What happens after we die? The best clues may come from those who have been right on the precipice of death, who have entered a mysterious realm unlike anything here on earth, only to return to the living. What they have gone through, and the stories they have to tell, are known as near-death experiences or NDEs. Doctor Bruce Greyson has been called the world’s leading expert on near-death experiences and in After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal... Read more
Are you familiar with Christ Consciousness? In essence, it’s the same thing as higher consciousness, or a state of mystical experience in which the separation between the ego and the Divine is transcended. You sense that God is within you and all around you. And come to discover that everything is one. In The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe, Franciscan priest and Christian mystic Richard Rohr takes a deep dive... Read more
What’s longtime action movie star and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger doing in a spirituality column? Let me explain. For the past year or two, I’ve been receiving the daily Arnold’s Pump Club newsletter written by him and a couple of cohorts. You might think it’s all about weightlifting. It’s not. In fact, I find it’s often spiritual in nature. To me, spirituality is about connecting with something greater than our selves—which Arnold tries to help his readers do on... Read more
We often hear tales of the wise old man, dispensing knowledge to those who seek it. What we don’t hear often enough of is the wisdom of our female elders. By chance, I recently came across two books written by women in their mid- to late-70s. Each offers valuable lessons and guidance, especially for those of us in our third or fourth quarter of life. In The Privilege of Aging: Savoring the Fullness of Life, Kamla K. Kapur who is... Read more
I once read a story about a scientific researcher who was studying a group of Tibetan monks who meditated for hours each day. He began strapping electrodes to the heads of the monks to measure their brain waves—which the monks found uproariously funny. The researcher asked, “Why are you all laughing?” One monk sheepishly replied, “because the mind is not up here” (pointing to his head), “the mind is in here” (pointing to his heart). I was reminded of this... Read more
What happens when we die? Is it lights out, game over? Or is there more to it, something hinted at by those who have had a near-death experience (NDE) and appear to catch a glimpse of an afterlife? These are some of the questions Sebastian Junger addresses in his new book My Time of Dying: How I Came Face-to-Face with the Idea of an Afterlife. You may know Junger as the author of several books including The Perfect Storm and... Read more
Earlier this year, after forty years in advertising, I walked away from my career and its accompanying six-figure salary. Sure, I was approaching retirement age, but I knew I still had some gas in the tank. I could have successfully continued in my job as a pharma advertising copywriter for another five years or so. But something inside me had changed. If you’ve glimpsed my recent book Wake Up Call: Daily Insights for the Spiritually Curious, this might come as... Read more
Do you remember the book The Shack? It was the story of a man’s journey from personal tragedy to spiritual rebirth, with a key component being his conversations with God, who appeared to him as a black woman. It sold more than 10 million copies after its release in 2007 and was later made into a movie—but it was not without its detractors. While the book was based loosely on Biblical scripture and was a huge hit with the Christian market, it also... Read more
What if the four Gospels of the Bible aren’t the most reliable source for the spoken words of Jesus? What if there was another source that consisted merely of the things Jesus said, with no attempt to weave a story around the sayings? Almost like someone had jotted them down in a notebook as he spoke? Well, such a document exists, and it’s called the Gospel of Thomas. In the book The Quantum Sayings: Decoding the Lost Gospel of Thomas,... Read more
If I were to ask you “would you rather feel empty or full?” what would you say? I know my first instinct would be to respond full. That may be because we’re a society that seems to yearn for fullness. We like our bellies to be full, our calendars to be full of activities, our homes and garages full of stuff. In The Eloquence of Silence: Surprising Wisdom in Tales of Emptiness, Thomas Moore makes the case that there’s a... Read more
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