Psicología

Centro MENADEL PSICOLOGÍA Clínica y Tradicional

Psicoterapia Clínica cognitivo-conductual (una revisión vital, herramientas para el cambio y ayuda en la toma de consciencia de los mecanismos de nuestro ego) y Tradicional (una aproximación a la Espiritualidad desde una concepción de la psicología que contempla al ser humano en su visión ternaria Tradicional: cuerpo, alma y Espíritu).

“La psicología tradicional y sagrada da por establecido que la vida es un medio hacia un fin más allá de sí misma, no que haya de ser vivida a toda costa. La psicología tradicional no se basa en la observación; es una ciencia de la experiencia subjetiva. Su verdad no es del tipo susceptible de demostración estadística; es una verdad que solo puede ser verificada por el contemplativo experto. En otras palabras, su verdad solo puede ser verificada por aquellos que adoptan el procedimiento prescrito por sus proponedores, y que se llama una ‘Vía’.” (Ananda K Coomaraswamy)

La Psicoterapia es un proceso de superación que, a través de la observación, análisis, control y transformación del pensamiento y modificación de hábitos de conducta te ayudará a vencer:

Depresión / Melancolía
Neurosis - Estrés
Ansiedad / Angustia
Miedos / Fobias
Adicciones / Dependencias (Drogas, Juego, Sexo...)
Obsesiones Problemas Familiares y de Pareja e Hijos
Trastornos de Personalidad...

La Psicología no trata únicamente patologías. ¿Qué sentido tiene mi vida?: el Autoconocimiento, el desarrollo interior es una necesidad de interés creciente en una sociedad de prisas, consumo compulsivo, incertidumbre, soledad y vacío. Conocerte a Ti mismo como clave para encontrar la verdadera felicidad.

Estudio de las estructuras subyacentes de Personalidad
Técnicas de Relajación
Visualización Creativa
Concentración
Cambio de Hábitos
Desbloqueo Emocional
Exploración de la Consciencia

Desde la Psicología Cognitivo-Conductual hasta la Psicología Tradicional, adaptándonos a la naturaleza, necesidades y condiciones de nuestros pacientes desde 1992.

viernes, 20 de febrero de 2026

¿Caos o Cosmos? El papel de la Conciencia Humana


Paco Vinagre nos invita a observar cómo la naturaleza nos sorprende a través de tres elementos fundamentales. Por un lado, existe una tendencia al caos y la destrucción ; por otro, el cosmos, ese orden que crea y mantiene las cosas.

El tercer elemento es el más revelador: la conciencia. Es esa capacidad netamente humana que nos permite darnos cuenta de que ambas fuerzas están en constante funcionamiento.

¿Por qué nos aferramos tanto al orden? Paco explica que el equilibrio nos da la capacidad de predecir, mientras que el desorden nos genera una sensación de resignación ante lo que no podemos controlar. Nuestra tendencia natural es buscar ese "refugio" de calma, creando modelos mentales sobre cómo funcionan las cosas para ordenar nuestro mundo interior.

En Plural 21, creemos que entender estas fuerzas es esencial para recuperar nuestra Identidad y Libertad. Si comprendemos el juego entre el caos y el orden, dejamos de ser víctimas de lo imprevisible para ser dueños de nuestra propia conciencia.

Ponente: Paco Vinagre.
Temas: Filosofía natural, Psicología, Conciencia, Plural 21.
Web: www.plural-21.org

#PacoVinagre #Conciencia #Naturaleza #CaosYOrden #Plural21 #Reflexion #Vida #Verdad #FilosofiaHumana

Recuerda que te puedes hacer socio de Plural 21 en https://plural-21.org/alta-nuevos-socios
Si quieres hacer alguna aportación a Plural 21 ahora puedes hacerlo a través de diferentes sistemas:
- BIZUM. En la opción "Donación a una ONG" utiliza el código: 07672
- A través de Youtube podéis: utilizar la herramienta "Gracias/Thanks" de Youtube
- a la vieja usanza: podéis hacer una transferencia a Plural-21 Caixa d’Enginyers cuenta nº ES55 3025 0004 3514 3326 6836

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*No suscribimos necesariamente las opiniones o artículos aquí compartidos. No todo es lo que parece.

