Archive

The seasons and the Cosmos

A conversation with Mirabai Starr

The trouble with goats

A conversation with Sufi master Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

“All the world’s a stage.”

Anonymous, “Nomad Girl” retold by Barbara H. Berger

A conversation with spiritual pioneer Ram Dass

The structure of traditional art

Training the body, training the mind

Despite acclaim, even adulation, garnered from his theater and film work, including such classic films as The Holy Mountain and El Topo, the author found himself in a state of doubt—of spiritual questioning. …

The legendary director meets Carlos Castaneda

Encountering Henrietta Lannes

Three notable biographies from the Gurdjieff Work

Indigo Animal is original, delightful, and profound. The artist, Rue Harrison, has given us wonderful characters in illustrated books in which she has raised the bar on a certain kind of content. […]

Imagination itself may be our best resource for experiential recovery of a vibrant, participatory, and wildly sacred Earth.

Anonymous / Aboriginal

Readers will find here an expertly assembled narrative—a chronological mosaic of the activities, inner and outer, of Gurdjieff and his followers, pieced together from the records kept by many. …

On Adin Steinsaltz and the power of hope

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…

Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, The Prado, Madrid I think we tend to create inward forms of our own — adopted, that is, from things we encounter outwardly — and then stalk each other with them. This process is writ large on the social and political landscape;…

Guidance for our time from three wise men

Every word I pick here | Is the wrong one, one | I’ve used too often, | Touched by thought | Until it’s worn and tired.

The essence of African religion

A hopeful report from the 2021 Parliament of the World’s Religions

A conversation with wildlife educator Steve Karlin

“At the very outset of the journey inwards, there is a crossroads. Signs point in both directions, and I am pulled both ways. I find that I am double. I want something and at the same time I don’t want it; I love and hate the same person. I am light and dark; I aspire…

When we least expect it, someone may walk up to us on the street and hand us a golden ticket.

A tale of snake handlers, faith healers, and speakers in tongues.

Among elephants, it’s a family affair

Sage advice from a welcome voice

Shamanic memories from an Indian visionary

To learn is to be vulnerable. It is to have the courage to say, “I don’t know” and the wisdom to know the difference between knowing and not knowing.

A recollection of the first moment of being at one.

A faithful companion

A child retells the legend of the Sumerian goddess Inanna and her descent to the Nether World.

There is a middle ground, a basic Reality embracing self and Self. It may be called my true nature. To discover what
prevents me from the experience of it, I have only to look at myself, just as I am. […]

Like a phoenix among sparrows, Chinese civilization is resplendent in its longevity, myth and tradition. For much of its long history, Chinese emperors incorporated myth, folklore, and ideological concepts to legitimate their dynasties, to sanction their rule.

A conversation with visionary philanthropist Nipun Mehta

Continuing Orthodox monasticism’s oldest unbroken tradition, Sinai monks still liturgize, shoeless, over the roots of the Burning Bush. On the holy ground where Moses was commanded to remove his sandals—together with all earthly logic—monks turn diversity’s polarizing forces to unity: some of the ways St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai (Egypt) brings Byzantium’s patristic spirit…

Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly.
leaving nothing out.
—Wendell Berry

The mystical heart of silence

The first issue of Stopinder: A Gurdjieff Journal for Our Time appeared in the year 2000. […]

As contemporary life becomes more and more fragmented and unsustainable, many individuals are left perplexed and searching for more complete and sustainable models to understand themselves and their place in the world around them. […]

Listening to the Yao

A review of John Teasdale’s “What Happens in Mindfulness” by Cynthia Bourgeault

Why God is a verb, not a noun

A visit with the famed nun and art historian

The Nobel winner with his muses

Travers in the role of Titania in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, c. 1924 (Wikipedia) It is not ignorance. Rather, one could say, a particular process of cognition that has little or no use for words. It is part of our heritage at birth, the infant’s first primer. And the…

Owen Barfield and the history of consciousness

A remarkable man of old Afghanistan

A child visits her ancestral land

When two ecologists and biologists, who have spent a year together exploring the wisdom hidden in ancient Egyptian temples, decide to share their discoveries about awakening higher consciousness […]

A celebrated composer hears celestial music

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…

Gitanjali Babbar wanted to walk to the Freedom Tower. This cold day in New York City marked the end of her first trip to the United States. …

Sound, scientific advice on attaining happiness

To meet her destiny, she needed a miracle

The secret prices of love

Exploring the “hidden face of God”

The calligraphy and paintings of the martial arts masters

Finding life between sand and sea

The ultimate practice?

