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Astrology from beautiful midcoast Maine
“Courage affirms the presence of the infinite in everything finite” - Paul Tillich
Most people are familiar with the practice of affirmations – writing or saying or thinking repeatedly a phrase that represents our desired reality – but truthfully, most of us don’t like them. I don’t like them either, but I have made what my uncle calls a “liberating discipline” of them. Why do we resist them, and how do we push through that resistance and make them effective?
The first stage of resistance is disbelief. We won’t practice affirmations because we believe they won’t work. This resistance is not entirely justified, and it is also impractical. It is not justified because quantum physics provides some defense for their efficacy: affirmations are a tool to shift our position as an observer, they give us practice observing a different reality, and therefore they increase the probability of a new reality. Stubborn disbelief is also unjustified because there are many people out there who will offer anecdotal evidence supporting the practice – maybe not scientific proof, but suggestive enough to form a hypothesis and do your own research. It is impractical, because the fact that you are rejecting affirmations as a solution means you have an unsolved problem – probably a stubbornly unsolved problem – and affirmations are a very cheap potential solution. Even the intensive version of the practice that I’m going to recommend here requires a pen, a notebook, and fifteen to thirty minutes per day for two separate weeks out of a given month. Compared to the scope of the problems you likely have in mind – poverty, unrequited love, spiritual angst, ill health, lack of confidence, hating your job – this investment is extremely minimal. Even if you are 99% convinced there is no possible mechanism for affirmations to work, remember that against all reasonable odds millions of people buy lottery tickets every day because two dollars is a tiny price to pay for even the infinitesimal chance of becoming filthy rich. Even if you are very skeptical, look at affirmations as your two-dollar ticket to the possibility of a joyful life.
Once we sit down with our notebook, pen in hand, there is likely still resistance. You are performing the task, but you feel painfully stupid, even ashamed. You wouldn’t want anyone to see what you are writing. This probably means you chose your affirmation well: it directly, explicitly contradicts the reality you live and believe in. Rejecting accepted reality is heresy, and heretics are spiritual criminals. Creating a new world, a new reality, is an act of god, a miracle: no one said it was going to come easily and naturally. Part of your task here is to proceed in a state of discomfort. Buy that two-dollar ticket even though your anti-gambling grandma is looking on, even though your statistician friend is telling you there’s no way you’re going to win. For the possibility of a joyful life, you can stand a little emotional discomfort for fifteen to thirty minutes a day. It is painful to write these statements because you don’t believe in them. You also don’t have the reality they represent because you don’t believe in them. Writing them down is a path toward learning to believe them. Believing them is the path toward living them. And what do you have to lose: half an hour that you might otherwise spend watching a show? Your dignity, which somehow rides on clinging to a Newtonian/mechanistic understanding of the world? An inkling of hope for a life that you already don’t have?
Maybe you have tried affirmations before and they didn’t work, and you don’t want to live out the definition of insanity by repeatedly trying the same thing expecting different results. Consider trying again using the techniques I suggest here, which are more regimented than typical approaches. Yes, they require more effort than pinning a card next to your mirror. Results often follow effort: quality in, quality out. My technique started with a technique recommended by astrologer Donna Cunningham to release yourself from restricting vows made in past lives. Our personal prejudices against certain words can also create unnecessary resistance, so choose your own phrasing if that helps to convince you to start. If you don’t like the “vows in past lives” description, you can choose “realities in parallel universes” or “subconscious psychological blocks” or “the sins of my past” or “childhood trauma” – whatever words work for you to describe an ongoing resistance to happiness in your life. Personally, I don’t even like the word “affirmations”, though I’m using it here because it is a commonly recognized term for this sort of practice. I prefer to think of it as a form of spellcasting. If you’re staunchly rational, you may prefer “rewriting your subconscious script” or simply “daily reminders.”
QUANTITY IS QUALITY. Not always true, but it really helps with affirmations. The lazy man’s affirmation is to write it on a card and pin it somewhere you’ll see it every day, or to put it on your phone background, or maybe to go as far as writing it five times in a row in your journal a few times and calling it a day. Why isn't it working?! The card is ineffective because when we read something it is external to us, and we are reacting to it; every time we write something we are creating it internally as a thought. Our voice saying something to ourselves is much stronger when we write than when we read. But writing something just a handful of times doesn’t stand a chance of affecting the fabric of your reality compared to the number of times a day that you’re subconsciously telling yourself the story you believe now. That’s like putting a drop of vinegar into a quart of water and expecting to taste it, or living your life at your desk and expecting to be in shape because you run across your office once a day. You have to put in some time and effort. You have to say it over and over again to start to believe it.
