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Three Poems by Jane Yolen

The science and spirit of awareness

A celebrated composer hears celestial music

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….

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.

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

As my prayer become more attentive and inward
I had less and less to say.
I finally became completely silent. […]

Story Editor Betsy Cornwell reflects on the spiritual value of education in this new episode of Parabola’s free monthly podcast.

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

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

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares PL Travers’ stunning essay “Walking the Maze” and William Segal’s wise poem “The Middle Ground” in this episode of Parabola Magazine’s free podcast.

The way in, the way out

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.

Although it felt like flight, I knew the fall was wrong: body upended, working to right itself even as it spiralled head-first, it seemed, down. I’d gone over the tiniest cliff, from darkened footpath to an unseen recessed lawn. On my back, I looked up at faces—my husband Christopher, my step-daughter Miriam, a nurse who’d…

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. …

In his book All and Everything, G.I. Gurdjieff presented what he called the “Obligolnian Strivings,” directives intended to instill in the consciousness of those who practice them—said to be engaged in the “Work”—the “divine function of genuine Conscience.”

Owen Barfield and the history of consciousness

For the last five or so years, as readers may know, I’ve been the poetry Editor at Parabola magazine, while also fulfilling various other duties as a Senior Editor. […]

This was the time in his life that Abd el-Kader had intended to devote to peaceful pursuits such as prayer, teaching, and charitable deeds. He might have turned his back on the growing tensions in Damascus: It would not have been unreasonable. Yet he could not escape the world around him, or the role that…

The spiritual awakening of a world-class drunk

A recollection of the first moment of being at one.

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…

Joshua Boettiger, “Alone, with Others”

This song comes from a place where the angels are present, where light is born, where the future is written.

How do you get people to trust life? You have to trick them. They won’t jump into the water, so you have to throw them in.Alan Watts, “How to Reach Where You Already Are” Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares excerpts from Parabola Magazine’s “The Search for Meaning” issue, which is available as a free PDF…

Yeshua said: Whoever lives the interpretation of these words shall no longer taste death.

Cinderella slaves for years for her heartless stepfamily; Beauty offers her life to the Beast at her father’s request. […]

Frederick Law Olmsted’s village in the woods

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,…

A conversation with Brother Satyananda of Self-Realization Fellowship

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

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. …

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

The structure of traditional art

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

Close encounters with a student of Gurdjieff

“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…

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.

Born in India in 1918, B.K.S. Iyengar has been teaching yoga since the age of seventeen. An innovative and exacting teacher for more than sixty years, he has guided the establishment of many centers of Iyengar Yoga worldwide. His message is “Yoga is for everyone.”

Anonymous / Haida
Retold by Leslie Hebert

In the Middle Ages people were well aware of the inexhaustible power that arises simply from sitting still. After that time, knowledge of the purifying power of stillness and its practice was, in the West, largely lost.

Inside an Ayahuasca ceremony

Being “old” in Bali

Mark Nepo on welcoming the life-force.

In the darkness, the Buddha found light

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

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

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

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

Housework as spiritual practice, from a Sufi master

A lyrical song of love, nature, the sacred

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.

Mary Oliver was an astonishing poet beloved by many and also a frequent contributor to PARABOLA over the years.

How the goddess of creation became the goddess of death

Walking with an Inkling or two

An Interview with Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church from November 4, 2006 until November 1, 2015.

“For it seemed to me certain, and I still think so today, that one can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward…

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…

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

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

A conversation with physicist Leo Piilonen

A conversation with visionary philanthropist Nipun Mehta

Exploring the “hidden face of God”

Listening for an answer beyond words

In a world on fire, finding the light that guides

Sleeping. Louis Sussman-Hellborn (1828–1908) I’ve had quite a tumultuous relationship with fairy tales. The Little Mermaid was always my favorite as a child. Not just the Disney version, where everyone lives happily-ever-after, but the original, where the mermaid feels like she’s walking on a thousand knives and almost stabs the prince to…

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares editorial director Tracy Cochran’s “Fusterlandia” and Elizabeth Napp’s “An Education in Peace,” as well as some wise words on leadership from Octavia Butler, in this episode of Parabola Magazine’s free monthly podcast.

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

TIMELESS IN TIME: Sri Ramana Maharshi. Reviewed by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos.

A conversation with educator and spiritual leader John Malloy …

A Sufi master looks at—and beyond—the approaching flames

A poem by Walt Whitman in our issue, Happiness.

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

A photographer envisions the sacred and the profane on a Hawaiian island

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. […]

Life lessons from William Segal

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. […]

“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…

Researches into the source of megalithic culture.

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

I don’t know why I was born | with this belief in something | deeper and larger than we can | see. […]

An encounter to last a lifetime

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares excerpts from Parabola Magazine’s new issue, “The Miraculous,” including three new poems by beloved author Jane Yolen.

The trouble with goats

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…

Naming Rumpelstiltskin, and the path to self-knowledge

Making the world her own

In February 2003, I went to Laura Rothenberg’s apartment to talk about her book, “Breathing for a Living,” which she wouldn’t live to see published. Laura was dying at age twenty-two. …

I was determined not to let dialysis take over my life. But it already had. […]

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

One bright spring day, Parabola met with Karen Armstrong  in her suite at the Parker Meridian hotel in Manhattan.  The petite, friendly 62-year-old British ex-nun, arguably the most influential commentator on religion in the English-speaking world, was on tour to promote her latest bestselling book.  Lauded by critics as “magisterial” and “magnificent,” The Great Transformation…

Among elephants, it’s a family affair

A great teacher meets his ultimate challenge

David Steindl-Rast (2004) Wikipedia The only point where one can start to talk about anything, including death, is where one finds oneself. And for me this is as a Benedictine monk. In the rule of St. Benedict, the momenta mori has always been important, because one of what St. Benedict calls…

Understanding mercy as a force from on High

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

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…

I would first and foremost like to follow an age-old injunction that every writer, before giving out any advice or critique to anyone else, should obligingly give an honest account of their journey. So before doing an appraisal of the 27th All & Everything International Humanities Conference I offer a short yet pertinent brief. Having…

The summer after I graduated from college, days before I moved to New York City to launch a real adult life, I saw a ghost—an apparition, a spirit, an angel.