This is an Index of Content on Psychology.
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Hexagrams of the I Ching
The following is a useful list categorizing each of the 64 hexagrams of the ancient Chinese study I Ching, or Book of Changes. For further information on this classic spiritual work, see my workshop on the I Ching. Glenda Taylor Information in the table below is gratefully taken from a more [...]
Prayer for the Perpetrators
My dearly beloved friends and family, Like you, I am sure, this week, including as it has the events in Boston, Washington, and now the small town of West in Texas, and also the places where storms may ravage our countryside and our cities, this week has sent me [...]
“Ageing,” a poem by Glenda Taylor
I’m slowly dissolving into the Void. While others are spending years sitting upright on hard cushions, striving not to strive to achieve mindlessness, I’m getting it for free by merely ageing, you see. I step into the shower, say, and, warm water streaming over me, I close my eyes [...]
“Either-Or” and “Yes-And”
When I was eight years old my mother and my stepfather married, my biological father having been dead since I was a baby. We moved temporarily to my stepfather’s mother’s home far out in the country, miles away from the home of my mother’s aunt where we had lived most [...]
Take Heart, an Essay
Take heart! Although the news each day seems more and more alarming, the political divisions and unrest, at home and abroad, seem more and more severe, do not think that hope is lost. Consider how many times those who came before us had to struggle through overwhelming situations. The [...]
A New Year, Thoughts by Glenda Taylor
A new year. But what’s new about it? The same old fretful dithering, over health, politics, family issues repeated over generations. Why bother to make new resolutions when the lists from more than seventy new years, yellowed and frayed around the edges, still remind me of my always [...]
Authenticity
"You wander from room to room hunting for the diamond necklace That is already around your neck!” Sufi Mystic Rumi Recently, National Public Radio began airing a series of readings of short essays, each composed by a different individual [...]
Dependent Arising, A Quotation
Quotation by Thomas J. McFarlane from Process and Emptiness: A Comparison of Whitehead’s Process Philosophy and Mahayana Buddhist Philosophy “…One of the core doctrines in Buddhist philosophy is that everything exists as a dependent arising (pratityasamutpada). According to the Buddha, all phenomena are dependent arisings, meaning not only that [...]
Compassion: Quotations
"People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people may accuse you of selfish motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you may win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. [...]
Individualism: Quotations
“Normal comes from normaliter, meaning in a straight line, directly. The 16th and 17th century meaning of ‘normal’ was rectangular, perpendicular, standing at a right angle. The word in our usage today, however, connotes average, usual, regular, not deviant. Thus it has to do with statistical certainty, and [...]
Revisioning: Ambiguities in the Language
Vision Dictionary Definitions: Latin: Videre: To see Some of its derivatives: Visible: Can be seen with the eye or evident to the mind; on hand. Vision: 1} Act or power to see with the eye 2} Something not seen with the eye, supernatural 3} Mental image, imaginative contemplation 4} ability [...]
Jung’s Concept of the Self: A Quotation from William M. Nicholson
The word "self" is used in different ways by many authors…However, Jung gives the term a very specific meaning and consequently does not use it loosely… He regards people who ordinarily come to him for treatment as being very much centered in their outer consciousness, with the center of awareness [...]
Excerpts from “The Invisibles” by David Abram in Parabola, Vol. 31. No. 1
“…A feel for the mysterious and the unseen is thus entirely proper to our experience of the material surroundings. Invisibility is not, first and foremost, an attribute of some supernatural domain beyond the sensuous, but is integral to our encounter with material nature itself. While there exist around us [...]
From “A Sense of the Cosmos: Scientific Knowledge and Spiritual Truth”
“…Every day, in almost all its branches, the revelations of modern science offer evidence that the universe, reality itself, is alive—alive beyond all imagining. All those who love science must know this truth in their bones, whatever may be the view officially sanctioned in the corridors of our universities [...]
Some thoughts of Marcus Aurelius: Quotations
'Remember that sometimes to change your mind is just as astute as to be able to discern the right course without advice.' Marcus Aurelius 'Before each action think: shall I have no reason to repent it afterwards?' Marcus Aurelius 'Virtue and wickedness exist, not as emotions and thoughts, but as [...]
