Conversations on Compassion

Having compassion for yourself and others as you go about your daily routine can have be a positive life-changing experience. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Our October issue features four myths about compassion, such as it’s a feeling that comes around once in a while, as well as a forgiveness exercise. They come from Thupten Jinpa, a former monk and principal English translator to His Holiness the Dalai Lama for nearly 30 years. In this dialogue, Jinpa talks about his life’s work and what role compassion may have played. VIEW HERE

New Thought’s Biggest (R)Evolutionary

The teachings of Religious Science were not written in stone. That’s the evocative premise of a new blog on HarvBishop.com. Bishop bases this premise on an interview with Obadiah Harris, who was ordained by Dr. Ernest Holmes and served for three years as a minister at the First Church of Religious Science in Phoenix, Arizona. Harris was mentored by Holmes and the two were very close. The blog gives new insights to Holmes’s well-known phrase, “We are open at the top.”

READ THE BLOG.

Halloween as a Religious Holiday?
You Better Believe It, Soldier
—By Mitch Horowitz

For most of us, Halloween is a kids’ celebration. Or perhaps it’s a chance for adults to play dress-up and to trot out the interminable sexy-maid or Elvis costumes.

But for a growing population of Americans, the holiday is returning to its Celtic and pre-Christian roots. That isn’t happening just within the New Age bastions of San Francisco and Los Angeles. If you want to watch the night of goblins and ghosties morph into a serious and historically grounded religious observance, look no further than the U.S. military.

Before Christianity became ascendant in the West, Halloween—more traditionally called by its Celtic name, Samhain (pronounced swain)—marked a seasonal change and a time to honor the spirits of departed relatives. Thanks to the growing numbers of modern U.S. soldiers who practice Wicca, Neopaganism, and other nature-based traditions, Halloween is recognized as a religious festival in the military, and is probably in line to become the nation’s next major faith-based holiday. READ MORE

Healing Miracles
—Dr. Ernest Holmes

The Great Wayshower [Jesus] laid down every rule and method of procedure necessary for the right use of the law. There were thousands of prophets before him. In many cases they had taught intricate systems and complicated methods. People had become confused over these varying systems, with a law for this and a law for that and a law for something else; over the posture they were to assume in prayer, the different ways of fasting and feasting, the control of the breath, the discipline of the mind, the need to repudiate the entire objective world as though it were an illusion.

These systems were so complicated that the ordinary person could not understand, much less follow them. It was the great spiritual genius of Jesus to reduce all of them to their common denominator and find the simple, affirmative factor running through all which gave reality and power to any. This is why is so carefully explained that it is not the method but the state of consciousness which the method leads to. The substance and essence of all these systems he proclaimed to be faith, conviction, trust  – “It is done unto you as you believe.”

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