Disonancia cognitiva y la visión no-dual


vision-no-dual.jpg

El mensaje de la no-dualidad es, en esencia, la invitación más simple y directa que el ser humano puede recibir: ya eres lo que buscas. Sin embargo, para la mayoría, esta verdad no se recibe con alivio, sino con una profunda resistencia. Esta fricción surge de lo que en psicología se conoce como disonancia cognitiva, ese malestar que experimentamos cuando nuestra estructura de creencias se enfrenta a una realidad que la contradice por completo. Como mencioné anteriormente, la mente es una herramienta de supervivencia diseñada para operar en la dualidad. Su función es separar, etiquetar...

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*No suscribimos necesariamente las opiniones o artículos aquí compartidos. No todo es lo que parece.

Bektashi Blues


Ali Naki is a true Sufi troubadour, bringing the fragrance of Ashk (divine, spiritual love) to circles of seekers throughout Anatolia. We met him first a few years ago when he appeared at a "meshk" (an evening of ilahis and whirling) we had organized near Fethiye during one of our Turkey trips. This is his [...]

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*No suscribimos necesariamente las opiniones o artículos aquí compartidos. No todo es lo que parece.

Aristotle vs Stoicism


Dear Classical Wisdom Reader,

Centuries go by…

And answers can remain elusive!

One of the eye-opening things about engaging with the ancient world is discovering that humanity has been asking itself the same questions, over and over.

You would think that with the sheer span of time, certain mysteries would have been solved, the answers widely circulated and celebrated, and all misgivings laid to rest.

Yet in a world where technology seems to answer to our every whim, humanity seems still to return to these unanswered questions, and perhaps one more than any other:

What is happiness?

Part of this searching can be seen in something of a revival of the ancients: the explosion of popularity of Stoicism in the modern world.

It’s a welcome development, but not all the ancients have the same answers.

So today we’re looking at Aristotle’s much-celebrated Nicomachean Ethics. Find out Aristotle’s thoughts on the nature of happiness, where it disagrees with the Stoics, and what all this can tell us about living in the world today.

Of course, such questions don’t always have straightforward, easy answers…

Yet perhaps we can find happiness and joy, here and now, in simply asking the right questions.

Without having to wait centuries.

All the best,

Sean Kelly

Managing Editor

Classical Wisdom

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Aristotle Vs Stoicism: What is Happiness?

Written by Van Bryan

“For contemplation is both the highest form of activity (since the intellect is the highest thing in us, and the objects that it apprehends are the highest things that can be known), and also it is the most continuous because we are more capable of continuous contemplation than we are of any practical activity.” ~ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

At the opening of Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle asks us “…what kind of thing is pleasure?” A notion that we might take for granted, it is essential to Aristotle’s moral philosophy that we adequately answer this question.

Aristotle asserts ideas that are reminiscent of the Stoics, putting emphasis on attainment of virtue within our lives. However, unlike the Stoics, Aristotle does not rely on a divine cosmology to make his case. Instead, he leans heavily on formalized logic (something he is credited with discovering) and what might be considered a rudimentary form of the scientific method.

Aristotle at Freiburg
Bronze statue, University of Freiburg, Germany, 1915

Aristotle concludes that pleasure is not a process or a state of being. Instead, he asserts that pleasure is an activity, something that we do. More precisely, pleasure is the thing that completes an activity. The philosopher makes a point to say that pleasure completes an activity so long as the subject and the object of the activity are in a suitable condition.

If we were to examine a shipbuilder, for example, we would first have to conclude that the shipbuilder is appropriately healthy and suitably prepared to partake in the activity of shipbuilding. Also, we would have to be sure that the object of the activity (the ship) is constructed from appropriate materials that are in good condition. If we can conclude both of these things, then we can safely assume that the shipbuilder will be capable of building his ship; at the completion of this activity, there will be pleasure. A shipbuilder, insofar as he is a shipbuilder, will inevitably find pleasure in building ships.

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So we have seen that pleasure is the natural end of an activity. Different people will certainly enjoy different activities more than others. The lover of philosophy will find the activity of philosophizing pleasurable, the lover of music will find music to be pleasurable, and so on.

According to Aristotle, the lover of music can even find pleasure playing the flute on the back of a dolphin!

flute player
Youth playing the flute and riding a dolphin. Red-figure stamnos, 360–340 BC. From Etruria.