Quotation from Andrew Harvey, contemporary mystic, scholar, poet, spiritual activist, on “Paradox” GalleryQuotation from Andrew Harvey, contemporary mystic, scholar, poet, spiritual activist, on “Paradox”
Mysticism, Hinduism, Cross-Cultural Mythology, Consciousness, Energy, and Matter: Quotations, Psychology, Spirituality, Islam, Justice and Ethics: Quotations, Mysticism: Quotations, Oneness and Unity: Quotations, Spiritual Diversity: Quotations, Transformation: Quotes
Quotation from Andrew Harvey, contemporary mystic, scholar, poet, spiritual activist, on “Paradox”
“All major mystical traditions have recognized that there is a paradox at the heart of the journey…Put simply, this is that we are already what we seek, and that what we are looking for on the Path with such an intensity of striving and passion and discipline is already [...]
Women’s Voices: Quotations
“Full maturity…is achieved by realizing that you have choices to make.” Angela Barron McBride, Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Dean, School of Nursing, Indiana University, noted for her work on women’s health issues. “You grow up the day you have the first real laugh—at yourself.” Ethel Barrymore (1879-1959), American Actress [...]
Forgiveness and Repentance: Many Short Quotations
This list of quotations has been collected over many years by Glenda Taylor. They are all credited appropriately, so feel free to copy and use in your own work. “If one has, indeed, done deeds of wickedness, but afterward alters his way and repents, resolved not [...]
Quotations from Carl Jung
“So long as you feel the human contact, the atmosphere of mutual confidence, there is no danger; and even if you have to face the terrors of insanity, or the shadowy menace of suicide, there is still that area of human faith, that certainty of understanding and of being [...]
Spiritual Diversity: Quotations
From The World's Religions, by Huston Smith: “Muslims point out that Muhammad incorporated into his charter for Medina the principle of religious toleration that these verses announce. They regard that document as the first charter of freedom of conscience in human history and the authoritative model for those of [...]
Mystery
What are we to do? In this time of cultural chaos, this video explores the question of where we may find the bedrock values and strength to go on and to have peace in our lives.
Settled, Unsettled
Every time I've come to Colorado by driving up out of the mostly flat lands of East Texas, through the endless plains, to the foothills, and eventually to the sudden uprising of the great Rockies, I've reflected on the experiences of pioneer families coming in their covered wagons. I [...]
War, Peace, Reconciliation, by Glenda Taylor
This article, War, Peace, Reconciliation, is by Glenda Taylor, who notes: "I wrote this in 1989, but amazingly, as I read it in the year 2018, it is as current today as ever it was then!" Last month in our home town, a young man hanged himself. In another [...]
Order and Connection, A Quote from Vine Deloria Jr.
“…From observing the world around them, they could see orderly processes that marked the way organic life behaved. From the obvious motions of the sun and moon to the effects of periodic winds, rains, and snows, the regularity of nature suggested some greater power that guaranteed enough stability to [...]
Quotations from Black Elk, Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux GalleryQuotations from Black Elk, Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
Native American, History and Culture, Cross-Cultural Mythology, Consciousness, Energy, and Matter: Quotations, Psychology, Spirituality, Fear, Courage, and Reassurance: Quotations, Earth and Ecology, Prayer: Quotations
Quotations from Black Elk, Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
Black Elk was a holy man of the Oglala Sioux. The following quotes are from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux: “The Sun Dance…We hold it during the Moon of Making Fat, because this is the time when [...]
“Cracks,” a poem by Glenda Taylor
“Cracks,” a poem by Glenda Taylor I. Somehow, perhaps temporarily, I have fallen into one or another of the cracks that can open in Wholeness itself, fissures that split Being into separate fragments called, first one and then another-- soul, heart, body, mind, ethereal, mental, mystical, sexual, permitted, profane, forbidden, [...]
A Partial Timeline for Women’s Studies, by Dawn Warren
1850 BC Egyptian texts describe the first known reference to contraceptives. 1750 BC The Code of Hammurabi, the Babylonian law code, protects a woman's right to hold and inherit property. 1500 BC Female students attend the Egyptian medical school at Heliopolis. 1450 BC By law and by custom, Mesopotamian [...]
“What We Want, We Have,” an excerpt from Huston Smith’s “The World Religions”
Hinduism and the Meaning of the Self, an excerpt from Huston Smith: “…Pleasure, success, responsible discharge of duty, and liberation—we have completed the circuit of what people think they want and what they want in actuality. This takes us back to the staggering conclusion with which our survey of [...]
Letting History Wash Over Us
I awoke this morning to the familiar cadence of a certain bird that greets each day perched on a bush somewhere outside my bedroom window at dawn. The amazing thing to me is that, daily, my barely-awake mind, without giving it any conscious thought at all, fits a different [...]
