Arguably the most dangerous of the seven deadly sins, pride acts like the invisible center of the wheel of transgression in which the other six revolve. Inextricably entwined in cases of wrath, lust, greed, sloth, envy and gluttony, humanity’s boastful nature has forced commentators to say plenty ...

On February 20, a conservative Christian group, the National Center for Law & Policy (NCLP), filed a lawsuit against the Encinitas School Board for teaching yoga in public schools. The suit’s claim that yoga promotes Hinduism shines a spotlight on nearly two centuries of ignorance regarding yoga’s ...

One of the more ubiquitous statements that has emerged over the last decade, ‘Spiritual, Not Religious’ is a self-affirming antidote to the traditional trappings of religion, the archaic and inflexible (and at times invented) demands of doctrine sometimes associated with Christianity, Judaism and ...

Our attitude toward the pathologizing may be more destructive than the pathologizing itself.—James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology Trauma affects all of us. Types of trauma—physical, emotional, violent, intrusive, social, or the product of brain chemistry—vary among individuals. The ...

I’m pretty certain that the New York Mets won the ’86 World Series because I refused to put my feet on the ground. Perched on the edge of my bed, I’d keep my legs tucked in during pivotal moments—Mookie Wilson’s epic ground ball through Bill Buckner’s legs being one of them. If I would have let my ...

I’ve noticed a pattern when speaking to friends about creationism: I say the word, and in response receive a squinted eye and disgruntled head shake, followed by, ‘But no one takes that seriously.’ If only that were the case. I suppose it’s geographical, not to mention tribal. I’ve lived in Los ...

Eben Alexander, author of the bestseller Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife, is only the latest in a long line of historical figures who has argued for the possibility of a disembodied state—that the human ‘soul’ or some such ineffable agent has the ability to leave the ...

Long before Allen Ginsberg used the phrase ‘first thought, best thought’ to describe spontaneous, intuitive writing that seemed to spring unaware from ‘somewhere else,’ Buddhists had developed this maxim as a sort of cognitive umbilical cord to the unconscious. The underlying idea is that the first ...

Humans experience joy in a multitude of ways, yet the varied forms of suffering—death, divorce, separation—return to one root principle: loss. What drives the fear of loss is something far more frightening, a state of being which religions and spiritual practices have been attempting to combat ...

Krishnamurti was faced with an unsolvable dilemma not unfamiliar to spiritual teachers. He often implored his audience to not take anything he says as truth, but to find it for themselves, which begs the question: What, then, is the value of any spiritual leader?  Different disciplines require ...

In one of his many humorous asides on Real Time earlier this year, Bill Maher got into a discussion about Eastern spirituality and made the claim, ‘Yoga is just stretching.’ While talking about the many connotations often attached to yoga in our culture, his assessment, as much as it made me laugh ...

When your hollow bullet causes a prairie dog to explode on impact, that’s called a tap. The real prize, however, is a double tap. That’s when your single bullet kills both a mother and one of her babies. While watching Youtube videos of hunters gunning down these ground squirrels you’ll hear giddy ...

While the desire to tax churches is not new, it seems as far from reality as possible at this moment. As has been commented, no atheist could possibly hope to win an election in today’s political climate—a freethinking man like Robert Ingersoll would have no influence with the majority of our ...

In general, I avoid free literature thrown my way on subways and street corners. Recently passing by a stack of cheaply printed books while leaving Samosa House in Culver City, one caught my eye: Coming Back: The Science of Reincarnation. I pocketed a copy and walked through the door, interested to ...

Security is perhaps the most well-known illusion human beings have contrived. From the cursory seduction of emotional stability to the wrathful manifestation of raging armies, the painful longing for complete ease blankets our species. Somewhere along our evolutionary trail the quest for safety ...