HARNESS NUMEROLOGY. Our own mind is a very powerful tool for reinventing our reality, but our mind does not operate in a vacuum, it operates in a network of other minds that are also affecting reality. This can work against us: it’s certainly harder to make more money at your job – even if you believe very strongly that you should – if your boss believes very strongly that you shouldn’t. Your boss’s mind is also real and powerful (not to mention society's collective beliefs about the value of labor that manifest as market rates for various professional roles). But we can harness collective beliefs to give much more power to our personal mind and actions, including the traditional powers assigned to numbers. Donna Cunningham’s affirmation technique requires writing your statement seventy times a day for seven days, harnessing the power of the number seven as well as the power of disciplined repetition. Seven is a lucky number, a prime number and therefore whole and perfect. In astrology the septile (51.4°, or ⅐ of the zodiac wheel) is an aspect that represents a mystical and revolutionary relationship between the planets, one with magical and unexpected results.
CLEAR IT OUT, THEN FILL IT IN. Donna’s technique involves rejecting the vows that restrict us. This is an important step: we have to dismantle old stories as we build new ones, or we will have two conflicting stories and that can be very stressful to the psyche. Trust me on this one: I have Sun and Mercury in Pisces in the 12th house, and a heavily aspected Neptune conjunct my midheaven. Holding and uniting multiple stories is a life purpose for me and a valuable gift, granting me passage onto bridges to different realities and allowing me a great capacity for loving acceptance of others – but I still find it tiring and difficult, and I have to be careful to discern when it supports compassion or imagination and when it approaches the brink of lunacy and self-destruction. It’s definitely not a state of mind I would recommend to anyone who isn't built for it.
We can’t stop at dismantling the old story: this leaves a void, which will fill up indiscriminately if we don’t choose a replacement story (“Nature abhors a vacuum.”) So I recommend a two stage process. In the first week, choose an affirmation that clears vows or dismantles old stories or somehow rejects what you don’t want. Write this affirmation seventy times a day for seven days. Choose your phrasing carefully: many practitioners caution against negative affirmations because repeating the things you don’t want has the potential to cement them in your mind rather than clear them. In the statement “I am not poor” the word “poor” has the most emotional resonance. So even in this stage, try to choose positive language. Donna recommends sentences like “I am free from any vow of poverty I ever made.” The word “free” has a lot of emotional resonance, and the word “vow” reminds us of the element of personal choice, taking the pressure off the word “poverty” to carry the sentence. “I reject…” is also a strong way to start your phrase if past-life-vow language really makes you cringe. In your second week of affirmations, choose a positive affirmation to fill the plate you have cleared with something careful and deliberate. Think carefully about what you are really wishing for! In my ongoing example of poverty, money does not buy happiness. That doesn’t mean it’s bad or unwise to wish for, but you’re probably really asking for something bigger when you want to shift away from poverty, so don’t think small and just ask for money. Money by itself could come at a price you don’t want to pay: a job you hate, or your honor, or broken relationships. You probably want money to bring you security, peace, pleasure, the sensation of plenty, the capacity for generosity, etc. Think about the root needs below the surface desire when composing your affirmation (it’s fine to mention the surface desire itself too).
HARNESS THE LUNAR CYCLES. Start this process just after the full moon, as the waning moon helps to drain away the unwanted. Wait until the moon has fully entered the zodiac sign following the sign it occupied when full, and spend its time in that sign, and maybe even the following one, composing your negative affirmation in your head. Then you can begin your seven days any time before the last quarter mark. Precisely at or just before the new moon (but not before the moon is fully occupying the sign it will occupy when new), burn these pages. Once the moon has fully entered the zodiac sign following the sign it occupied when new, begin composing your positive affirmations: the power of the waxing moon to build energy will support this work. Then begin your second seven days any time before the first quarter mark. You can simply keep your positive affirmations in your notebook, or plant those pages like seeds at your threshold – or at this point it would be appropriate to write the affirmation on a card and pin it up as a reminder of the work you’ve already done, instead of expecting the card to do the work for you by itself. When I say to wait until the moon has “fully entered” a sign, I mean you should avoid beginning a cycle of affirmation, or burning negative affirmations, or planting or otherwise cementing positive affirmations, when the moon is “void of course” – this is the period when the moon is transitioning between two zodiac signs and is not aspecting any planets, and it is traditionally a time to rest, not a time to move projects forward. Void of course tables will readily pop up on a Google search, or you can use an app like TimePassages.
