I usually regard quizzes that promise to categorize me in five minutes as too simplistic to be accurate, and therefore only complete them when bored. That said, in a recent bored moment, I took a “listening quiz in Rebecca Shafir’s book The Zen of Listening, and was taken aback by…
Articles by Ryan NeuCollins
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I wrote this post after observing the damage that occurs when religious authority is wielded by individuals or groups who may have credentials but are otherwise no more compassionate or wise than anyone else. The need to address this form of religious abuse is one of the reasons I became…
Contemplative prayer has been called “resting in God.” It’s a prayer, according to Friar Arico, of Contemplative Outreach, of “interior silence, an experience of God’s presence as the ground in which our being is rooted, the Source from whom our life emerges at every moment.” Its beginnings Plato It began…
A Mennonite Family’s Grief I recently read an article entitled “A Radical Grief” by Jana Pruden. It describes a conversation with a man whose life had been ruined by his child’s murder. Because of it, a Mennonite family decided to forgive the man who had murdered their own child. Although…
I just a read short poem about tragedy called “New Year’s Eve” by Carl Dennis*. It begins by advising the reader to “reserve one evening a year for thinking about your double”– in the case of this poem, a driver who slams into a pedestrian on his way home, while…
In answer to the title…well, that depends on the practitioner. However, Insight meditation does aspire to it, although perhaps to a different version of it than does the yoga meditation of my last post. So, to get down to basics, Insight meditation is a contemporary name for Vipassana Meditation, which…
Granted, the name of this meditation category implies pretty impressive results. Does one really become enlightened through practicing it? And if so, how many millions of enlightened individuals are currently wandering the earth? Well, answering in order of the questions: yes, you can—but enlightenment requires a ton of work, not…
Benefits of Meditation: Health professionals, popular magazines, gurus like Dr. Chopra, and TV celebrities like Dr. OZ have long been touting the benefits of meditation. Perhaps its most convincing advocates, however, are average practitioners like you and me, who have been meditating for years, and who can attest first-hand to…
Baha’i Tenets according to the Charlotte, NC Baha’i Community As a non-denominational minister in Atlanta, I often talk to others of different faiths and even coach individuals of various faiths. Last weekend I went to an interfaith event and met a…
Dalai Lama During this last entry in my series on Buddhism, I’ll discuss three final concepts within Buddhist philosophy. Anatta: The Concept of No Self While few of us would admit to personality variances of the same degree as the fabled Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, many of us do manifest different…