Moore's The Soul of Christmas ships this weekend

Order Thomas Moore's new book The Soul of Christmas to read how "The infant in the manger symbolizes new life, the potential all human beings have to be a new kind of being dedicated to agape, a love of the other — whoever that 'other' may be." Listen to Amazon's short introductory sample from the audio CD version of the book, read by Thomas Moore. For your gift list?


Barque coverage
9 Aug 2016 "Moore's The Soul of Christmas available for Kindle"
24 Mar 2016 "Child in the manger may be most radical reformer"

"Feel the crisp edge of your reality" then be quiet

How do you act when pulled over for speeding? Thomas Moore shares his zazen-style response in "No Need to Explain", his September-October 2016 column for Spirituality & Health magazine. Moore suggests:

"Being simply with what is, you feel yourself and sense the moment. The edges of your experience are intact. You own your world, which is never perfect and is so perfect that way. So delicious. So right.
...
The real art of being with what is is to know when to stop talking. Most add-ons are defensive, explanatory, and escapist. You want to speak without speaking, or confess without being guilty. Better to feel the crisp edge of your reality and be with it, weeds and all.
...
It is so tempting to explain and defend and be in the right. But it might be far better to keep quiet. Use a few simple words. Do what seems unreasonable. Live in such a way that you don’t have to be innocent all the time."

Read Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki to help with encounters:

"Our mind should be soft and open enough to understand things as they are."

Use your imagination to create your desired life

Today's blog post "A New Renaissance" at Patheos explores Marcilio Ficino's practical remedies for emotional problems.

"Today we tend to face our emotional problems by trying to figure them out and then changing our way of life.  Ficino put more trust in the simple things around us and our relationship with the concrete world. He showed how to use the imagination to see metaphors and poetry everywhere and use those metaphors to address our moods and feelings. The painters who studied with him didn’t just express themselves or try to capture realistic portraits and landscapes. They made amulets of their work, so that art works were sources of healing. Art as medicine."

A soul mate relationship is a daimonic invitation

Today the Jung Society of Utah posts "Interview: Thomas Moore on Soul Mates" before Moore's events in Salt Lake City, Utah on Friday 21 October and Saturday 22 October, 2016.

Moore emphasizes points in this interview that often are glossed over in discussions about soul mates:
— Soul mates may be very close friends, not necessarily lovers.
— Friendship may be the best model for a soulful relationship.
— Ending this relationship may be necessary.
— Features of soul are challenging and it has a lot of shadow.
— Being soul mates is not the same as being compatible.
— Soul mate relationships may help us to "become our most authentic selves".
— Attraction includes the daimonic:
"You respond to the passions you feel that pass through you. You are not responsible so much as you are responsive. You respond to the invitations that are daimonic."
— Those in relationship may not know what to do with the prima materia of passions and desires:
“One of the purposes of relationship is to create an alchemical vessel in which that raw stuff can be cooked and sorted out. So you sort out the raw material that is in you, and in a way you’re also helping your partner sort out his or her material.”
— The connection is mysterious and mystical.
— The eternal is part of the temporality of the relationship.

Barque coverage
1 Sept 2016 Meet Thomas Moore in Salt Lake City, Utah

Imagination, arts and spirituality may nurture soul

The C. G. Jung Society in Seattle hosts Thomas Moore's three hour public event Care of the Soul in the 21st Century on Sunday 23 October, 2016 starting at 3:00 p.m. at Seattle Public Theater.

The program description includes:

"Our society tends to be materialistic, leaving little room for soul, and is spirit-driven. In his early essay “Peaks and Vales,” James Hillman distinguishes between soul and spirit and explores how both are essential. Today generally people don’t appreciate this difference and therefore lose sight of soul. A significant route to soul involves developing a spiritual way of life that is individually captivating and rooted in this world. 

This three hour lecture and discussion explores these and other ways to be soulful in a time of intense technologizing of daily life and urgent preoccupation with the practical task of making a living. The society is also more materialistic and mechanistic than ever, and so one task is to devise our own form of the ancient monastic practice of contemptus mundi, resistance to established values. You can’t be an unconscious participant in today’s society and care for your soul. In other ways, though, we live in a time of promise. Imagination, the arts and new forms of spirituality can bring the soul alive and make life more profoundly intelligent and joyous."

When: Sunday 23 October 2016, 3:00 p.m.
Venue: Seattle Public Theater
7312 W. Green Lake Dr N.
Seattle WA 98103

Host: C. G. Jung Society, Seattle
General Admission: $40
Seattle Jung Society Members: $30

Learn how to contribute to a more humane world

Spend an evening talking about soul with Thomas Moore in Seattle, Washington on Wednesday 26 October, 2016 from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. in the Sanctuary at the Center for Spiritual Living. Reserve your seat online.

When: Wednesday 26 October  7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Venue: Sanctuary
Center for Spiritual Living
5801 Sand Point Way NE
Seattle WA 98105

Admission: $35.00

"Center for Spiritual Living — Seattle is thrilled to host renowned author and modern mystic, Thomas Moore, for this very special  evening lecture and discussion. His bestselling book, Care of the Soul, is considered by many to be essential reading for those on any spiritual path."

"To be human and to contribute to a more humane world we need to learn about the soul, about our depth and the precious vitality inherent in the world itself and in all its particulars." — Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life

Meet Thomas Moore in Salt Lake City, Utah

The Jung Society of Utah describes next month's visit by Thomas Moore on Friday 21 October and Saturday 22 October. Friday evening Moore talks about Soul Mates at the public library in downtown Salt Lake City starting at 7:00 p.m.

Saturday's full-day workshop is at Wasatch Retreat Center from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
75 South 200 East
Salt Lake City, UT 84111

Register for the Experiencing Deep Love workshop online.
Early Discount:
$105.00 ($109.67 w/service fee) Lunch on your own
General Fee:
$120.00 ($125.19 w/service fee) Lunch on your own

The workshop description:

"Most of us hunger for intimacy and at the same struggle for happiness in relationship. Thomas Moore's Soul Mates came out in the early 90s, suggesting that we might be better off bringing soul to marriage and partnerships than seeing love as a problem to be solved. We might appreciate imperfection and honor each other's mysterious natures and destinies.

This workshop aims at happiness together and yet give a place to disillusionment, anger, misunderstanding and thoughts of giving up. It finds opportunity in the confusing longing in most people for both intimacy and separateness, and suggests that marriage is a sharing of differences. Ultimately it's a matter of seeing love as complex and transforming.

Thomas also examines the narratives and images we take from our parents and other important people and bring them to our adult loves. He looks at the shadow of love, the self-centered and neurotic motives we bring to it, with the idea of transforming these matters into soul."