My Concern For The Children, by Glenda Taylor
My Concern For The Children, by Glenda Taylor South Texas Border - U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2014; Photo by Eddie Perez and US Dept. of Homeland Security, Public Domain. When my third grandson was born with a critical heart defect, I entered the Neonatal Intensive [...]
Debate and Decision Making: Quotation by Martin Prechtel GalleryDebate and Decision Making: Quotation by Martin Prechtel
Change: Quotations, Native American, History and Culture, Consciousness, Energy, and Matter: Quotations, Cross-Cultural Mythology, Psychology, Earth and Ecology, Healing: Quotations, Individualism: Quotations, Intention and Expectation: Quotations, Intuition: Quotations, Oneness and Unity: Quotations, Prayer: Quotations, Spiritual Diversity: Quotations, Transformation: Quotes
Debate and Decision Making: Quotation by Martin Prechtel
Glenda Taylor Comments: Yesterday morning I read something that was perfect for me personally to hear on the day of the “Great Debate.” It gave me a delightful and ancient context for our zany and critically important political drama, in which I, like many others, am caught up, raising [...]
Archetypes, Part One, by Glenda Taylor
The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung said that the gods and goddesses of myth are “archetypal” symbols. Jung spent a great deal of time developing his theories concerning archetypes, and many psychologists since Jung have further developed this concept. By now there is even a branch of psychology that is [...]
Archetypes: Quotations from Carl Jung GalleryArchetypes: Quotations from Carl Jung
Jungian, Cross-Cultural Mythology, Consciousness, Energy, and Matter: Quotations, Psychology, Courage, Hope, Meaning: Quotations, Doubt, Certainty, and Humility: Quotations, Individualism: Quotations, Intention and Expectation: Quotations, Intuition: Quotations, Spiritual Diversity: Quotations, Transformation: Quotes
Archetypes: Quotations from Carl Jung
“An archetype is like an old watercourse along which the water of life has flowed for centuries, digging a deep channel for itself. The longer it has flowed in this channel the more likely it is that sooner or later the water will return to its old bed.” From [...]
Navajo Nation Reacts to Children at Border
I am currently camping out near the Four Corners area of Colorado. I picked up a Navajo Nation newspaper, and I noted an article citing the Navajo Nation's reaction to the current border crisis in the U.S. I excerpt portions of it here as a historial reference that helps [...]
Authentic Voice, a poem by Glenda Taylor
Authentic Voice by Glenda Taylor I am a person acquainted with sorrow. Remember that, as I manifest joy. Undivided, the dark and the light, The day and the night, course through me, And you. And the true, the real, The one actual thing, sings, “I am all that, yes [...]
Quotation: Greatness
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and [...]
A Message of Encouragement
A Message to Friends, September 2008 Finally, nine days after Hurricane Ike ripped through East Texas, the electricity is back on at Earthsprings, so that I again have water, phone, and this computer. For days I have been outside giving thanks for the blessings of survival and for the [...]
Gendercide
A look at gendercide, the worldwide loss of females through a variety of causes, with significant consequences for the world at large. Images from an exhibit at the Toronto Parliament of World Religions, 2018.
Why Did He Do That?
"Why did he do that?" I hear that question a lot these days, about any number of so-called deviant behaviors. For most of us, answering it seems somehow more and more urgently important. We do, after all, live in a time when, for example, gun [...]
Dancing With a Tornado: An Easter Story, by Glenda Taylor
Today, a week after the occasion of my 80th birthday celebration, which was a Dances of Universal Peace Four Day Camp at Earthsprings Retreat Center, my heart, mind, and body are still vibrating with the energy of the time some fifty people spent together dancing, singing, praying, eating, [...]
Resonance, Harmony, and Creativity
As I was working on this week’s podcast, Resonance, (which you will find here) I looked up some quotations I remembered reading years ago in a work written by Hazrat Inyat Khan, The Mysticism of Sound and Music. I decided to include a few of [...]
That Intersecting Place, by Glenda Taylor, 2014
I came across this today, and I was glad to be reminded. I had posted it on the TowardCommonGround.org website back in 2014. Some of you responded then with deep insight. I include it here because, well, I guess I needed it this week again! This is [...]
Reaffirming Possibilities
“…The attack against reason and objectivity is fast reaching the proportions of a crusade…We desperately need to reaffirm the principle that it is possible to carry out an analysis of social life which rational human beings will recognize as being true, regardless of whether they happen to be [...]