COMMIT. Reality has no reason to pay attention to you if you don’t show it you mean business about changing it. This practice requires fifteen to thirty minutes a day, depending on the length of your affirmation and how quickly you write (write longhand, don’t type to save time: the mind-body connection matters and writing long-hand involves your body in the affirmation more than typing). You can make the time, so don’t decide to make the attempt until you are committed to making the time. Don’t allow yourself bullshit excuses for skipping a day. If you’re busy all the time, wake up fifteen minutes earlier or go to bed fifteen minutes later. If you are forgetful, set an alarm on your phone to remind you. Park at Walmart for a while on the way home from work. Hide in your closet so your family doesn’t interrupt you. Don’t try to break the task up into multiple chunks by doing some at the drive-through and some on your lunch break: this weakens the numerological power of the seventy-fold repetition. If you really mean it about change, you can find fifteen to thirty consecutive minutes to devote to this practice. Fear and resistance and shame are sneaky. Don’t let them win.
ALLOW YOUR MIND TO WANDER. After all this stern talk about commitment and discipline, here’s an easy out! You don’t have to hold your focus to the grindstone while writing affirmations. Once you get into the pattern of writing a statement, your brain will carry on with the motions pretty easily even if half of you is thinking about something else. By all means, spend some of this writing time deliberately imagining what your life would be like if these wishes came true. But it’s actually better not to consciously focus like this the whole time: it’s pretty rare that you are consciously telling yourself the stories that keep you in your present reality, so the biggest task is retraining your subconscious mind, reinventing the stories your mind is telling in the background while you’re thinking about other things. So go ahead and think about whatever you like, including whatever is going on in your life that contradicts the affirmation (notice when you are thinking about this, and use the opportunity to imagine different outcomes). Occasionally, pull your attention gently back to the affirmation: notice if your body is carrying discomfort or resistance somewhere, and focus your attention on that part of your body while you write the affirmation. You may notice that you are holding your breath while you write: this is also your body showing resistance to the new reality. Consciously take deep breaths while writing your affirmation a few times, and then allow your mind to wander again.
LISTEN FOR ANSWERS AND OFFERS, AND SAY YES. Affirmations are much more likely to cause a shift than a revolution. If you follow this practice seeking wealth and then buy a lottery ticket the next day that doesn’t win and therefore decide that the whole thing was a nonsensical waste of time, you need to adjust your expectations! First, any practice like this is a drop of energy within an immense framework of reality that is affected by infinite influences. Whistling at a sailboat will not alter her course from east to north in a moment. Second, reality is not a solid object: it is a process that unfolds in time, and real time is circular and relative and inconstant. Seeds take time to sprout: how much time depends on the seed, the soil, the moisture, the temperature, and the season. Understanding the longer lunar cycles as they unfold around your intention may help you predict when and how your seed will sprout. Most importantly, you must watch for new doors to open and step through them boldly even if they don’t look exactly as you expected and even if you don’t know exactly what is on the other side. If you don’t step through them, you are saying “never mind about those affirmations, I guess I’ll just stay where I am.” An answer to affirmations of wealth may look nothing like a winning lottery ticket: instead, notice opportunities to save money, embrace unexpected professional breaks, accept gifts, and pick up the phone when an old friend calls. After you walk through the little doors in faith and gratitude, bigger doors will open, and that’s when you will start to recognize miracles.
About Paul Tillich. Tillich was born in Germany in 1886 to a conservative Lutheran pastor. He emigrated to the United States in 1933 after being declared an enemy of the Third Reich due to his teachings as a sociology professor at the University of Frankfurt. In America he enjoyed an illustrious career at the Union Theological Seminary, Harvard Divinity School, and finally at the University of Chicago until his death following a heart attack in 1965. His work grappled with the connection between ontology (the nature of being) and theology (the nature of god), and his answer was effectively to equate the two (“God is being-itself”) placing his thought on the same philosophical ground as Alfred North Whitehead and other mystics through the ages who have refused to sever matter from mind. My uncle (himself a philosopher in organizational theory and an aficionado of Tillich's) gave me a ratty old copy of Tillich’s Love Power & Justice when I was in my late teens, a gift I remain grateful for decades later.
