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PO Box 3201
Martinsville, VA 24115
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Stephen H. Provost is an author of paranormal adventures and historical non-fiction. “Memortality” is his debut novel on Pace Press, set for release Feb. 1, 2017.
An editor and columnist with more than 30 years of experience as a journalist, he has written on subjects as diverse as history, religion, politics and language and has served as an editor for fiction and non-fiction projects. His book “Fresno Growing Up,” a history of Fresno, California, during the postwar years, is available on Craven Street Books. His next non-fiction work, “Highway 99: The History of California’s Main Street,” is scheduled for release in June.
For the past two years, the editor has served as managing editor for an award-winning weekly, The Cambrian, and is also a columnist for The Tribune in San Luis Obispo.
He lives on the California coast with his wife, stepson and cats Tyrion Fluffybutt and Allie Twinkletail.
Ruminations and provocations.
Filtering by Category: Spirituality
People have scratched their heads and wondered why so many white evangelical leaders had embraced Donald Trump, the heir to a New York fortune who’s spent it on high living and self-promotion. Because he might as well be one of them. It’s like looking in the mirror.
Read More(Trump’s) been acting like Jesus, without all the nice-guy talk about loving your neighbor and turning the other cheek — which is exactly what makes him more attractive to many evangelicals than their putative founder. They feel like victims, and they want to lash out. To fight back. And Trump’s “vengeance is mine” attitude gives them permission to do so, whatever Jesus himself might have said.
Read MoreWhy should people refuse to wear a mask? How is it more of a hardship to put a piece of cloth over your face than to spend several days on a respirator in the ICU (at a cost of thousands of dollars)? Of course, that won’t happen to them, because they’re special, chosen people. They’re “immune.” They don’t have to wear seat belts or condoms, either. It’s all such a terrible inconvenience. But this isn’t really about personal freedom. It’s a repudiation of personal responsibility.
Read MoreYou have to be able to define something before you can ask whether it exists.
Read MoreYes, the majority of people in this country still identify as Christians, but that figure is dropping, and what does being a Christian even mean? It’s hard to say. Are we to accept the contemplative, inwardly focused view, as represented in the Beatitudes and Jesus’ “peaceful” sayings, or the outwardly focused template that puts “wheat-and-chaff” divisions and “compelling them to come in” front and center?
Read MoreNote: This is an excerpt from my book Timeless Now: The Empyrean Gate, available as an ebook for 99 cents on Amazon.
Empyreanism is an approach to life that pursues self-awareness with the goal of understanding and connecting with the world around us. It takes its name from the Empyrean, defined by Claudius Ptolemy as the highest heaven or celestial realm, which translates literally as “the place in fire” (em-pyr). Its core principle is derived from a saying attributed to Jesus in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas: “The kingdom is within you and all around you.”
The recognition that the highest good — the Empyrean or “fire inside” — resides within us leads to the recognition of its presence in everything around us. Hence the symbol of Empyreanism, the flaming heart: the crucible in which the inner realm of self is forged and brought into harmony with the outer realm of the universe. When this is accomplished, the distinction between the realm “within you” and “all around you” loses its meaning: The two are reconciled as one.
Indeed, the inner and outer realms have always been one: Not just spiritually, but physically. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson points out that “the atoms of our bodies are traceable to stars that manufactured them in their cores and exploded these enriched ingredients across our galaxy, billions of years ago.
“For this reason,” he says, “we are biologically connected to every other living thing in the world. We are chemically connected to all molecules on Earth. And we are atomically connected to all atoms in the universe. We are not figuratively, but literally stardust.”
The process of becoming aware of this, however, begins within. As the Buddha said: “The Way is not in the sky; the Way is in the heart.”
And it is a process that is alwaysoccurring, from moment to moment and day to day.
Empyreanism is simply a name for that process. It is not dogmatic, but dynamic: dedicated to the idea of continual growth. It is not a religion, but rather seeks to find commonality in core principles shared by many belief systems, both spiritual and secular. It can be practiced by people of any faith or philosophy, by people of spirit and of science. After all, Jesus spoke of a kingdom of heaven — a celestial realm — within each of us, and Neil deGrasse Tyson agrees: We are made of stardust.
Empyreanism calls upon us to acknowledge this connection and recognize that which we share at the core of our being. It therefore focuses on shared principles such as compassion, empathy, the quest for truth, openness, reverence for nature and respect for others. In doing so, it seeks to build bridges of awareness between diverse individuals, breaking down barriers that obscure our commonality and suppress our connection: barriers such as prejudice and fear.
Such barriers are the result of focusing on our differences, and guarding them jealousy as though they define who we are. But when, conversely, we focus on what we have in common, we gain the freedom to embrace those differences without fear, because we recognize them as new and vibrant manifestations of the same shared spirit.
The bridges we build in doing so stimulate more rapid growth by exposing us to new perspectives. This dynamic process of building bridges and crossing them to explore new, yet somehow familiar wonders is both the goal and the nature of Empyreanism.
The essence of Empyreanism is expressed in a number of sayings from around the world. Here are just a few of them:
“The kingdom is within you, and all around you.” — Jesus the Galilean
“Awakening is not changing who you are, but discarding who you are not.” — Deepak Chopra
“He who is filled with love is filled with God himself.” — Augustine of Hippo
“Who looks outside dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” — Carl Jung
“The Way is not in the sky; the Way is in the heart.” — Buddha
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” — Albert Einstein
“Each star is a mirror reflecting the truth inside you.” — Aberjhani
“Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.” — Eckhart Tolle
“Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.” — Walt Whitman
“To find the journey’s end in every good step of the road ... is wisdom.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Love your neighbor as yourself.” — Jesus
“Love is the bridge between you and everything.” — Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
“Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” — Roald Dahl
“That which is to you hateful, do not to your neighbor.” — Rabbi Hillel
“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” — Rumi
“We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out — and we have only just begun.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson
“E pluribus unum. (Out of many, one.)” — Pierre Eugene du Simitiere
“All things are bound together. All things connect.” — Chief Seattle
“You are the universe in ecstatic motion.” — Rumi
“Peace cannot be achieved through violence; it can only be attained through understanding.” — Emerson
