Tag: Inquiry
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Is Right Thinking Just Pollyannaism?
The Pollyanna objection to “thought power” has been, I trust, on your mind since you’ve been reading the last series of posts. The thought power thesis states that positive thinking is more powerful and truer than negative thinking, and it doesn’t flinch with regard to the twin implications. One, your life is “the product” of…
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Can ‘My’ Thoughts Hurt You?
What might be our standard picture of thought? And what, indeed, might be wrong with this picture? I see three basic propositions: In Thought Power, Sivananda (it can be surmised) takes all three propositions to be false. What would be his counters? If this new, albeit quite unorthodox picture of thinking is correct, then it…
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Do Thought Shape My Destiny?
What if we were to take very seriously the formative character of thinking? Could this be one way of understanding “thought power”? Thoughts, Sivananda states in Thought Power, beget habits (“grooves”); habits beget character; and character begets destiny (let’s say: the course of a life). Could he be on to something? Nobody denies that someone…
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Power Bypass
Due in large part to the emergence of ethical and sexual scandals following the arrival of the “new religions” in the West, “spiritual bypass” was a term coined in order to make sense of how certain spiritual practitioners (again, in the West) could use a spiritual path in order to “go around” their psychological issues…
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Dickens, A CEO, & Fear Of The Poorhouse
Charles Dickens, perhaps the most famous novelist in the Victorian era, made a great living during his lifetime and yet, all his life, was deeply fearful of returning to the workhouse. When he was 12, his father was put in debtors’ prison while he, separately, worked at a nearby factory, Warren’s Blacking Warehouse. It is…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 