The first stage of resistance is disbelief. We won’t practice affirmations because we believe they won’t work. This resistance is not entirely justified, and it is also impractical. It is not justified because quantum physics provides some defense for their efficacy: affirmations are a tool to shift our position as an observer, they give us practice observing a different reality, and therefore they increase the probability of a new reality. Stubborn disbelief is also unjustified because there are many people out there who will offer anecdotal evidence supporting the practice – maybe not scientific proof, but suggestive enough to form a hypothesis and do your own research. It is impractical, because the fact that you are rejecting affirmations as a solution means you have an unsolved problem – probably a stubbornly unsolved problem – and affirmations are a very cheap potential solution. Even the intensive version of the practice that I’m going to recommend here requires a pen, a notebook, and fifteen to thirty minutes per day for two separate weeks out of a given month. Compared to the scope of the problems you likely have in mind – poverty, unrequited love, spiritual angst, ill health, lack of confidence, hating your job – this investment is extremely minimal. Even if you are 99% convinced there is no possible mechanism for affirmations to work, remember that against all reasonable odds millions of people buy lottery tickets every day because two dollars is a tiny price to pay for even the infinitesimal chance of becoming filthy rich. Even if you are very skeptical, look at affirmations as your two-dollar ticket to the possibility of a joyful life.
Once we sit down with our notebook, pen in hand, there is likely still resistance. You are performing the task, but you feel painfully stupid, even ashamed. You wouldn’t want anyone to see what you are writing. This probably means you chose your affirmation well: it directly, explicitly contradicts the reality you live and believe in. Rejecting accepted reality is heresy, and heretics are spiritual criminals. Creating a new world, a new reality, is an act of god, a miracle: no one said it was going to come easily and naturally. Part of your task here is to proceed in a state of discomfort. Buy that two-dollar ticket even though your anti-gambling grandma is looking on, even though your statistician friend is telling you there’s no way you’re going to win. For the possibility of a joyful life, you can stand a little emotional discomfort for fifteen to thirty minutes a day. It is painful to write these statements because you don’t believe in them. You also don’t have the reality they represent because you don’t believe in them. Writing them down is a path toward learning to believe them. Believing them is the path toward living them. And what do you have to lose: half an hour that you might otherwise spend watching a show? Your dignity, which somehow rides on clinging to a Newtonian/mechanistic understanding of the world? An inkling of hope for a life that you already don’t have?
Maybe you have tried affirmations before and they didn’t work, and you don’t want to live out the definition of insanity by repeatedly trying the same thing expecting different results. Consider trying again using the techniques I suggest here, which are more regimented than typical approaches. Yes, they require more effort than pinning a card next to your mirror. Results often follow effort: quality in, quality out. My technique started with a technique recommended by astrologer Donna Cunningham to release yourself from restricting vows made in past lives. Our personal prejudices against certain words can also create unnecessary resistance, so choose your own phrasing if that helps to convince you to start. If you don’t like the “vows in past lives” description, you can choose “realities in parallel universes” or “subconscious psychological blocks” or “the sins of my past” or “childhood trauma” – whatever words work for you to describe an ongoing resistance to happiness in your life. Personally, I don’t even like the word “affirmations”, though I’m using it here because it is a commonly recognized term for this sort of practice. I prefer to think of it as a form of spellcasting. If you’re staunchly rational, you may prefer “rewriting your subconscious script” or simply “daily reminders.”
QUANTITY IS QUALITY. Not always true, but it really helps with affirmations. The lazy man’s affirmation is to write it on a card and pin it somewhere you’ll see it every day, or to put it on your phone background, or maybe to go as far as writing it five times in a row in your journal a few times and calling it a day. Why isn't it working?! The card is ineffective because when we read something it is external to us, and we are reacting to it; every time we write something we are creating it internally as a thought. Our voice saying something to ourselves is much stronger when we write than when we read. But writing something just a handful of times doesn’t stand a chance of affecting the fabric of your reality compared to the number of times a day that you’re subconsciously telling yourself the story you believe now. That’s like putting a drop of vinegar into a quart of water and expecting to taste it, or living your life at your desk and expecting to be in shape because you run across your office once a day. You have to put in some time and effort. You have to say it over and over again to start to believe it.
