religion

Please note that this post has been revised to reflect commentary on Jill Bolte Taylor’s reliance on the right brain—left brain model. See the note at the end of this post. If you have any interest at all in the relationship between the brain and your awareness of who you are, please go straight to […]

There is a longing for spiritual closeness just as there is a longing for an emotional bonding to another human being. But it is a form of longing, of human need, that I spent years ignoring. I’ve written here about longings arising from depression and inner devastation, emptiness and loss. Those longings tend to break […]

Ever since reading about Bill Wilson’s struggle with alcohol and the role that religious experience played in his recovery, I’ve had hope that spirituality can also be decisive in undoing the impact of long-term depression. William James, whose Varieties of Religious Experience was so important to Wilson and other founders of AA, wrote in that […]