Shocking Predictions for 2012

Hello friends, this is Scoopji here, letting you know that I have had a spiritual breakthrough. Perhaps it is due to the fact that I have been consuming massive amounts of a new herbal formula, “Chakra Decongestant.” Or maybe it is because the battery on my meditation timer died and the bell didn’t go off, causing me to enter into a blissful absorption for several days until my lotus finally went limp. But when I emerged from my altered state I found that my mystical …

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Just Another Planet

One of my daily spiritual practices is to check on the condition of the universe. After all, that’s where I live. At least for now. I get an update on the universe every time I turn on my inter-net search engine, set to open on “the Astronomy Picture of the Day.” Recently I saw a picture of a red dwarf star dying, consuming itself in a fireball similar to the one in which our own sun will eventually die. Another day I saw a simulated …

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The Solution to Our God Problems

“All great truths begin as blasphemies.” – George Bernard Shaw Humanity is now suffering through a deep spiritual crisis accompanied by the usual “holy” wars, and we can assume that a major part of the problem lies with our gods and goddesses. After all, if they created everything then whatever goes wrong is their fault. I know that “god” is a delicate topic of inquiry, and some people feel very protective of their deity, so as I explore this subject I hope not to insult any …

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That Old Time Religion

One reason that I like Buddha’s teaching so much, is that it doesn’t require that I believe in a personified god, an omniscient, all-powerful being who created everything, and sits up there in the sky somewhere, judging how I’m doing at being a human. The Buddha tells us we can never know the first cause, and it is fruitless to try to trace our karma back to its origins. Furthermore, according to the Buddha’s teaching, our rewards and punishments come not from some deity who watches us …

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A Brief History of Yourself

I wanted to escape myself. That’s one reason why I went looking for some kind of cosmic consciousness. I yearned to feel part of a bigger reality so that I could leave the small reality I was living in– the separate, subjective, “me” monad. It was painful just being little old me. And I was not alone in my aloneness: there were a lot of other monads who desperately wanted to feel connected to something. Many post-war middle-class children were pumped up with self, pampered …

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The Attitude of Gratitude

In the dark season, when the world weighs heavy on your shoulders and the facts of life are so bad you can feel them in your gut, I suggest that you practice the gratitude game. My daughter and I play it when one of us is feeling out of sorts. It consists in simply thinking of all the reasons you have to be grateful. You can make up your own list, but please feel free to borrow some of our reasons.  Many of them apply …

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Changing Fields

It is time for you to change professions. You’ve been a psychologist of yourself for way too long. If you were any good, there would be more people calling for appointments. So leave the psychology behind and become an anthropologist. Dig through the status symbols of your civilization; uncover the fashion trends that dress you; or the accessories you use from The Fifth Collection brand. From your studies you will know that these are all temporary appearances. You could also become a biologist of yourself, …

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I LOVE SCIENCE

As I was growing up I didn’t like science very much. It seemed to me a lot of empty facts, bits of knowledge about the formation of the planets, or atomic valence, or the parasympathetic nervous system – stuff that I had to memorize but that didn’t matter much in my everyday life. I would much rather read a novel by Dostoyevsky or a philosophical essay by Camus, something that spoke directly of the joys and sorrows of life. I only began to be interested …

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How To Be An Earthling

EARTHDAY, EVERYDAY. Hello humans. (If you are reading and understanding this then you probably are one.) It’s time once again to celebrate our home planet, and this year as never before, the earth is calling out for your attention, your rituals and prayers and, of course, your activism. And this is Scoop Nisker with a piece of green liturgy for Earthday, everyday. We’re talking about your mama here, and I’m not playing the dozens. We’re talking about the mother planet who gave you life and …

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Revelations Revisited

The heavenly messengers march across the pages of history and proclaim as well from the skies above that all things are subject to aging and death. Not only individuals but entire species of life disappear; civilizations and ideologies rise and fall; mountain ranges make temporary appearances; even suns grow old and die. The truth of impermanence becomes especially obvious in transitional times like these, in a period of “apocalypse,” a Greek word meaning “the lifting of the veil.” What we see behind the veil are …

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