HARNESS NUMEROLOGY. Our own mind is a very powerful tool for reinventing our reality, but our mind does not operate in a vacuum, it operates in a network of other minds that are also affecting reality. This can work against us: it’s certainly harder to make more money at your job – even if you believe very strongly that you should – if your boss believes very strongly that you shouldn’t. Your boss’s mind is also real and powerful (not to mention society's collective beliefs about the value of labor that manifest as market rates for various professional roles). But we can harness collective beliefs to give much more power to our personal mind and actions, including the traditional powers assigned to numbers. Donna Cunningham’s affirmation technique requires writing your statement seventy times a day for seven days, harnessing the power of the number seven as well as the power of disciplined repetition. Seven is a lucky number, a prime number and therefore whole and perfect. In astrology the septile (51.4°, or ⅐ of the zodiac wheel) is an aspect that represents a mystical and revolutionary relationship between the planets, one with magical and unexpected results.
CLEAR IT OUT, THEN FILL IT IN. Donna’s technique involves rejecting the vows that restrict us. This is an important step: we have to dismantle old stories as we build new ones, or we will have two conflicting stories and that can be very stressful to the psyche. Trust me on this one: I have Sun and Mercury in Pisces in the 12th house, and a heavily aspected Neptune conjunct my midheaven. Holding and uniting multiple stories is a life purpose for me and a valuable gift, granting me passage onto bridges to different realities and allowing me a great capacity for loving acceptance of others – but I still find it tiring and difficult, and I have to be careful to discern when it supports compassion or imagination and when it approaches the brink of lunacy and self-destruction. It’s definitely not a state of mind I would recommend to anyone who isn't built for it.
We can’t stop at dismantling the old story: this leaves a void, which will fill up indiscriminately if we don’t choose a replacement story (“Nature abhors a vacuum.”) So I recommend a two stage process. In the first week, choose an affirmation that clears vows or dismantles old stories or somehow rejects what you don’t want. Write this affirmation seventy times a day for seven days. Choose your phrasing carefully: many practitioners caution against negative affirmations because repeating the things you don’t want has the potential to cement them in your mind rather than clear them. In the statement “I am not poor” the word “poor” has the most emotional resonance. So even in this stage, try to choose positive language. Donna recommends sentences like “I am free from any vow of poverty I ever made.” The word “free” has a lot of emotional resonance, and the word “vow” reminds us of the element of personal choice, taking the pressure off the word “poverty” to carry the sentence. “I reject…” is also a strong way to start your phrase if past-life-vow language really makes you cringe. In your second week of affirmations, choose a positive affirmation to fill the plate you have cleared with something careful and deliberate. Think carefully about what you are really wishing for! In my ongoing example of poverty, money does not buy happiness. That doesn’t mean it’s bad or unwise to wish for, but you’re probably really asking for something bigger when you want to shift away from poverty, so don’t think small and just ask for money. Money by itself could come at a price you don’t want to pay: a job you hate, or your honor, or broken relationships. You probably want money to bring you security, peace, pleasure, the sensation of plenty, the capacity for generosity, etc. Think about the root needs below the surface desire when composing your affirmation (it’s fine to mention the surface desire itself too).
HARNESS THE LUNAR CYCLES. Start this process just after the full moon, as the waning moon helps to drain away the unwanted. Wait until the moon has fully entered the zodiac sign following the sign it occupied when full, and spend its time in that sign, and maybe even the following one, composing your negative affirmation in your head. Then you can begin your seven days any time before the last quarter mark. Precisely at or just before the new moon (but not before the moon is fully occupying the sign it will occupy when new), burn these pages. Once the moon has fully entered the zodiac sign following the sign it occupied when new, begin composing your positive affirmations: the power of the waxing moon to build energy will support this work. Then begin your second seven days any time before the first quarter mark. You can simply keep your positive affirmations in your notebook, or plant those pages like seeds at your threshold – or at this point it would be appropriate to write the affirmation on a card and pin it up as a reminder of the work you’ve already done, instead of expecting the card to do the work for you by itself. When I say to wait until the moon has “fully entered” a sign, I mean you should avoid beginning a cycle of affirmation, or burning negative affirmations, or planting or otherwise cementing positive affirmations, when the moon is “void of course” – this is the period when the moon is transitioning between two zodiac signs and is not aspecting any planets, and it is traditionally a time to rest, not a time to move projects forward. Void of course tables will readily pop up on a Google search, or you can use an app like TimePassages.
