May Angels Lead You To Willingness: Dialogues with "Man's Search for Meaning"

I recently came across the idea of logotherapy in Viktor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning.”  I briefly nerded out big time: I initially intended this post to be a wholesale endorsement of Frankl’s thought.  It proposed good ...

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One, Two, Buckle my Soup: Conversing with ‘Conversations with Hank’

Hank, Everyone...

Conversations with Hank is written by Joy Hanford, who lives in Guimarães, Portugal with her husband and two children. Described as an “accidental parenting blog,” Conversations with Hank is a glimpse into Hanford’s life as a ...

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Crucified and Risen: A Theory of Christian Reincarnation

I’ve been speaking for weeks about “purgatorial predicament” as if it were the equivalent of the Hindu concept of the Karmic Predicament.  I haven’t adequately explained what the purgatorial predicament is.  The purgatorial predicament ...

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Why Patreon feels icky, and other musings

You might have noticed that I recently added a Patreon button to Under the Influence. I feel divided about it. Money's not the point: the site is a spiritual tool, primarily for me, but hopefully for you too.


On the other hand, when I finish a ...

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An Open Letter on the Holiday Season

To those who, like me, are perpetually recovering from their own assholery,

Over the Thanksgiving break, for the second time in the history of Under the Influence, I stopped writing the post I was working on.  The first time was on June  ...

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Ecclesiology and Ego, Trinity and Transformation

On October 26th, Under the Influence’s post “Christ, Christians and the Body Language of Transformation” defined right belief (orthodoxy), right practice (orthopraxy) and its own term “right transformation” (orthomorphosis.)  For good or ...

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Love, Service Devotion: A reading of Ram Dass and Trungpa Rinpoche

When I was int the monastery, I was guilty of “Spiritual Materialism.”  This is when my ego makes the things of the spirit into little merit badges that I go around collecting.  By and by, I realized that, by doing this, I was ignoring a ...

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Not Two: on the Non-Dual Mind of Christ

In Catholicism, as much as anything else, dualistic thinking is a problem. The Pharisees in Jesus’ time thought some practices holier than others, and felt free to judge those who didn’t behave as they expected. In modern times, to the extent ...

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