In this second installment of our examination of the Descent, I help define this reality by examining its opposite: the Ascent. This is not about picking one or the other since both are vital to life. However, we are taught from a young age that ascending is the path to a better life; work harder, more output, more effort, more knowledge, more stuff, and so it goes. After years of ascending, modern people are asking if there is anything more. They wonder where to find something meaningful, lasting and beautiful. This realization is our first entrance into the counterintuitive downward path.

When it comes to the deeper aspects of life and ultimate reality, people are not shallow or stupid. We are simply oblivious to what is behind, and in and through all things. In this post and podcast, I begin a new series that will help us understand why we need to be intentional about going deeper into our lives. Most of our lives are spent clinging and ascending in order to possess the things we think we want. This series will prove that in order to obtain what we really want, the path is always a descent.

The bible evokes strong reactions in people. Some roll their eyes and are amazed that any modern person could believe any of it, while others will defend every word in a literal interpretation.  In this podcast and post, I show how both of these reactions to sacred texts are errors that truncate our spiritual growth and progress as a people. The path to the new world is not to throw out old ideas about God, but to widen our understanding of them by learning them in new ways. This allows us to avoid the error on either side.

The typical light switch is binary, it’s on or off. The Dimmer Switch has many versions of on.  When it comes to Truth or Ultimate Reality, most of us approach life with a binary switch. We see others in dualities. Ultimate Truth resolves the tension between seemingly opposites. The path to discovering this is incremental widening of our truth system (dimmer switch) through humility, not by holding tenaciously to outdated binary assumptions through certainty.

Our world is full of advice and countless Truth Claims. How can we know the right one? Our New Year resolutions are a portal through which we can see the real navigation tools we use to make life decisions. In this podcast, I share two metaphors for two powerful spiritual realities along with a simple way to gain awareness of them so we can stop chasing the Good life and begin living it.

Christmas is the time of telling the story of Jesus being born in a manger. It is perhaps the most famous story about incarnation. But what is incarnation? Is incarnation a particular story like that of the birth of Jesus? Or is incarnation a much wider story that is being told in every person’s life?  In this post, I make a case that Incarnation is not a contest between the particular and the universal, but the marriage of the two. And if we grasp this, then perhaps the incarnation/Jesus story is already being told in every atom of the universe.

We take our breathing for granted.  Exhaling is not simply an aspect of breathing. It is the very first step of dying. The fragility of our lives hangs on whether inspiration takes place within seconds. In this podcast I look closer at our breathing and invite you to try an exercise that has the power to transform your entire life.

The holidays are a time where multiple trajectories all intersect. Is it any wonder the energy of the season is so powerful? Have you ever considered why? In this podcast I explore the rhythm of gathering and scattering and use it to tap into the true source of power that unites all of us. Hopefully it will free us to connect more deeply and to find unity within the midst of such diversity.

We live in a world with extreme perspectives. Those who polarize toward one side of the discussion usually have low tolerance for those in the middle. People who can “see both sides” are seen as “lukewarm” or as noncommittal.  In this podcast I build a case that those who shift toward the middle are not lukewarm, but centered. This migration is a hallmark for the true progress of the world. It isn’t apathy, but a wider consciousness that refuses to see the world in dualities.