Moore writes about cleansing the soul for Lent

U.S. Catholic reposts Thomas Moore's Lenten message about "Cleansing the soul". Moore writes, "Thinning out and simplifying a busy life helps create a focus on things that really matter at this time of year: reflection on suffering, deep Easter optimism, personal renewal, and hope. Today, in a time of world conflict and economic pressure, everyone knows how precious and elusive a genuine sense of hope can be." He suggests, "Lent should bring you to a point of spiritual intensity so that the Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter touches the mystery of your own existence."

This message is part of the series, "40 Days to a new you". Access is limited for some of the entries. This passage first appears in 2004.

Read Care of the Soul excerpt about spirituality

The May 1993 issue of Psychology Today offers a long excerpt about spirituality from Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul. In it, Moore suggests,

"Just as the mind digests ideas and produces intelligence, the soul feeds on life and digests it, creating wisdom and character out of experience. Renaissance Neoplatonists said that the outer world serves as a means of deep spirituality and that the transformation of ordinary experience into the stuff of soul is all-important. If the link between life experience and deep imagination is inadequate, then we are left with a division between life and soul, and such a division will always manifest itself in symptoms."

Section titles in excerpt:
Psychological Modernism
Everyday Sacredness
Maintenance of the Holy

Excerpt:
Three individual pages
One continuous page

The last paragraph states, "We have no idea yet of the positive contribution that could be made to us individually and socially by a more soulful religion and theology. Our culture in is need of theological reflection that does not advocate a particular tradition, but tends the soul's need for spiritual direction. In order to accomplish this goal, we must gradually bring soul back to religion."

Readers who enjoy Moore's Care of the Soul may want to read his The Soul's Religion next.

Watch Thomas Moore at Antioch University

Thomas Moore’s December 2008 presentation at Antioch University New England, "Building Successful Relationships Using Spiritual Principles" is available for download as a four-part podcast or as a 70-minutes streaming video. According to a university description of the evening:

"More than three-hundred people came to hear Dr. Thomas Moore, bestselling author and practicing psychologist, speak about spirituality and relationships during a fascinating evening talk co-hosted by Antioch New England and MAPS Counseling Services. Moore has an easy, relaxed delivery style that kept the crowd listening intently to his thoughtful insights about the nature of love, the soul, spirituality in the modern world, and the joys and difficulties of relationships.

Dr. Moore uses his wide reading, deep erudition, and wry humor to explore what it means to be a spiritual being in the modern world. He joked that when people are disappointed to hear he has not read a particular author, he tells them he does not read anything written in the last five hundred years. While it’s true that he does often cite Heraclitus, Erasmus, or Buddha, he is also well-versed in the writings of Carl Jung…"

Thomas Moore has appeared on The Oprah Show, The Today Show, Good Morning America, and Sunday Morning on CBS.

Beliefnet features Moore in video about religion

In its Preachers and Teachers series, Beliefnet offers a 2:39 minute video of Thomas Moore talking about nurturing your spirit and soul . According to the video description, Moore says "... it's possible to bring our soul - the deepest part of ourselves - in touch with our spirituality without moving away from everyday life and experience."

Spiritual with material manifests the incarnate

In his Deep Spirit column for Resurgence (issue 247 March-April 2008), Thomas Moore urges readers, "Pray to Gaia". After describing divinities associated with Nature in ancient Greece, he continues,

"Renaissance philosophers said that you don’t have to be pagan to appreciate the spirituality of Nature. These various gods and goddesses are facets, they said, of the God many honour as the monotheistic source of life and meaning. In other words, you see God when you stop to wonder at a copper sunset or a misty moon. Nature is the avenue towards nurturing your spirit. It is the way in which the divine most powerfully shows itself.

There is a tendency, even among environmentalists, to adopt the 20th-century way of seeing Nature, as a source of material commodities needed for the heroic building of culture. But that isn’t sufficient motivation for preserving Nature, because it doesn’t address our essence: what we need to survive as humans. We are people of body, soul and spirit. We need constant feeding of our vision, moral sensibility and piety, and if Nature is at all diminished, our spirituality goes into eclipse."

Moore suggests reconciliation between monotheists and pagans: "As long as we keep spirituality and the material world separated, the Earth will be threatened," while offering short prayers and rituals to shake the unconsciousness of our times.

Thank you, Barque member Ken Blackham, for bringing this to our attention.

Reconciling feelings of pride and worthlessness

The table of contents for the November-December 2007 issue of Spirituality and Health magazine shows Thomas Moore’s most recent column, "Sacred Time with Children."

Available now in the S&H Articles area is his May-June 2007 column, "Living with Opposites" that may be read online after free registration with the S&H site. In this column, Moore talks about reconciling feelings of pride and worthlessness:

"Uncomfortable, symptomatic emotions are usually not character flaws, but raw material in need of refinement. If you worry about pride, yet feel worthless, you need to refine both feelings. Raw pride can’t handle defeat and runs away from it; raw worthlessness implodes. Going with the symptom of pride can help you locate a more expansive self-love; following worthlessness may lead to healthy questioning. Going with the symptom, you become a "big" person.

Most people I know are too small. They believe they have a limited destiny and little to give to the world. They don’t see how their small ideas can make a real contribution. Transferring their personal authority to someone else — a leader, a writer, or an organization — they give away too much. Identifying themselves as followers, they look to someone "above" them for permission to be who they are or do what they want, and they may draw their confidence from their associations rather than from themselves."

Moore then talks about a related desire for recognition:

"Closely related to the minor neurosis of pride and worthlessness is the desire for fame and recognition. Some people crave the fame and finances of the privileged few, and their painful awareness of being a "nobody" keeps them from accomplishing much.

Again, go with the symptom — the desire for attention. You may have to study, train, and get experience so you can accomplish something and enjoy the appropriate recognition. Sometimes a desire for fame is simply the heart speaking. Most of us need recognition. Recognition and fame are worthy goals for your dedication and hard work.

Parents, teachers, and leaders of all kinds might take this lesson to heart. It’s important to offer words of praise and recognition. It does no good to keep your feelings of gratitude and appreciation to yourself. We all need and even crave recognition. It helps us move on to the next job, and it makes us just a little bigger."

He concludes, "Pride and craving attention can be problems; nevertheless, they are an invitation to be big even in the small contours of our lives. The solution to having a big ego is to have a big heart."

Thomas Moore's Spirituality and Health columns are linked in the Barque: Thomas Moore's Work sidebar.