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It strikes me that our name, "Guild for Psychological Studies," is a bit odd, in that we (collectively, at least) don't really "study psychology." Our main activity is seminars where we use what has come to be known as the "Guild method." The "axis" of  this method is between the participant (as an individual and as ego) and the content and questions placed in the center of the circle by the leader. The expected outcome, too, is primarily individual, expressed in terms of  "greater consciousness" and a deepening of the relationship between ego and Self. True, there is a group dynamic and the seminar is something like a temporary intentional community--but it is a community of people each tending their own garden, and perhaps comparing notes on weather and crop yields.
 

Lately in the Guild there has been some urgency expressed toward taking "the abyss" or "darkness" or "meaninglessness" more seriously.

One way to not take darkness seriously is to ignore it. Another way is to push it away as evil and an obstacle to goodness. Of course most of us are too sophisticated to do that: we have learned to not take darkness seriously by seeing it as something to be "integrated" and acknowledged as part of some greater whole!

The problem is that I/we don't usually give darkness enough time to speak in its own terms. We rush to learn lessons from it, draw conclusions. We come up with a mandala that is like a neutral atom in which positive and negative are perfectly balanced. Of course this atom is  inert and can't do much of anything of interest ... such as bond to another atom and form a tasty molecule.

Note: the following is in response both to the book by Kevin Kelly and to some of the ideas in Hal Childs's paper "Is There Life in Those Old Bones?"

I have just finished reading What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly. This title may seem strange to many people (what can a machine or tool "want"?) but perhaps it might not be so strange to Guild people. After all, some of us ask "what does Soul want?" Such language is sometimes decried as being anthropomorphic (treating the non-human as human), but as we will see, there is equal danger in being anthropocentric (assuming that only humans can have real "purposes.")

A review of

The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow

If you want to get to the edge of science, there's no place like astrophysics. In this latest book Hawking (who needs no introduction) and his co-author make the latest assessment of the quest of science to develop a "Theory of Everything" that could explain why our universe is the way it is.

The latest news turns out to be rather surprising. After providing a clear, accessible review of astrrophysics from ancient Greece to the latest string theories (no math needed), Hawking and Mlodinow suggest that there not only is no final "Theory of Everything" but that it is quite possible no single comprehensive theory can even exist.

The description for the 2011 summer seminar "Who I Am I Must Become" is now online. I would urge you to click here  and read it with fresh eyes, as though you've never heard of Records or even been to a Guild seminar. See what response comes ...