Category Archives: Transpersonal experiences

A Glimpse of Infinity

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After graduating from the University of California Berkeley in 1987, I moved to Fukuyama, Japan—about 400 miles south of Tokyo—to teach English. People often ask why I decided to go to Japan, but the reality is that Japan chose me. At that time, I longed to take a year off and travel abroad. Having applied for English teaching positions in more than fifty countries, the school in Fukuyama was the one that invited me to come.

I arrived knowing only three words in Japanese: hajimashite (nice to meet you), arigatoo (thank you), and sayonara (goodbye), thanks to a Japanese friend who helped me learn some helpful phraes before I left. I practiced constantly.

The author at the Sanzen-in Temple in Kyoto in 1987.

I ended up staying two years in this beautiful country. I learned to speak Japanese and to read enough of the language to decipher grocery labels and train schedules, and I was blessed with making many Japanese friends, some of whom I am still in touch with 35 years later.

You can read more about my time in Japan and the transpersonal experience that I had while visiting Sanzen-in Temple in Kyoto. This story was published as a “Spiritual Journey” by Unity Magazine (September/October 2023).

Feel free to enjoy and share “A Glimpse of Infinity.” (Note that the graphic makes more sense if you open the pdf and view it in two pages!)

CALombard A Glimpse of Infinity Unity Magazine Sept Oct 2023Download

 

Beauty as a Divine Imprint

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John
As an expression of beauty, awe, and awakening, art has always played a great part along our journey to our Higher Self. Throughout the world, holy places have been built to hold the polar tensions of spirit and matter, inner and outer space and light, as well as the community that shares the transcendent experience within the architectural space.

Assagioli noted that:

“Matter is the highest form of Spirit and Spirit is the lowest form of Matter.”

In this way, spirit seeks matter to express the full beauty of the transcendent. Assagioli also noted that Plato, Plotinus, and Christian mystics have recognized and proclaimed that “beauty is the essential attribute of the Supreme.” Continue reading →

Two Black Women’s Voices Once Heard

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Jarena Lee and Julia Foote

They were two women preachers during a time when only men preached. They were black preachers who preached to both slaves and slave-holders. They were black women preachers who inspired men and women, believers and ‘backsliders,’ Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists and Presbyterians, lawyers, doctors and magistrates.

Their names were Jarena Lee (1783–1855?) and Julia Foote (1823-1901), two of the first African American women to achieve the right to preach in the newly formed nation. Overcoming both gender and racial barriers, both women preached widely over great distances. A widow and mother of two children, Lee traveled 2325 miles, walking many of them, to preach 178 sermons. Defying her husband and parents, Foote was a deacon and minister for five decades, traveling to the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic region, California, the Midwest, and eventually Canada.

“I had nothing to do but open my mouth and the Lord filled it.”

Jarena Lee
Continue reading →