Archive

In the old days, no one ever stole. Those who were well off always shared what they had. […]

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. […]

Close encounters with a student of Gurdjieff

A transformative discovery lights the way

A visitation in the night

Protecting the places where the magic folk roam

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

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. …

A free PDF of our ALONE & TOGETHER issue from summer 2012 to read in these challenging times.

In mid-August 2015, Viral Mehta, a co-founder of ServiceSpace.org, was diagnosed with an acute form of bone marrow suppression. In the passages below, his wife, Pavithra. “Pavi” Mehta, offers an update on Viral’s condition and speaks with him about his challenges and recovery.

Saint Anthony Abbot Tempted by a Heap of Gold, Tempera on panel painting by the Master of the Osservanza Triptych, ca. 1435, Metropolitan Museum of Art “As I commute to work every day, I leave behind a quiet country road for a highway that takes me to the city. Nature still…

Download a free PDF of a new rendering by Thomas Powers of “Consolation of Philosophy” (c. 524 A.D.), the classic and influential work by the Roman senator Boethius (c. 477-524 A.D.).

A conversation with African healer and guide Baba Mandaza Augustine Kademwa

Transforming repetition into renewal

Elie Wiesel died Saturday, July 2, 2016 at his home in Manhattan. The Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner was 87. In May of 1985, we interviewed Elie Wiesel for our “Exile” Issue.

“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…

How can we find joy in this suffering world?

A recollection of the first moment of being at one.

Remembering Harold Bloom and Jacob Needleman

A fisherman, a celestial maiden: a fateful decision

A guided meditation on being gentle with yourself when things are hard, with Parabola’s editorial director Tracy Cochran. To support Parabola’s mission, please consider donating. 

Whoever you are: in the evening step out | of your room, where you know everything …

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. …

Happiness is everywhere. Not that anyone is claiming to be really, truly happy but everyone is talking about wanting to be happy. Wanting to be happy is not news. […]

Rabbi Douglas Goldhamer, with Peggy Bagley, “Spiritual Laws: The Hidden Wisdom of Kabbalah”

I follow two rules. The first is that my presence is invisible and silent. The film belongs to the storytellers. The second is to do as much research as possible, trust the material, and never film re-creations.

Silas Hagerty was a young filmmaker in his twenties when I met him at a Servicespace retreat. […]

In a world on fire, finding the light that guides

The calligraphy and paintings of the martial arts masters

Ever since human beings discovered that we live in an expanding, evolutionary universe with billions of other galaxies, it has become increasingly fashionable to suggest that human existence is essentially meaningless …

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

This episode shares excerpts from Parabola‘s current issue, “Mercy and Forgiveness.”

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.

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…

“GURDJIEFF RECONSIDERED: The Life, the Teachings, The Legacy” by Roger Lipsey. Reviewed by Jeff Zaleski

“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…

Little Gidding has been described as a “thin place” where there is only a slim veil between time and eternity.

Announcing the publication of Senior Editor, Lee van Laer’s new book on symbolism in the artwork of Hieronymus Bosch. […]

The ultimate practice?

“Some men believe in the power and value of suffering,” writes Thomas Merton. “But their belief is an illusion. Suffering has no power, no value of its own.”

Love and compassion are qualities essential to our stature as true human beings, and jointly might be considered the capacities that most distinguish us from the animals, except that animals sometimes display more kindness towards one another—and towards people—than we do.

Previously unpublished commentary from Alan Watts, a pioneer of East-West spirituality.

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. […]

A conversation with Brother Satyananda of Self-Realization Fellowship

Learning to love winter’s night

“All the world’s a stage.”

A great teacher meets his ultimate challenge

Life lessons from William Segal

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

Betsy Cornwell shares Josh Boettiger’s essay on King David and Leonard Cohen, “The Poet and the Shepherd,” and Susan McCaslin’s meditation on spiritual journeys, “Guidance,” in this episode.

