THE WAY OF PEACE
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Everyone’s this way a little bit.
It’s adaptative to check the door two or three times to be sure it’s locked.
It’s not adaptative to check it fifty times.
I have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
I talked some about its physiological basis, and treatment, in a previous chapter.
I will tell more, and about my own experience, now. Continue reading — Life with OCD
THE WAY OF PEACE
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“Are you abnormal?”
Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (DSPS), like Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), is a disturbance of the body’s processing of serotonin.
It’s been the bane of my existence. Continue reading — Life with DSPS
THE WAY OF PEACE
| ← 7. Mooring oneself in What Is | Home | 10. Strategies → |
| “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” | |
| — Soren Kierkegaard | |
This post has been on tap for years; I’ve come to feel the time to write it is now. On the one hand, however, I hardly feel I know what I’m talking about. I can see the goal, I can point to it, I can admire it, but I hardly have any idea how to get there. On the other hand, there are multiple directions from which to approach the subject, which fact doesn’t lend itself to the linear-sequential proneness of written words.
So, this may not be the best presentation.
In question is a dynamic that has profound pertinence to the effectiveness of one’s desires, the effectiveness of one’s prayers, the effectiveness of one’s life. Continue reading 8. Heart and soul
THE WAY OF PEACE
THE WAY OF PEACE
| ← 8. Heart and soul | Home | 11. Tactics → |
Strategies pertain to long-range goals, or a basic posture one means to maintain over a long period of time. Tactics are plans of what to do from moment to moment. In this chapter and the next I set forth the strategies and tactics known to me, that I personally use. Continue reading 10. Strategies
THE WAY OF PEACE
| ← 11. Tactics | Home | 13. Two (or more) views of the Kingdom → |
In the beginning, I claimed that all Jesus’ teachings have the goal of enabling a person to attain and maintain a state I said he called “the Kingdom,” which I call peace of mind; and that the principal means thereto is the practice of presence, keeping one’s attention on the here and now and on what one, oneself, can do.
The time has come to test that thesis. Continue reading 12. An examination of the Sermon on the Mount
THE WAY OF PEACE
| ← 12. [About] the Sermon on the Mount | Home | 14. Jesus is not coming soon — or ever → |
The term “kingdom of heaven” or “kingdom of God” meant different things to different people in New Testament times. What it meant to Jesus appears to me to be different from what it meant to the early church, the Gospel writers, and even the Twelve.
On the one hand, I will set forth below what it meant to everyone but Jesus. On the other hand, if the reader is content to accept what I just said without proof, the reader may be happiest to skip the rest of this chapter, and the next, and instead go straight to “Jesus’ words about ‘the Kingdom‘”. Some of this stuff gets really technical. Continue reading 13. Two (or more) views of “the Kingdom”
THE WAY OF PEACE
| ← 13. Two (or more) views of the Kingdom | Home | 15. Jesus’ words about “the Kingdom” → |
| “The end of all things is at hand.” | |
| — 1 Peter 4:7 | |
The first time I was told, “Jesus is coming soon,” I was twelve years old, in seventh grade. My friends and I had no reason to doubt it. We thought, “He might come tonight. Or tomorrow. But it could be tonight.” We lived in breathless anticipation.
For me, it all began to unravel seven years later, albeit it hasn’t finished unraveling yet.
THE WAY OF PEACE
| ← 14. Jesus is not coming soon — or ever | Home | 16. Other Jesus sayings → |
When I first conceived The Way of Peace, I set myself the task of accounting for every time Jesus used the word “Kingdom” in the Synoptics, the end being to demonstrate that what I call “peace of mind” is what Jesus called “the Kingdom.” This task will remain unfinished. I decided that only 41 of those sayings were authentic. Some will be examined more than once, from different angles; others won’t be examined at all, either because I don’t understand them myself or because they’re hard to relate to The Way of Peace. Continue reading 15. Jesus’ words about “the Kingdom”
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