Aristotle then tells us that life is an activity and, as is true with all activities, pleasure should be the natural end for life. Finding the appropriate pleasure for our lives means arriving at a happy life, which Aristotle believed was synonymous with a good life.

And so we seem to have concluded that finding the appropriate pleasure within our lives as human beings will lead us to happiness, which will lead us to a good life. But this, rather obviously, leads us to another question: What is the appropriate pleasure?

Recall that the hedonists believed bodily pleasures were our ticket to a happy life. Aristotle considers this but ultimately rejects the notion. Does it seem rational to say that all of our struggles, our fears, our hardships, and our miseries are suffered only so that we may eat and drink as much as we please? Aristotle thought such an idea implausible.

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Aristotle also did not agree with the Ethical Egoists, who declared that a pleasurable life is one where we conquer our fellow man and assert ourselves above society. While some might find pleasure in this, Aristotle believed that certain pleasures were better than others. We should make a point to find these most perfect pleasures.

Aristotle
Bust of Aristotle. Marble, Roman copy after a Greek bronze original by Lysippos from 330 BC; the alabaster mantle is a modern addition.

To do this, Aristotle asks us to imagine a hypothetical man who is perfect in every way imaginable. This ideal human would find pleasure in that which is most perfect. What is this pleasure that is most noble and honorable? Aristotle tells us that it is the active expression of virtue.

So…

A happy life and a good life are synonymous. We only find a happy life if we find our most appropriate pleasure as rational beings. Our most appropriate pleasure is the active expression of virtue. Finally, we must ask, which virtue is the truest, the most honorable, and the noblest? Believe it or not, not all virtues are created equal.

Aristotle makes a point that some virtues are self-sufficient while other virtues require external things in order for that virtue to be realized. For instance, generosity is only possible if we have an excess of resources and other citizens to receive our generosity. Justice, although important, requires other citizens to receive our just acts. Virtues such as these are not self-sufficient.

Then we arrive at wisdom, which requires nothing external to be realized. We may pursue wisdom for our own pleasure and we require nobody else to have this virtue realized. Additionally, learning is the one activity that we may consistently do throughout our lives. While variables may interfere with our abilities to be generous or just, there is no reason why we should ever stop pursuing wisdom.

plato and aristotle
The School of Athens by Raphael (1509–1510), fresco at the Apostolic Palace, Vatican City.

Aristotle also appeals to the gods to make his case for a life in pursuit of wisdom. He states that the gods are most assuredly all-knowing, and so by pursuing a life of wisdom we come closer to the divine.

Aristotle does note that some may disagree with this, saying that we are mortal and should, therefore, think mortal thoughts; he dismisses these notions. Instead, the philosopher urges us not to settle for mediocrity. We ought to pursue that which is most important, most pleasurable, and most divine.

We must not listen to those who urge us to think human thoughts since we are human, and mortal thoughts since we are mortal; rather, we should as far as possible immortalize ourselves and do all we can to live according to the finest element within us—for if it is small in bulk, it is far greater than anything else in power and worth. ~ Nicomachean Ethics

You may now be realizing that Aristotle and the Stoics arrived at similar conclusions. Both tell us that a life in pursuit of wisdom is the best type of life. However, the Stoics believed that we ought to pursue wisdom for the sake of duty. Aristotle, rather simply, tells us that we ought to pursue wisdom because it will make us happiest. We need no other reason than this. Aristotle’s philosophy is based upon systematic logic and empirical observations that many would agree with; we need not accept the divine cosmology of the Stoics in order to live a good life.

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Aristotle and Seneca
Aristotle (above) and Seneca (below).

Therefore, it can be concluded that the Nicomachean Ethics is among the most accessible and the most all-encompassing of the moral philosophies. It remains a cornerstone of ancient ethical philosophy, leading those who might seek happiness toward enlightenment and a life well-lived.

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El género biográfico árabe


Una de las características que distinguen y dan personalidad propia a la historiografía árabe es el extraordinario desarrollo del género biográfico, hasta el punto de que ha llegado a afirmarse, con evidente exageración, que en este ámbito cultural la Historia es Biografía Luis MolinaEscuela de Estudios Árabes Sin necesidad de aceptar como válida semejante afirmación,...

