If you’ve been reading here a good long while, you remember my review of The Mist Filled Path, a book by Frank MacEowen that struck my life with great force a year and a half ago. Frank’s message came to me at just the right time, and I found that it resolved a lot of issues with the direction of my spiritual path, as well as laying down rich soil for growth. Perhaps the most profound gift the book gave me was a deepening of my sense of comfort and rightness in the label ‘druid’, which I had adopted as my own just a few months before, and the path circumscribed by that term.

But people are not labels, as Frank makes very clear by his own example. His path has wound among Zen Buddhism, shamanic studies, Celtic spirituality, and Jungian psychology, with a dash of poetry thrown in. He has undergone the ’shaman sickness’, participated in the Lakota Sun Dance, and slept alone in burial mounds in Scotland, listening to the song of the world.

Frank’s latest book, The Celtic Way of Seeing: Meditations on the Irish Spirit Wheel, is vastly different from The Mist Filled Path. The latter is a journeyman’s chronicle, a spiritual travelogue; but The Celtic Way of Seeing is a great map of the soul. Frank looks at the ancient divisions of Ireland, and the connections between that sacred physical space and the sacred spiritual space within us. It’s a book that packs a lot of punch, especially for those of us inclined to think in terms of maps and landscapes. I’ll be writing a full review soon.

In the meantime, I’m absolutely ecstatic to present this interview with Frank, in which he very graciously opens himself up with characteristic insight and honesty on all kinds of topics. I asked Frank five questions, and I’m going to present four of them here; the fifth I’ll save for the review of The Celtic Way of Seeing, since it will make more sense in that context. And now I’m going to scurry out of the way and let you jump right into the interview! Read the rest of this entry »

In 1997 I was in graduate school, and I was coming to that dreaded point where you have to decide on a dissertation topic. I enjoyed linguistics, and there were dozens of topics I could have chosen; but whenever I asked myself, “Is THIS what I want to study the rest of my life?”, I had a sinking feeling that I was a terrible fraud, and that I was in the wrong place entirely. I didn’t know what I should be doing, but graduate school just didn’t seem right anymore. What should I be doing? What was the purpose of my schooling? What was the purpose of my life? Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I decided to gather up a list of web articles on the Law of Attraction for my mother, who has no web access (by choice) and is in serious difficulty financially (not by choice — at least, not conscious choice). She is in an interesting position spiritually — she’s a Zen Buddhist, and so in theory she doesn’t care what her financial situation is; but, given that she can’t realistically wander the suburban streets of Greensboro, NC, with a begging bowl, she’s a bit stuck. She has been trying to use the Law of Attraction under various forms and names for years, to little avail.

Since I was gathering up the links anyway, I thought I’d post them here, in case anyone was interested. You’ll see there’s a whole pile of Steve Pavlina there, and some of Slade’s fantastic work, too. Read the rest of this entry »