Soul's Code

Congratulations to Michael Hampson, whose photo, “The Kiss,” won the first Soul’s Code Show us your Peak Experience photo contest. As Michael explains, “This is Drew and Katie at a benefit I organized. The band had just finished their set. He was so happy to share the moment with her.” [It almost looks like it could be Adrian Grenier in the HBO series, Entourage.]

Michael has won a $50 gift certificate to www.SoundsTrue.com, the iTunes of audio courses, books, videos, and music for all things spiritual.

GUEST COLUMN: AMY LEASK

I’ll admit that spiritually speaking, I’m still groping my way through the universe. My soul may have been around the block a few times, but with respect to its understanding of the how and what and why of my existence . . . it still has a great deal of homework to do.

I’ve always taken comfort in the philosophy of William James, who created a long laundry list of characteristics for mystical experience, but who also insisted that contact with the divine was not reserved for the high and mighty. In his view, everyday folks had equal access to the great hereafter, and being human and curious were sufficient conditions for finding it.

BY HUNTER REYNOLDS, resident astrologer at California’s celebrated, Harbin Hot Springs, does a reading of the Democratic nominee for president

Choosing a president is embarrassingly similar to courting a mate. In the initial stages, the temptation is to disqualify, or idealize. The astrologer’s job is to help you find the middle path. As passionately supportive as I am of Barak Obama, when I stare at the symbolic map of his psyche and consider his unique blessings and blind spots, I am sobered. He — like all of us — is a cracked vessel.

The Esalen Institute is where legends like Joseph Campbell, Abraham Maslow and Fritz Perls did some of their seminal work.

It’s one reason we call Esalen “the cradle of West Coast civilization” in the Soul’s Code slideshow, The 10 Best Spiritual Resorts.

We ranked Esalen No. 2 in that series because of its unparalleled physical amenities — like these luxurious cliff-hanger mineral baths that jut off Big Sur over Pacific breakers.

But California’s wildfires are now within a mile of Esalen’s magical property, and the remaining skeleton staff of 50-odd people can see flames on the ridges of the coastal mountains (the image above was taken by one of them from the Esalen grounds).

GUEST COLUMN: VICKI WOODYARD

Vicki is a spiritual teacher and writer who lives in Atlanta, GA

Besides love, what one trait have you noticed in couples that have maintained a successful relationship for many years?

The question in the headline is a common one on dating sites, which probe people for their relationship attitudes when filling in the boxes in their profiles. I was asked the question not on a dating site, but by this site because I was happily married to the same man for thirty-eight years. And I am going to tell you something that will make me blush.

GUEST POEM: HUNTER REYNOLDS

Hunter is an astrologer whose practice is based at the California spiritual retreat, Harbin Hot Springs

Here at this strip club,
where the seductive maidens of phenomena
undulate on the lap . . .

News that Madonna retained Paul McCartney’s divorce attorney has now stoked revelations that her marriage to film director Guy Ritchie (left) is on the rocks because they’ve parted paths in their spiritual practice.

Forgive us for thinking that a spiritual path was all about bringing people closer together — like, getting them out of their heads and into their hearts

The story is that Madonna has delved deeper into Kabbalah; Ritchie was also into the Judaic mystical tradition to the point of even helping to school their kids in it, but has now called it quits.

The irony is that critics say that the fiercely-secular Madonna practices a kind of Kabbalah Lite, a watered down version suitable for stars.

The mind that is so sure of itself and who it thinks we are — and who others are — goes into shock at the thought of its own extinction. It’s terrified by that moment when it goes from “On” — to forever, .

It’s most shocking when the mind’s fear of mortality is projected onto familiar figures who die suddenly.

George Carlin, June 23, may his soul be sanctified:

Mr. Carlin was born in New York City in 1937. “I grew up in New York wanting to be like those funny men in the movies and on the radio,” he said. “My grandfather, mother and father were gifted verbally, and my mother passed that along to me. She always made sure I was conscious of language and words.”

Camping out in a tent in California’s coastal ranges, near the spot where Robert Louis Stevenson honeymooned, puts a different spin on the myth of mother earth

BY SMADAR DE LANGE — Can you escape from society? Does being a hermit have a transcendental value? Does nature unlock the secrets to spirituality?

There is an American tradition, going back to Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond — and re-expressed in Sean Penn’s 2007 movie, Into the Wild — that honors rustic solitude as something sacred.

The concept of freedom in Western Civ has gotten mixed up in the Wild West with the image of the Marlboro Man, the stoic dude riding in solitude toward the horizon — or in another cultural image, a mountaineer challenging the immense force of nature, all alone at the peak of a mountain. (Or, conversely, Daniel Day Lewis with a pick inside a shale shaft in his Oscar-winner, There Will Be Blood).

A house in a small town in Wisconsin where a mass-murder took place last October is being demolished by the owner, local clergy and government.

Soul’s Code contributor Cyndi Ingle asked in a recent essay on peak experiences, Do you need a building to feel spiritual?

Conversely, can a structure be evil? We believe, but cannot prove, the answer is “no”