limb, and suggesting that on the inner, you and I are identical. Indeed, I suppose all of us are identical on the inner. It's on the outer -- the brain-controlled sense perceptions -- where we differ, and, dare I say it, where we have all the fun! I...

Here's a line from the movie Pi: When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out, and you will find it everywhere. The movie is about finding numerical patterns in everything from the stock market to the creation stories of the Torah. It’s an interesting idea, and ...