“The greatest responsibility of all: the transmission of the mystery.” —Basarab Nicolescu

A conversation with civic visionary Jonathan F.P. Rose

Waken, Wala!
Wala! Awake!
From thy long sleep,
Slumberer, wake at my call! […]

Oxford skyline. Photo by David Iliff During the hectic middle decades of the twentieth century, from the end of the Great Depression through World War II and into the 1950s, a small circle of intellectuals gathered on a weekly basis in and around Oxford University to drink, smoke, quip, cavil, read…

The Golden Rule Tetraflexagon is a magic device created by Steffan Soule in order to teach the Golden Rule.

Impressions from the land of Rumi

Snow White. Heinrich Leutemann or Carl Offterdinger, late nineteenth century When I was three or four years old, I started to grow afraid that I was evil. That year I had the worst nightmare of my life thus far: intense, consuming, and hyper real in the way that only very young children’s nightmares…

The fiery path from light to light

Dr. Joseph K. Dixon, A Native American sends smoke signals in Montana, June 1909, National Geographic Creative. The sacred pipe of the Native Americans is a potent symbol of relationship. Through it the human breath sends to all the six directions the purifying smoke that connects the person to the divine and…

Photograph by Peter Cunningham The rain was coming down in sheets as I drove down a wooded road in rural Montague, Massachusetts, towards the opening ceremony of the Maezumi Institute, the new training center of the Zen Peacemakers Order. “The End” by the Doors was playing on the car stereo. “The…

A lyrical song of love, nature, the sacred

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares Margaret Delaney’s “The Anonymous Ones” and “Gastronomy in Ancient China” by Donald Haper in the latest episode of our free monthly podcast.

Vincent Van Gogh, Pietà (after Eugène Delacroix). 1889. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam As the following passage begins, Jesus of Nazareth, here called Yeshua, is suffering on the cross, attended by several including his mother, Mary, here known as Maryam, and Elizabeth, cousin to Maryam and mother of John the Baptist. It is Elizabeth who narrates. —The…

How the Golden Rule can be the Golden Path

A conversation with deep psychologist Michael Penn

Anonymous, “Krishna and Radha,” retold with commentary by Laura Simms

The gift of fear and awe from a beast cold as the earth

They say the legendary hitter Ted Williams could see the seams of the ball as it came out of the pitcher’s hand. …

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares essays from Parabola’s extensive archives on the theme of “Renewal” in this episode of Parabola magazine’s free podcast.

The simplest and hardest thing to do each day is to be here–fully, completely, without turning away.

A conversation with physicist Leo Piilonen

A professional magician ponders a universal law

The Gurdjieff Foundation of Illinois has generously assembled a free searchable index for Parabola magazine readers.

A report from the new Goddess Spirituality

Two strangers, vehicles of the miraculous

Despite a growing awareness of the Divine Feminine, women remain ineligible to head many major religious groups and institutions […]

The photo project “Icon and Mirror” by Pola Rader analyzes the Orthodox woman and her social role in feminist context.

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.

A universe of meaning in a small Parisian abode

All it takes is one blue rowboat tied to a buoy,
and its reflection, and this moment
for me to go remembering everything. …

This story is so old we don’t know who told it or who it’s about, except that it speaks to all of us. We no longer know if it was a “he” or “she” at the center of the story. […]

A Trappist monk’s sojourn at Thomas Merton’s hermitage

Odilon Redon, Buddha Walking Among the Flowers, 1905. “Most of us are like a fish caught in a hook. The Buddha is trying to reel us in; the hook holding us is our deep spiritual longing. We spend most of the time struggling, not wanting to be reeled in, not wanting…

A classic quest seen anew

The most powerful teachings and teachers are those that bring us back to ourselves, as we are now, helping us see our true nature: vulnerable and exposed, along with both our nascent strengths and formidable obstacles. […]

Chatting with America’s favorite saint