Category: Distilled Insights

For much of my life, I felt a responsibility that burdened me beyond endurance, which was that somehow I had to save the world. I can’t say for sure, but I think that sense of responsibility came from reading Abdu’l-Baha. He emphasises how Baha’is must help others, must sacrifice themselves for others, must always be…

I listened to the interesting YouTube talk Reflections on the Long Healing Prayer, given by psychiatrist Dr John Woodall. Apparently, he has done a lot of work with people suffering from trauma and anxiety. He makes some interesting observations about the long healing prayer. One of these is that the three attributes that open each…

Inspired by what’s happening in Ukraine, I recently read the 1919 Tablet to The Hague. What does Abdu’l-Baha say about peace and how to get it? I was surprised at what I found. Below I give an outline of Abdu’l-Baha’s argument. When it is reduced to its basic structure, interesting ideas emerge. After complimenting his…

If you were browsing on Amazon and came across this book, you would find that it does not have a description. By looking ‘inside’ the book, you find a blurb on the back cover, which simply reads: “Mother of all Evil is an intimate account of an Iranian girl growing up in Tehran during the…

Many excellent resources to do with trauma are available on YouTube (this, from Gabor Mate), for example). Through them, I discovered what trauma is and how it affects the body and the brain and one’s behaviour. I learned that trauma is any experience a person has that overwhelms their ability to deal with it. Usually,…

By Baha’i journalism, I mean journalism about issues to do with the Baha’i Faith and its community. As I see it, there is no Baha’i journalism, or very little. I think that is because the Baha’i concept of ‘unity’ is understood to mean that Baha’is cannot disagree with each other in public, and may not…

Do you have a favourite attribute of God? As I pass through different moods and understandings, I think to myself that, for example, the Clement, is my favourite attribute. The All-sufficing is one I’ve spent a lot of time dwelling on, for obvious reasons. But the one I keep going back to is the All-Powerful….

Telling people about the Baha’i Faith means telling stories. Everytime someone talks about the Faith, they are telling a story about it that they believe to be true. It is important to see this, because until we see that telling stories is really the nuts of bolts of teaching, we are not in a position…

We know that Baha’u’llah is divinely inspired, but what about everyone else? Abdu’l-Baha is clear that ordinary people can also access divine inspiration – but, of course, in a much more limited way. The inspiration available to the average person is all that they need to make progress in their allocated world of eternity. Ordinary…

A narrative of identity is a story that we tell ourselves repeatedly, which is so fundamental that it defines who we are. Nations, cultures, genders, peoples all have narratives of identity. I have given much thought to the narratives of identity that are used by the Baha’i community. They appear in the places where Baha’is…