COMMIT. Reality has no reason to pay attention to you if you don’t show it you mean business about changing it. This practice requires fifteen to thirty minutes a day, depending on the length of your affirmation and how quickly you write (write longhand, don’t type to save time: the mind-body connection matters and writing long-hand involves your body in the affirmation more than typing). You can make the time, so don’t decide to make the attempt until you are committed to making the time. Don’t allow yourself bullshit excuses for skipping a day. If you’re busy all the time, wake up fifteen minutes earlier or go to bed fifteen minutes later. If you are forgetful, set an alarm on your phone to remind you. Park at Walmart for a while on the way home from work. Hide in your closet so your family doesn’t interrupt you. Don’t try to break the task up into multiple chunks by doing some at the drive-through and some on your lunch break: this weakens the numerological power of the seventy-fold repetition. If you really mean it about change, you can find fifteen to thirty consecutive minutes to devote to this practice. Fear and resistance and shame are sneaky. Don’t let them win.
ALLOW YOUR MIND TO WANDER. After all this stern talk about commitment and discipline, here’s an easy out! You don’t have to hold your focus to the grindstone while writing affirmations. Once you get into the pattern of writing a statement, your brain will carry on with the motions pretty easily even if half of you is thinking about something else. By all means, spend some of this writing time deliberately imagining what your life would be like if these wishes came true. But it’s actually better not to consciously focus like this the whole time: it’s pretty rare that you are consciously telling yourself the stories that keep you in your present reality, so the biggest task is retraining your subconscious mind, reinventing the stories your mind is telling in the background while you’re thinking about other things. So go ahead and think about whatever you like, including whatever is going on in your life that contradicts the affirmation (notice when you are thinking about this, and use the opportunity to imagine different outcomes). Occasionally, pull your attention gently back to the affirmation: notice if your body is carrying discomfort or resistance somewhere, and focus your attention on that part of your body while you write the affirmation. You may notice that you are holding your breath while you write: this is also your body showing resistance to the new reality. Consciously take deep breaths while writing your affirmation a few times, and then allow your mind to wander again.
LISTEN FOR ANSWERS AND OFFERS, AND SAY YES. Affirmations are much more likely to cause a shift than a revolution. If you follow this practice seeking wealth and then buy a lottery ticket the next day that doesn’t win and therefore decide that the whole thing was a nonsensical waste of time, you need to adjust your expectations! First, any practice like this is a drop of energy within an immense framework of reality that is affected by infinite influences. Whistling at a sailboat will not alter her course from east to north in a moment. Second, reality is not a solid object: it is a process that unfolds in time, and real time is circular and relative and inconstant. Seeds take time to sprout: how much time depends on the seed, the soil, the moisture, the temperature, and the season. Understanding the longer lunar cycles as they unfold around your intention may help you predict when and how your seed will sprout. Most importantly, you must watch for new doors to open and step through them boldly even if they don’t look exactly as you expected and even if you don’t know exactly what is on the other side. If you don’t step through them, you are saying “never mind about those affirmations, I guess I’ll just stay where I am.” An answer to affirmations of wealth may look nothing like a winning lottery ticket: instead, notice opportunities to save money, embrace unexpected professional breaks, accept gifts, and pick up the phone when an old friend calls. After you walk through the little doors in faith and gratitude, bigger doors will open, and that’s when you will start to recognize miracles.
About Paul Tillich. Tillich was born in Germany in 1886 to a conservative Lutheran pastor. He emigrated to the United States in 1933 after being declared an enemy of the Third Reich due to his teachings as a sociology professor at the University of Frankfurt. In America he enjoyed an illustrious career at the Union Theological Seminary, Harvard Divinity School, and finally at the University of Chicago until his death following a heart attack in 1965. His work grappled with the connection between ontology (the nature of being) and theology (the nature of god), and his answer was effectively to equate the two (“God is being-itself”) placing his thought on the same philosophical ground as Alfred North Whitehead and other mystics through the ages who have refused to sever matter from mind. My uncle (himself a philosopher in organizational theory and an aficionado of Tillich's) gave me a ratty old copy of Tillich’s Love Power & Justice when I was in my late teens, a gift I remain grateful for decades later.
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