Archive

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares excerpts from the Spring 2021 issue of Parabola, Wellness, including an exploration of the world’s healing water goddesses and a practical guide to awakening awareness. Your thoughts about yourself, experiences, and perceptions continually arise and change, come and go, but awareness remains. Don’t try to grasp or understand awareness; notice…

Story Editor Betsy Cornwell shares excerpts from PARABOLA’s forty-three year archive on the theme of remembering.

Four steps to take on the road of life

What makes the Wizard of Oz an iconic American tale that has entered into the language? Some expressions are so well known they need no further explanation, as for example “You’re not in Kansas anymore”.

On true seeing

How deeply we fear being nobody. One way to think of the ego is as a defense against pain, particularly the pain of being no one.

Lynda A. Archer

“We shall not cease from exploration,” wrote the Catholic poet T.S. Eliot. “And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

The long encounter of Thomas Merton and his Abbott, James Fox.

Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. […]

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;…

The remarkable story of A.A. co-founder Bill Wilson

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

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. …

Mindfulness and the roots of war

Από τη στιγμή που ιδρύθηκε, πενήντα χρόνια πριν, η κοινότητα του Bose ήταν προορισμένη να λειτουργήσει ως οδοδείκτης […]

On silent retreat, a woman finds connection from PARABOLA, Vol. 37:2, Summer 2012: Alone and Together.

In the darkness, the Buddha found light

The filmmaker writes about forgiveness and acceptance

Lee van Laer, Red-Tailed Hawk, Piermont, NY Like the rest of the Parabola readership, I’ve been watching the developments on the borders of Europe — the influx of desperate refugees, the corpses of children — in a mixture of astonishment and horror. We live in what we believe to be an…

Paul Reps (1895–1990) was an American artist, poet, and author best known for his pioneering book that helped introduce Zen to the West, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Parabola is honored to have the opportunity to […]

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. …

Remembering the beloved poet

Verity climbed down from the scaffold and stood with me, looking up at his work. I murmured something about how otherworldly the statue looked. “I look for something other when I carve them,” he said. “They’re not connected to this world. They’re in another place, in their heavenly robes.” I was wearing the clothes of…

A mother and daughter trace their roots to the Vikings—and to those they conquered

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

A guide to exploring, inner and outer

Stephanie Unger is a writer who lives in Buffalo, NY. She has studied poetry at workshops led by Martha Heyneman and others at the Rochester Folk Art Guild in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State.

The science and spirit of awareness

The seasons and the Cosmos

“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.”

Come join the circle of we who pray

What our arboreal friends can teach us

Stephanie Unger is a writer who lives in Buffalo, NY. She has studied poetry at workshops led by Martha Heyneman and others at the Rochester Folk Art Guild in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State.

Making the world her own

A meditation teacher loses her voice—and finds her way

The trickster, the shape shifter, the god–the coyote

The structure of traditional art

Among elephants, it’s a family affair

A white rose opens in a quiet arbour
Where I sit reading Dante, Paradise
unfolding in me, opens hour by hour […]

Finding life between sand and sea

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

Frederick Law Olmsted’s village in the woods

By being born, we all find ourselves on a journey of some kind.

Memorable encounters with an extraordinary being

The idea of a “fall of man” is not confined to Christendom. Krishnamurti in his famous dialogues with physicist David Bohm on “The Ending of Time” asked the question: What went wrong in human life? …

A classic quest seen anew

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…

In April 1976, Mother Teresa spoke before the United Nations. The following day, she was interviewed by spiritual teacher and radio host Lex Hixon. What follows are some of Hixon’s introductory remarks and a brief portion of his rare interview with Mother Teresa.

The language of life asks for our ears and calls for our souls.

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…

Owen Barfield and the history of consciousness

Story editor Betsy Cornwell looks at our Summer 2014 Issue, EMBODIMENT, in Parabola Magazine’s monthly podcast.

The Descent offers a chance to look clearly at tired habits of thought and action. A woman may finally admit to an addiction or see how some long-denied pattern of action has failed her time and again. The Return offers a chance for something to be born or recovered. A woman may reclaim a talent…

A conversation with African healer and guide Baba Mandaza Augustine Kademwa

“The Verses of the Theri Ambapali,” translated and retold with commentary by Margo McLoughlin

America’s children are being robbed of their childhood. It’s as simple as that.

Close encounters with a student of Gurdjieff

Joshua Boettiger, “Alone, with Others”

Two strangers, vehicles of the miraculous

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. […]

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

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.

Four statements to transform your life

Expressing our essential self

Shamanic memories from an Indian visionary

A human, an orangutan, a heart-to-heart communion

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

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

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.

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…

One Autumn day in 1976 a question appeared: if I took a photo of something I’d seen that touched my feelings, would the feeling return later when I looked at the print?

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…

The mystical heart of silence

The special power of classic films

A faithful companion

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. […]

An interview with Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai

Walking with an Inkling or two

Es difícil para la mayoría de nosotros creer que ambos ángeles y demonios se mezclan con los humanos en la Tierra […]

How can we find joy in this suffering world?

A remarkable man of old Afghanistan

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares Ursula K. Le Guin’s “A Parabola Bestiary: Bear” and Eleanor O’Hanlon’s “Remarkable Beings” in this episode of Parabola magazine’s free monthly podcast

Seeing the light when it is darkest

A conversation with visionary philanthropist Nipun Mehta

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. …

What we need is right at hand

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…

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

Why God is a verb, not a noun

A conversation with spiritual pioneer Ram Dass

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

Are we the generation that will lose the Earth?

Story editor Betsy Cornwell explores our current issue, Generosity and Service, in Parabola‘s monthly twenty-minute podcast.

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…

Lucifer is the most compelling character in Milton’s Paradise Lost. He is the most dazzling angel. In Hebrew his name means “to shine” or “to bear light.” In Latin it means “morning star.” […]

Impressions from the land of Rumi

On Adin Steinsaltz and the power of hope

The Nobel winner with his muses