Hints and Guesses – Details, episodes & analysis

In an age obsessed with "knowing oneself," how do we not get stuck in endless autobiography and self-absorption?  At its best, a healthy spiritual and religious life helps free us from the cul-de-sac of narcissistic feedback.  In the episode, we'll look at a story from Saint Antony, a paragraph from C.S. Lewis about hell, and I'll outline the four foundations of a spiritual life from the book Journey Into Emptiness by Robert Jingen Gunn (a book about Dogen, Merton and Jung).  See below for the link I promised in the episode about the Cree mountains of human development.  Enjoy!  

https://decolonialfutures.net/portfolio/fourmountains/#:~:text=Each%20mountain%20represents%20a%20stage,one%20mountain%20to%20the%20other.

https://www.patreon.com/c/kentdobson

Here's the final episode of The Christ Symbol.  This episode is about Authority and Resurrection (stage 6 and 7).  What does real authority look like?  What does it mean for a "grain of wheat to go into the ground and die?"  What is the nature of real change?  Hope you hear something from Jesus own transformed life, that may in fact trans-form your own.  Enjoy!

There are many ancient stories about making a deal with the Devil.  What happens when we no longer take these seriously?  What is lost?  What are we missing?  I'd like to explore the consequences and opportunities in taking seriously what happens when we make a deal with the Devil through stories of the Handless Maiden, Faust, and the Temptation of Christ.  Enjoy!   

Here's a conversation with Quique Autrey, therapist, author and podcaster, about his new book Green Flags.  What does it look like to become a person who's a little more like a "green flag" than a red flag? Where does one even start with "depth psychology?"   Quique's highlights a number of accessible ways to turn the gaze inward, toward a healthier relationship with ourselves, which seems necessary in order to be a more generative presence in the world.  You can find out more about Quique, and buy the book, at https://www.quiqueautrey.com/ Hope you here a hint or guess for your own path.  

The word sermon implies a threading together, and I'd like to thread together some lines from St Paul, T.S.Eliot, and Jung.  I hope you'll find some encouragement and challenge from these voices, who in their own way, point beyond themselves to the transcendent, to God.  I can't think of anything more important in our age of mistrust.  

Here are few thoughts on feeling stuck, big storms gathering at the window, what it's like when our stories and imagination seem disconnected from the present, a few musings on intuition, the still small voice, the melody below the melody, being defeated, and less metaphorically, moving back to Michigan.  The poems that I quote are from Rilke and Annie Lighthart.  Enjoy!

What's the difference between mood and feeling?  Between emotions and values?  How do we grow our capacities for relationship, for deep values, in other words, how do we access the "feeling function" (Jung)?  This episode is an exploration of the feeling function, the common wounds associated with it, and some possibilities for developing a healthier "masculine" psyche.  I pull mainly from Robert A. Johnson's book He: Understanding Masculine Psychology, but also a little from Jung, and from my own experience.  Thanks for supporting this podcast.  I hope you hear and hint, a guess, for your own life.  Enjoy!

I'd like to explore the mystical, not as an expert, but a student.  Lately I've been inspired by Evelyn Underhill's insights in her book, Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Conscious which I quote in this podcast.  My sense is, that despite the darkness of the age we live in, something of the Absolute wishes to break in, to rearrange our consciousness.  When this happens, the old dream and the young see visions.  What might it look like for modern people, spiritual - religious - not-so-religious, to open up to the possibility of the transcendent, so that our present mode of consciousness, our small egoic frame, might grow?  What if Reality is not what we thought?  The mystics left us a few clues for how to listen and how to be.  

Here's a followup to Religious Problems, Religious Medicine, a further exploration of the tension between Law and Spirit, tradition and innovation, which seems to be natural and important.  I also have a few musings on the Wandering Desert God of the Hebrew people, as a kind of symbol for the religious outsider.  And I turn again to Jung's highly unusual sense for "God," which might open a few doors to the transcendent.  Enjoy!

I want to explore some religious questions that have been troubling me lately, where I've gotten things wrong over the last few years, and some hints and guesses about what's calling my name; namely some very ancient invitations...worship, prayer and sacrifice.  Enjoy!