Reflections from a Death Row inmate; inspired thoughts from a Sikh guide

What the bees—and the Bushmen—know

Llewellyn-Vaughan-Lee photographed by Richard Whittaker One August day recently in Northern California, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee sat down with Parabola in to speak about free will and destiny.  The English-born Vaughan-Lee is a Sufi mystic and lineage holder in the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Sufi Order and the founder of The Golden Sufi Center. Sitting in…

Inside an Ayahuasca ceremony

Memorable encounters with an extraordinary being

A miraculous visit to Machu Picchu

The secret prices of love

There once lived, in Fanti-land, a man named Father Anansi. He possessed all the wisdom in the world. People came to him daily for advice and help.

The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali is the foundational and earliest text on yoga. Dating from about the fifth century BCE, it reflects an oral tradition in existence long before.

Expressing our essential self

Walking with an Inkling or two

If you dream of finding a great Teacher, a Master, the operative advice is, “get real.” Great teachers may appear once in a hundred years. …

“SYMBOL OF DIVINE LIGHT: The Lamp in Islamic Culture and Other Traditions” by Nicholas Stone. Reviewed by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos.

Photograph courtesy of Monastero di Bose “There must be monasticism in the twenty-first century!” So said a friend not long ago. Both his implicit protest and his conviction make sense. The landscape of the spirit in the West would be torn and lacking if the monastic way vanished in our time….

A miracle made of wood

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares excerpts from the current issue of Parabola, BALANCE.

How the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca created a fiesta of music.

“The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation” by Richard Rohr with Mike Morrell. Reviewed by Patty de Llosa

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me. Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

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. […]

On Adin Steinsaltz and the power of hope

More than three-quarters of the way through this extraordinary biography (though that label barely captures this book’s breadth and richness) of the scholar of religion Huston Smith …

Vincent Van Gogh, The Red Vineyard at Arles, 1888, oil, on canvas (Puskin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow)One morning last October, I experienced a moment of grace. It happened as I was walking my black Labrador retriever, Shadow, on one of those warm autumn days when everything looks edged in gold….

Remembering the sacred mother animal

Housework as spiritual practice, from a Sufi master

She,
In the dark,
Found light
Brighter than many ever see. […]

A journalist and a monk exchange revelatory letters

In the Summer of 1987, Parabola sat down for an exchange with Marion Woodman on the subject of addiction.

Remembering the beloved poet

A podcast from Parabola Editor, Tracy Cochran’s mindfulness meditation talk at the Rubin Museum of Art on January 6th, 2016.

When you accept the state of being a stranger, you are no longer a stranger. […]

Amma, 2009 The Hindu spiritual teacher known as Amma (“Mother”), or Mata Amritanandamayi, was born to a family of fishermen in southern India in 1953. Today she is popularly known as the “hugging saint” for her practice of embracing all who approach her as she gives darshan, or an “auspicious sight”…

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

Eight traditional ways to wholeheartedness and authenticity

Kuzunoha is a popular figure in Japanese folklore

A fresh look at “the mad monk”

One August day recently in northern California, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee sat down with Parabola to speak about free will and destiny.

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…

The acclaimed actor, now Zen teacher, remembers

The miracle is that the practice of presence not only enlivens ourselves, but allows us to share that new life with others and also to receive the presence of the Divine. It is the foundation for truth, and it is the genesis of hope. With practice, presence can, in the words of John G. Bennett,…

Story Editor Betsy Cornwell shares excerpts from the current issue of PARABOLA: The Wild.

Of might and right, and the future of the world’s art

An interview with Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai

A conversation with Mirabai Starr

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. […]

Over 2,500 years ago, Peter Kingsley tells us, Parmenides and Empedocles laid the basic foundations for the world and culture we now live in.

A remarkable man of old Afghanistan

Fertility, birth and death, ferocity, protection, sexuality: all of these are surely aspects of the goddess, and not mutually exclusive of each other.

A meditation teacher loses her voice—and finds her way