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A point comes in our search for meaning in life where we are ready to take a next step. We know there is a higher side to things, that the “day to day” is the water flowing under the bridge, here today gone tomorrow.

Traditionally people have sometimes turned to the spiritual life through various religious structures by withdrawing from physical worldly life, becoming nuns or monks as in Buddhism or Christianity, living in monasteries or in more extreme expressions as in the examples of Indian Yogis withdrawing into the proverbial cave and embracing the totally austere and solitary life for a time.

Wanted: A Rebirth of Ethics

Boris de Zirkoff – USA

Theosophy BdZ 2

Lesser known photo of Boris in his office, early 1950's

(Written in 1951!)

While world statesmen and politicians are dividing humanity into respective "spheres of influence", and the scientists of the world are inventing more and more powerful weapons for still greater slaughter, a solution of the one basic problem remains practically ignored.

It is the problem of the appalling lack of ethical integrity - a condition which affects every aspect of our modern life and penetrates into every stratum and level of our civilization.

Empathy in Action: Self-Knowledge Arises with Loving Deeds

Kenneth Small – USA

Theosophy KS 2

With some commentary based on Helena Blavatsky’s The Voice of the Silence

“Self-Knowledge is of loving deeds the child” (1)

In a current media editorial, it was recently expressed (September 2025) as a wake-up call, the writer advocated: “Don’t express empathy without action”. This is a timely insight applicable in today’s fractious world conditions, filled with contentious polarizing and competing ideas largely motivated by the rush for personal power. Conversely, we may say that it is imperative that “we don’t take action without empathy.” Reflecting on this conundrum, what more all-encompassing insights may the Wisdom Traditions offer for understanding ‘empathy in action’ today?

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The Wasted Life

Dara Eklund USA

Theosophy DE 2

Dara lecturing at Olcott, Wheaton in 2012

The most acute loneliness one can experience is estrangement from one's True Self. We are burdened with a sense of loss or dejection when that inner Voice or Presence is not heard or felt. Some call it Conscience. I have heard a depressed friend once pronounce, "I have no conscience." He meant that he had not awakened his own conscience. Therefore, he could not recognize it in others. Yet, even a hardened criminal has a spark of nobility. Gottfried de Purucker once declared in a Lecture of July 22, 1930:

Conscience is the working of your spiritual being, a spiritual manifestation of the inner god of you, managing to send some faint gleams of light and truth and harmony and love into the poor, heavy, material brain-mind in which most men live and suffer and die.

Habit and Change

Andrew Rooke – Australia

Theosophy AR BEES

There is an old saying which says: “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” But looking around at the state of the world today, if we want a better world in the future, we are definitely going to have to learn a whole new ‘barrel of tricks’ at every level of human behavior and endeavor.