Ecstasy & Idiot Glee
We live in a culture that tries endlessly to find more and more pleasure, thinking that sensory gratification in every sense organ will lead to happiness.
Michael Stone • The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner
At what point can we know that ecstasy, or singular purpose, or religious fervor has become pathological, if we don’t wish to wait until obvious and irreversible damage has been done?
Christine Montross • Falling Into the Fire: A Psychiatrist's Encounters with the Mind in Crisis
In his book Bad Religion, writer and religious scholar Ross Douthat describes our New Age “God Within” theology as “a faith that’s at once cosmopolitan and comforting, promising all the pleasures of exoticism . . . without any of the pain . . . a mystical pantheism, in which God is an experience rather than a person. . . . It’s startling how little
... See moreAnna Lembke • Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
Mysticism is a confusing word. It refers to the belief in, and experience of, a direct, sublime union with the divine. But it also means secret or occult knowledge, or vague and confused speculation.
George P. Hansen • The Trickster and the Paranormal
There are two ways to make the world more mesmerizing: to seek out new and increasingly intense experiences, or to loosen the filters that make ordinary experience “ordinary”. You can go skydiving, or you can meditate for long enough that walking feels like skydiving. Either way, I think what we’re seeking is an escape back into what we used to be,... See more
Kasra • Tastes of magic
