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



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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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Edgar Degas, The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer, model executed ca. 1880, cast 1922, The Met FI

The Inner Forms the Outer

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…

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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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Snap-the-Whip,-1872.-Winslow-Homer.-Metropolitan-Museum-of-Art
Sin-Cochran03-6
Snap-the-Whip,-1872.-Winslow-Homer.-Metropolitan-Museum-of-Art

Parabola Podcast, Episode 30: Together

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.

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Parabola Podcast Episode 44: The Search for Meaning

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…

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Learning to Die, by Brother David Steindl-Rast

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…

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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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McKay Savage, Close-up of the Buddha head in the banyan tree at Wat Mahathat, Wikimedia
Madame White Snake
Vincent Van Gogh, The Red Vineyard at Arles, 1888, oil, on canvas (Puskin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow)

French Lessons, by Tracy Cochran

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….

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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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Lee van Laer
Bosch Decoded: The Esoteric Bosch, Vol. II
JOHN MALLOY

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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Greenbelt-Iweb

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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Truth and Perception, by Mickey Lemle

All movies are an illusion. We think we are seeing motion but in fact we are seeing twenty-four still pictures every second. Half the time the screen is actually black. Yet movies seem so real, and some have the potential to reveal great truth. […]

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Parabola Podcast: Wellness

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…

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Andrei-Rublev, The-Old-Testament Trinity, 1422-–-1427, Moscow, Tretyakov Gallery

Parabola Podcast Episode 26: “Wealth”

This episode of Parabola’s free monthly podcast includes an excerpt from David Ulrich’s Zen Camera on the joys of mindful photography and drawing, as well as Alexandra Haven’s essay on the wonders of ancient Egypt […]

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Sleeping Beauty. Henry Meynell Rheam, pencil and watercolor, 1899

Waking Up Aurora, by Rhiannon Thomas

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…

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A Shared World

A Shared World, by Tracy Cochran

Therefore, Ananda, be islands unto yourselves, refuges unto yourselves….” As he lay dying, the Buddha gave this advice to his beloved cousin and disciple Ananda. I thought of it as I stood in a security line in the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, just after a male security guard gestured for me to…

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Forest-IIweb

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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The Third Striving

The nature of wisdom is necessarily esoteric, because it subsists on a level which both transcends and is internal to, anything we can directly observe. …

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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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Virgin and Child in Majesty, 1150–1200, Made in Auvergne, Walnut with paint, gesso, and linen

The Prayer of Saint Francis

Virgin and Child in Majesty, 1150–1200, Made in Auvergne, Walnut with paint, gesso, and linen Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is discord, union; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where…

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Photograph © Bruno Zanzottera
Parabola Fall 2017, The Sacred

Playing with Laozi, by Elizabeth Napp

Laozi, Investiture of the Gods at Ping Sien Si, Pasir Panjang, Perak, Malaysia Photograph from the Ping Sien Si Temple in Perak, Malaysia taken by Anandajoti. My father had many good qualities; unfortunately, equanimity was not one of them. Known for a ferociously bad temper, he once threatened a one-armed theater…

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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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T. Enami, Pilgrim on a Forest Road, 1898-1908
Parliament of the World's Religions, Chicago, 1893