The Doors released their first single in 1967: “Break on Through (to the Other Side),” a tribute of sorts to Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception. Huxley had been trying to break on through to the other side for years. He put together a splendid book in the 1940s called…

The left hemisphere gets things done. The Tao isn’t concerned about getting things done. Let your left hemisphere dominate: you’ll never be bothered by the Tao again. A focus on money is the best tool for accomplishing this. — Since its publication in 2010, Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and his Emissary has pretty much ensconced itself as a modern classic and an intellectually landscape-shifting work.

My daughter runs. She runs in the morning, she runs at night. Runs, runs, runs. People around town see her and go, “Look at that girl! She’s a runner.” But I know she’s more than that. My daughter breathes. She breathes in the morning, she breathes at night. Breathes, breathes…

You Need to Deal with the Survival Paradox — The man who invented the calculator, you might imagine, was pretty freakin’ smart. But he apparently didn’t understand some really freakin’ fundamental things. He one time wrote: “I know not what is good or bad in anything. I know not which is more profitable to me, health or sickness, wealth…

This dude first articulated the western mystical tradition. Like the inventor of Bitcoin, we don’t even know who he was. But he pointed to the Tao. — If you read Chapter 17 of the Book of Acts in the Bible, you’ll see an odd reference at the end. It says that many people converted to Christianity, including Dionysius the Areopagite. The writer just throws it out there, as if everyone knows him. “Ah, yeah. Great guy, that…

A Micro-Review/Essay — “A Prophet can hear and communicate the word of God, but he is neither a Philosopher or a Saint.” Josef Pieper writes thick and thin books: books that are short but packed. Eric Voegelin wrote a five-volume set that is thick and thick: Order and History. I’ll never have a…

When Dr. Faust insulted the Tao, the devil emerged. — Im Anfang war die Tat! “In the beginning was the deed.” Faust A German necromancer flourished for a while during the Protestant Reformation. We only know a little about him. We aren’t even sure when he died. He was supposedly boastful and sometimes gained influence in powerful ecclesiastical and worldly…

1545. The city of Trento, in today’s northern Italy. The Council of Trent. The Bible was placed on the altar. Next to it, the officials put Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica to symbolize the Catholic Church’s reverence for the Saint’s work, the greatest of the Catholic philosophers and Scholastics. It may…

A Micro-Review/Essay “[T]here cannot be unused space in the total world of work.” Obsessed with efficiency? I am. At least I used to be. I’m a recovering efficiencoholic. It was bad, so bad that my time and energy spent on being efficient far exceeded the time and energy I saved…