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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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Learn to Die!, by Alejandro Jodorowsky

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. …

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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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The Iron Maiden

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;…

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Parabola Podcast Episode 41: Androgyny

“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…

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Tara as Prajñāpāramitā, 13th century, Java, Indonesia.
A Holy man in meditation (from Wikipedia)

The Middle Ground, by William Segal

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. […]

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Emperor Wu Zhao and Her Pantheon of Devis, Divinities, and Dynastic Mothers

The Ladder of Heavenly Unity, by Sister Joanna

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…

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Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 – 1858), Man Crossing a Bridge in the Snow
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Bob Dylan in concert, Rotterdam de Kuip, June 23, 1978. Photograph by Chris Hakkens

On Unknowing, by Pamela Travers

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…

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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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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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Edward Robert Hughes, The Valkyrie's Vigil, 1906

The Fellowship, by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski

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…

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Sister God, by Betsy Cornwell

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…

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The Pipe of Reconciliation, by Joseph Epes Brown

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…

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Into The West, by Tracy Cochran

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…

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Vincent Van Gogh, Pietà (after Eugène Delacroix). 1889. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Ave Maria, by Jenny Koralek

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…

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Desire (Vol. 35. 3)
Gabriele Münter (February 19, 1877 – May 19, 1962), Breakfast of the Birds.
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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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Odilon-Redon-Buddha-Walking-Among-the-Flowers-1905.

The Buddha Calling the Buddha, by Kinrei Bassis

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…

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