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Two angels singing. Benjamin West, nineteenth century? Pen, ink, watercolor. Denver Art Museum. Wikimedia Commons



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The Gurdjieff Foundation of Illinois has generously assembled a free searchable index for Parabola magazine readers. The index will allow rapid and in-depth access to any topic/author/title covered by over 40 years of Parabola‘s publications.


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Parabola Podcast, Episode 9: “Spiritual Practice”

“Often I have come across stern pronouncements directed at people like me: One cannot dabble, say the priests and scholars. Spirituality is not a tasting menu. “New Agers” who borrow a bit of this religion and a bit of that, while discarding the parts they don’t like, will never have anything but a shallow and…

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Forest-IIweb

Finding the Path, by Tracy Cochran

Among the tasks or “yogi jobs” a participant can volunteer for during silent retreats at the Insight Meditation Society, a Buddhist meditation center in rural Massachusetts, the most resonant in every sense is that of bell ringer.

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Photograph: Girls exploring rock pools, Cameron Bay by State Library of Victoria Collections, 1909

Playing With God, by Tracy Cochran

Photograph: Girls exploring rock pools, Cameron Bay by State Library of Victoria Collections, 1909 “Religion isn’t for me,” announced my eight-year-old daughter, Alexandra, as we ate dinner together one January night. “I think of it like an old spider on the wall. I know that it’s there but I try to…

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Bosch Decoded: The Esoteric Bosch, Vol. II

Truth and Perception, by Mickey Lemle

All movies are an illusion. We think we are seeing motion but in fact we are seeing twenty-four still pictures every second. Half the time the screen is actually black. Yet movies seem so real, and some have the potential to reveal great truth. […]

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Gifts for Gifted Children

Each summer I teach creative writing classes at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. It’s a wonderful job for many reasons: my colleagues are uniformly, eccentrically brilliant, I’ve taught at campuses all over the country, from Los Angeles to the U.S. Virgin Islands, and since the program is a sleepaway camp, the mood is…

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Already Broken, by Joyce Kornblatt

Although it felt like flight, I knew the fall was wrong: body upended, working to right itself even as it spiralled head-first, it seemed, down. I’d gone over the tiniest cliff, from darkened footpath to an unseen recessed lawn. On my back, I looked up at faces—my husband Christopher, my step-daughter Miriam, a nurse who’d…

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Jacob Needleman

Healing the Wounds of War

In contrast to our modern situation, traditional and indigenous peoples had extensive spiritually and communally based warrior medicine, practices and lineages. […]

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The Third Striving

The nature of wisdom is necessarily esoteric, because it subsists on a level which both transcends and is internal to, anything we can directly observe. …

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JOHN MALLOY
Amanda Means

Portfolio: Amanda Means

Memory of Loss I grew up in a rural environment, close to nature, observing the changes of seasons and weather, the changes of light on the fields, and in the woods. I remember walking through my father’s apple orchards in spring — the trees full of blossoms, the hum of bees,…
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A Formal Feeling Comes

Bonfire, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons “After great pain, a formal feeling comes,” writes Emily Dickinson.  “The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs.” After a great shock or loss or change, a stillness comes. We sit still and receive life without leaning forward to grasp at it or commenting on it—think of the…

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The Inner Forms the Outer

Photograph by Lee van Laer Human  beings are peculiar creatures. We can think; and it sets us apart from other creatures, who can think some (consider the honeybee) but not much. Thinking, over the last 10,000 or so years (a rough estimate,) mankind has occupied himself, in the disciplines of science…

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Alice Coltrane’s “Om Shanti”

In the early 1980s, jazz pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane devoted herself to the Hindu tradition, adopting the name Swamini Turiyasangitananda and established the 48-acre Sai Anantam Ashram outside Los Angeles.

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We Begin Where We Are, by Jan Jarvis

In his book All and Everything, G.I. Gurdjieff presented what he called the “Obligolnian Strivings,” directives intended to instill in the consciousness of those who practice them—said to be engaged in the “Work”—the “divine function of genuine Conscience.”

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Lascaux Cave Paintings, ca. 15,000 BC

The Unfinished Painting, by Mark Nepo

Lascaux Cave Paintings, ca. 15,000 BC Dreams and art are the smoke signals connecting the one tribe over time. Stories and myths do the same. Often we are so greatly taxed by circumstance that we lose the larger view of time and how we are always related, not only to those…

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Tara as Prajñāpāramitā, 13th century, Java, Indonesia.

Parabola Needs Your Help!

We urgently need your help to carry on. Parabola is a nonprofit, independent, reader-supported publication. In order to publish each issue, we depend directly upon the generosity of readers like you. Without your support, there would be no Parabola. Parabola brings timeless wisdom to troubled times. As a longtime reader of the magazine has written,…

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Volume 40 No. 2, Fall 2015: Intelligence
Bob Dylan in concert, Rotterdam de Kuip, June 23, 1978. Photograph by Chris Hakkens
Reflection Nebula from NASA

The Night I Died, by Tracy Cochran

New York City At Night, ca. 1935 from Wikimedia Head down, hugging a grocery bag, I hurried past gutted buildings and empty lots, back to my ex-boyfriend’s apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. It seemed like a good idea at some point, having dinner together as friends. But the little Spanish market on…

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Steve McCurry, A man during the Indian festival of Holi, Rajasthan, India
Satish Kumar

The Meaning of Tradition: A Conversation with Huston Smith

Parabola’s first issue, Winter 1976, included the magazine’s first interview. Conducted by then-editor John Loudon, it questioned religion scholar Huston Smith, author of the bestseller The Religions of Man, whom Loudon described as “a man who has traveled widely, but deeply, learning the many languages for what is primordially true.”

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Dance Around The Golden Calf by Emil Nolde
McKay Savage, Close-up of the Buddha head in the banyan tree at Wat Mahathat, Wikimedia
Chantal Heinegg, Christ Pantocrator, Egg tempera and 22k gold leaf on birch panel. Icon of Christ the Savor, based on a 12th century Byzantine prototype.

Determination, by Tracy Cochran

When most of us think of determination, we think first of imposing our will on the world, insisting on a particular outcome, our vision. Yet real determination appears when we keep going, surrendering what the ego wants, which is always to look good, to sound good, to win. Real perseverance is willingness, not will. […]

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The Asklepion at Kos.
Sleeping Beauty. Henry Meynell Rheam, pencil and watercolor, 1899

Waking Up Aurora, by Rhiannon Thomas

Sleeping. Louis Sussman-Hellborn (1828–1908) I’ve had quite a tumultuous relationship with fairy tales. The Little Mermaid was always my favorite as a child. Not just the Disney version, where everyone lives happily-ever-after, but the original, where the mermaid feels like she’s walking on a thousand knives and almost stabs the prince to…

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Becoming Part of It, by Joseph Epes Brown

Roland W. Reed, Alone With the Past, The Life and Photographic Art of Roland W. Reed, Afton, MN: Afton Press. In terms of interconnections, a dominant theme in all Native American cultures is that of relationship, or a series of relationships that are always reaching further and further out; relationships within…

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Parabola Podcast, Episode 7: “Ways of Healing”

Story editor Betsy Cornwell explores our current issue, “Ways of Healing,” in PARABOLA Magazine’s podcast. Learn more about this issue or become a subscriber at parabola.org. This episode also includes Kenneth Lawrence’s retelling of the Japanese tale “Kiyotsune.” Please consider supporting this podcast and Parabola Magazine by purchasing a back issue or becoming a subscriber. This…

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Volume 37 No. 3, Fall 2012: The Unknown
Photograph © Bruno Zanzottera