Academy of Ideas – Details, episodes & analysis

“The warrior’s approach is to say “yes” to life: “yea” to it all…Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging. Negativism to the pain and ferocity of life is negativism to life. We are not there until we can say “yea” to it all.” Joseph Campbell, Reflections on the Art […]

…totalitarian domination as a form of government is new in that it… bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is among the most radical and desperate experiences of man.  Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism Many people have amnesia regarding that fact that a mere few […]

“The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn’t just […]

“. . .you must look at who you are and make an effort to know yourself, which is the most difficult knowledge one can imagine. When you know yourself, you will not puff yourself up like the frog who wanted to be the equal of the ox. . .”   Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes […]

“Since ultimately people heal themselves with or without the tool of psychotherapy, why is it that so few do and so many do not? Since the path of spiritual growth, albeit difficult, is open to all, why do so few choose to travel it? It was to this question that Christ was addressing himself when […]

“…more people look for salvation through relationship than in houses of worship. One may even suggest that romantic love has replaced institutional religion as the greatest motive power and influence in our lives…the search for love has replaced the search for God.” James Hollis, The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other Half of […]

“Over half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia [in the 20th century]: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’”   Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1983 Templeton Address Is secularization a sign […]

“Evil is not committed by people who feel uncertain about their righteousness, who question their own motives, who worry about betraying themselves. The evil in this world is committed by the spiritual fat cats, by the Pharisees of our own day, the self-righteous who think they are without sin because they are unwilling to suffer […]

“And the word “courage” should be reserved to characterize the man or woman who leaves the infantile sanctuary of the mass mind.” Sam Keen, Fire in the Belly In the privacy of our minds many of us disagree with the ideologies, political agendas, and government mandates of our day, yet in public we comply. We […]

“I must be myself, I cannot break myself any longer for you. . .If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance The great 19th century American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that to flourish […]