Archive

Discovering the divine in her own backyard

There are different kinds of realizations. They are not always lightening bolts but sometimes soft and slow, as if snow were quietly falling and settling.

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

Learning to love winter’s night

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

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

Two strangers, vehicles of the miraculous

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

Institutions can give the money, but they don’t dispense the compassion. That’s up to us. We need, as individuals and as a society, to take a long hard look this question. We should begin now, because the question is being forced upon us with an urgency that will only become apparent later, after the excitement…

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? …

Remembering the beloved poet

A life-changing encounter with spiritual authority

Naming Rumpelstiltskin, and the path to self-knowledge

In a world on fire, finding the light that guides

New York City At Night, ca. 1935 from Wikimedia Head down, hugging a grocery bag, I hurried past gutted buildings and empty lots, back to my ex-boyfriend’s apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. It seemed like a good idea at some point, having dinner together as friends. But the little Spanish market on…

The structure of traditional art

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

Protecting the places where the magic folk roam

Tracy Cochran, “A Shared World”

A child retells the legend of the Sumerian goddess Inanna and her descent to the Nether World.

What our arboreal friends can teach us

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…

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…

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

An older Navajo runs for his people

Remembering Harold Bloom and Jacob Needleman

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. …

LETTERS FROM HELL by Valdemar Adolph Thisted. Preface by George MacDonald. Reviewed by Jan Cheripko

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

Impressions from the land of Rumi

The fiery path from light to light

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

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

A conversation with Brother Satyananda of Self-Realization Fellowship

Sound, scientific advice on attaining happiness

Searching for her place in God’s house

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

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….

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

A lyrical song of love, nature, the sacred

Reflections on the 2020 All and Everything International Humanities Conference and beyond

A  Palestinian rapper and the music of hope

Homespun advice to a young man in need

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”…

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

Many people may be surprised to learn that the surface of our brain is actually dark and that this darkness has consequences for our experience of consciousness and transformation itself, including our ultimate transformation at death. It also has consequences for the most subtle form of light we know, the light we associate with religious…

A conversation with Kabbalah expert Rabbi Dr. Raphael Shuchat

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…

These are challenging times for all of us. We at Parabola are offering a free PDF of our “The Search for Meaning” issue from Spring 2017 to anyone who would like one, and we hope you will find comfort in its pages. Click here to access your free PDF. You can also purchase a print…

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

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.

The science and spirit of awareness

In the early 1980s, jazz pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane devoted herself to the Hindu tradition, adopting the name Swamini Turiyasangitananda and established the 48-acre Sai Anantam Ashram outside Los Angeles.

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

That a book on the Pyramid Texts of ancient Egypt has been favorably reviewed by the New Yorker is surely a sign of a significant cultural shift, but if you take the time to read this extraordinary book you will quickly see why. […]

Owen Barfield and the history of consciousness

During the Nazi Occupation of Paris, Gurdjieff and his students dared to meet late into the night….

On the night of Thanksgiving 2015, our family got into a conversation about the nature of Grace and Mercy. Having written about these subjects recently, it occurred to me that it might be worth collecting the essays into a small booklet.

Come join the circle of we who pray

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

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. […]

Rafe Martin offers a retelling of a traditional Buddhist Jataka tale.

A conversation with deep psychologist Michael Penn

A story on homelessness, the deep woods, and wonder

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 the current issue of Parabola, “Hope,” in this episode of the magazine’s free monthly podcast.

How the goddess of creation became the goddess of death

learning mindfulness and connection from a dog named George Lucas

A conversation with Frankl’s grandson and a Frankl family champion.

With a gaze of majestic power, the master electrified me with a glimpse of his cosmic consciousness.

THE BHAGAVAD GITA: A Guide to Navigating the Battle of Life by Ravi Ravindra. Reviewed by Vinita Kaushik Kapur.

Forgiveness in the work of Martin Scorsese

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….

Anonymous / Haida
Retold by Leslie Hebert

Advice and exercises from a Qigong master

The extraordinary inner life of a great public figure.

The secret prices of love

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

Listening for an answer beyond words

Cooking for the sage king

King Salomon seeks paradise with the help of an eagle

Awakening to ourselves and the world

Four steps to take on the road of life

Tasting the forbidden fruit

Four role models for all who seek the sacred

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

A conversation with physicist Leo Piilonen

“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…

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…

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.

Exploring yoga with the guru’s granddaughter

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 review of John Teasdale’s “What Happens in Mindfulness” by Cynthia Bourgeault

A childhood memory leads to forgiveness and love

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares Margaret Delaney’s “The Anonymous Ones” and “Gastronomy in Ancient China” by Donald Haper in the latest episode of our free monthly podcast.

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,…

Being “old” in Bali

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. 

Imagination itself may be our best resource for experiential recovery of a vibrant, participatory, and wildly sacred Earth.