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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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David Ulrich

Portfolio: David Ulrich

Can my inner work towards stillness and consciousness be reflected in images? Perhaps the moments of presence I, at times, experience can be extended outward to you, the viewer.

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Xharije kissing the author at her sweet sixteen party, 1979

I Pleaded. I Waited. I Married, by Hane Selmani

Xharije’s wedding, 1970 “Who you marry and when you die was written on your forehead the day you were born,” my mother told me when I was young. I was relieved. It was lucky that God, the Infinite, the All Powerful had things under control. They were much  too important to…

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Paul Gaugin, "Paradise Lost," c. 1890. Oil on Canvas. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut

Verbum Ineffabilis, by Anita Doyle

Cezanne, Fruit and Jug on Table, Detail (1890-94). “Before she could speak, my daughter taught me the language of silent things: fruits, flowers, an oaken chair. I came to understand, through my relationship to this small being, why the word adult forms the root of adulteration and adultery. Watching her, it became…

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Zen Moments, by Pamela Travers

Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), Tea house at Koishikawa. The morning after a snowfall We sit on our heels on the tatami, the Japanese woman and myself, telling the stories of our lives. One can do this with a stranger. Too near, and the perspective is lost. Only the far can be near….

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Volume 37 No. 3, Fall 2012: The Unknown

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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Spiritual Intelligence, by Gerald Epstein

Intelligence is a quality available to choose, as a function of mind that can live itself through us. In this article, I will focus on spiritual intelligence as understood within the Western Monotheistic traditions. Here we will explore five forms of intelligence:  1) moral, 2) analogical, 3) intuitive, 4) imaginal, 5) esoteric. Before proceeding, a…

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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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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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Parabola Podcast Episode 46: The Creative Response

The Unknown — our beautiful An­glo-Saxon word, intimate, reverberant, profound, not so much to be understood but stood under while it rains upon us — that is something I could well live with and, indeed, have revered, cherished, and tried to serve for many a year and day.P.L. Travers, “The Interviewer,” from Vol. 13 No….

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My Ancestor, by David Guy

In my mid-thirties I found myself in Dante’s dark wood, where my way was entirely lost.  My marriage was falling apart.  My primary mentor, Reynolds Price, seemed to be dying of a weird spinal cancer that was slowly paralyzing him.  My visits to him brought up visits I’d paid to my father in the hospital…

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

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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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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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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James Whitlow Delano

Portfolio: James Whitlow Delano

James Whitlow Delano has lived in Asia for 17 years. His work has been awarded internationally: the Alfred Eisenstadt Award (from Columbia University and Life Magazine), Leica’s Oskar Barnack, Picture of the Year International, Photo District News and others. His Scorched Earth: China’s Wounded Environment was awarded 1st place in the…
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Snap-the-Whip,-1872.-Winslow-Homer.-Metropolitan-Museum-of-Art

Soft, by Tracy Cochran

Odilon Redon, Flower Clouds, 1903 The root meaning of heal is whole. Illness and mishap and even great tragedy can lead us eventually from the pain of isolation to a greater wholeness. There is such a powerful tendency in our spiritual aspiration to climb up out of the mess of our…

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The Challenge of Artificial Intelligence, by Jeff Zaleski

Mike Licht, Cydippe with Acontius’s Apple iPhone, after Paulus Bor The toy company Mattel has announced the release in Fall 2015 of “Hello Barbie,” the first Barbie doll to feature artificial intelligence. Through the toy’s wireless transmission of a child’s voice (“Hello, Barbie!”) to offsite computers, which will wire back a…

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Barney Taxel

Portfolio: Barney Taxel, Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland

From the Photographer: I began to seriously consider a project about Lake View Cemetery shortly after I finished my book about Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens (Akron, Ohio), in 1999. Within walking distance of where I live in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and rich in manmade and natural beauty, the cemetery was…
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There Must Be More

There must be more to me than this. Have you ever thought this? It’s a little moment of awakening rather than an ordinary thought—a clearing in the clouds, a a distant memory, a knowing that there is more. More to life. More to me. This realization can feel like hitting bottom.

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Hands, by Robinson Jeffers

Inside a cave in a narrow canyon near Tassajara
The vault of rock is painted with hands,
A multitude of hands in the twilight, a cloud of men’s
palms, no more,
No other picture. […]

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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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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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Again and Again Anansi Tried To Climb the Tree

To Struggle, by Lee van Laer

The word [struggle] is of unknown origin; and although it is presumed to have come from Scandinavian and Germanic roots (there are no clear parallels or roots in Latin) the connections are uncertain […]

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