On Centering GalleryOn Centering
Change: Quotations, Native American, History and Culture, Cross-Cultural Mythology, Consciousness, Energy, and Matter: Quotations, Psychology, Spirituality, Poetry, Intention and Expectation: Quotations, Mysticism: Quotations, Oneness and Unity: Quotations, Spiritual Diversity: Quotations
On Centering
On Centering The quotations are all from the book The Tao of Symbols, published in 1982 by James N. Powell “…Where is the still center of this turning universe? Are we to bow down several times each day in the direction of the stone in [...]
Wisdom for This Unusual Day
Wisdom for This Day The words of Hazrat Inayat Khan: Rumi says your worst enemy is hiding within yourself, and that enemy is your nafs or false ego. It is very difficult to explain the meaning of this ‘false ego.’ The best I can do is to say that [...]
Quotation by Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder at Columbia University in 2007, via wikimedia, CC2.0 “A great poet does not express his or her self, he expresses all of our selves. And to express all of our selves you have to go beyond your own self. Like Dogen, the Zen master, said, [...]
Perennials, Archetypes, and Eternal Life, by Glenda Taylor, May 2009
A Reflection by Glenda Taylor, May 2009 Today the daylily that Rebecca Estes’ father hybridized in memory of Shelia and Rich’s son, Kenneth Collins, is blooming again here at Earthsprings. This morning, after taking a picture of it, I walked up the hill to the big old pecan tree [...]
On A Difficult Day
Today I had to reach deeply into the sources of my spiritual life, seeking the means to be with, in a sacred way, as I like to say, what I am experiencing of the outer world. It was not easy, for at first I could only see a world full [...]
On the Edge, a quote from Joan Halifax
“…I have come to see that mental states are also ecosystems. These sometimes friendly and at times hazardous terrains are natural environments embedded in the greater system of our character. I believe it is important to study our inner ecology so that we can recognize when wea re on the [...]
Election Eve, During a Pandemic, 2020
The Day Before Election, in a Pandemic, 2020 This is not political. This is about me. As I am on this day before the national election, during a growing pandemic, 2020. To mark this day of days I choose to record here how [...]
Perspective
Many years ago, I was privileged to spend some time with an incredible man named Hyemeyohsts Storm. He described himself as a “breed,” his mother being Native American and his father German. Storm was, in my own experience, a wise, insightful mystic, as well as also [...]
In Honor of That Not Spoken, A Poem by Glenda Taylor
I speak, till you cry out "Partial! Only Partial!" Then I go silent. I paint, until you say "One, only one of the limitless possible," and so I cease to paint. I wish to publish, yet you whisper, "Ah, but you'll be penned to one perspective and who will [...]
Voices Imagined in Spring
A unique glance at springtime in a season of suffering through imagined voices of the Great Feminine Archetype Me: All these lilies here are my Mama’s lilies. That is, they are the offsprings of bulbs that were growing in the bog near the [...]
Saying the Unsaid
They say (whoever they are, so saying), a picture’s worth a thousand words. A Picture. A painting. A Photo. An image. Worth more than words. So they say. For such a sayer against saying, words are merely mental constructs, abstractions, illusions. Even calligraphy, even runes, do not picture the [...]
Oh, Thou!
Oh, Thou… known by many names in all times and places, Thou art beyond all names and places, beyond all distinctions and directions, beyond inward and outward, even beyond knowing, for knowing requires knower and known, a division illusory, since Oneness is necessarily both knower and known. One [...]
Elderhood, Youth, and Shoes
A friend of mine yesterday started a cell phone discussion thread about elderhood. He isn’t as old as I am, but old enough and experienced enough to qualify as an elder, and a wise one at that. His comments got me thinking about feet. Partly because he’s having some [...]
We Are More Than We Know
In Cabeza de Vaca's account of his journey from Florida to the Pacific, between the years 1528 and 1536, he tells how the Indians came to him and his companions asking them to cure the sick. The two white men were themselves half starved, lost and filled with blank [...]
In The Midst of Mystery
Always life presents us with such a mix of things, sometimes wonderful, sometimes chaotic or fearful, always, it seems paradoxical. Here are a few quotes about the mystery that is at the heart of creation. May you, this day, find peace and joy in the always present beauty, abundance, [...]
Podcast: Coping Creatively With Disturbing Social Change
Podcast: Coping Creatively With Disturbing Social Change Glenda Taylor explores, with discussion, story, and history, ways that many of us us deal with disturbing social change and suggests how we may do so more creatively both to have more peace of mind and to be [...]