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Sounds like Chopin's Marche funèbre - Turning memes into music, part 2


What happens when memes become music? The musicians of the Stegreif Orchestra took their classical instruments to Bonn's pedestrian zone and asked passers-by for memes, which they then set to music. Part 2 of our series is about a postcard featuring an old man who says, “Guess I'll die.” How well do you think the musicians did? Write your opinion in the comments!

And don't forget to subscribe to DW Classical Music: https://www.youtube.com/dwclassicalmusic

#memes #memeshorts #memesounds #memesound #shortsvideo #shortsyoutube #shortsyoutubevideo #shorts #shortvideo #shortvideos #shortfeed #classicalmusic #shortsyoutube #challenge #mememusic #Marchefunèbre #Chopin #pianosonata

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Book Review: A Private Man: Stephanie Sy-Quia


“Let me lessen my request. Let me breathe between the heavens and the earth, a private man. To live a quiet life: this too can be a radical political act.”
— (David Fletcher: A Private Man)

The title of this novel is adapted from a passage (III.xii.12-18) in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, where Antony petitions Caesar for permission to live as “a private man” in Athens if he cannot be permitted to live with Cleopatra in Egypt. Caesar denies both requests. The petition to Rome, and its harsh rejection, are mirrored in the request by the novel’s character, David Fletcher, a Catholic priest, to his Church superior, to permit him to be relieved of his vows of celibacy so that he can marry his charge, Margaret Bendalow, whom David loves and who loves him. Like Antony, he seeks a quiet life. Margaret is a theology teacher who bucks the traditional bridle by questioning certain Church-sanctioned practices and dogmas that constrain love and dignity. David’s and Margaret’s own views, playing out at a time when Church reform was being debated in the lead up to Vatican II are an affront to some Church officials. David’s petition and the progressive views that he and Margaret represent are perceived as threatening by the Church establishment. The issues they raise remain matters of debate even today, and so the book will be of interest to readers of this journal for more than its literary merit.

The author of A Private Man (Grove Press, 2026), is Stephanie Sy-Quia, an award-winning poet. Her previous publication, Amnion (Granta, 2021), a volume of poetry (“my attempt to wrestle with the metrics for provenance and belonging”[[1]]), explored of some of the same family history that she now revisits in her debut novel. The term ‘amnion’ refers to the protective casing around the womb, which has to be broken for a child to be born. The new publication is also, at a deeper level, an exploration of amniotic relationships, of caring, and of being born into a fuller meaning of selfhood beyond those defined by social definitions and traditional expectations, and the novel is therefore a natural development of the ideas that Sy-Quia was addressing in her poems. Indeed, she regards Amnion as a foundational work and sees her future writing, including the novel, as “being in dialogue” with it.

The new book, a reimagining of the real-life story of her grandparents, is a masterfully structured tale, told from various perspectives and timeframes, and woven into a tapestry of thoughtful narrative threads, poetic prose (reminiscent at times of Michael Ondaatje and Anne Michaels) as well as engaging dialogue, which collectively draws the reader into the circumstances and inner lives of its main characters.

The writing is personal and humanely intelligent, underpinned by a literary sensibility, sensually concrete and richly imagined, leavening ideas and perspicuous observations with descriptive realism. The character portraits of the family over three generations and multiple locations in Europe, Asia and North Africa, with their various circumstances and their human tugs, ripple outward with intimate relevance from a deep hidden centre to keep the reader engaged. The story alternates between, on the one hand, a retrospective reconstruction of the relationship of Margaret and David, at a time when David has died (“turned his face to the wall,” as his daughter puts it) and Margaret is ailing with dementia, and, on the other, flashbacks of memories describing their childhoods, relationships and careers, as they were unfolding. The retrospective view is that of their grandchild, Adrian, now Margaret’s caregiver, who is wanting to ensure that his grandmother can live with dignity in her remaining days.

The positions of David and Margaret within the constraining mores and expectations of Church and society place the two individuals in circumstances that force the confrontation, at first within and among themselves, and then with their ecclesiastical authorities, that propels the tale. The reader associates the author both with the perspective of Adrian, the grandchild reconstructing the family history, and with Margaret, the progressive woman championing the claims of the intelligent heart that eventually build to the confrontation and decision at the centre of the novel. Sy-Quia handles the issues through a combination of observation and reflection, irony and passion, crafting narrative and dialogue that speak for the simplicity of love and dignity transcending the prejudices and complexities of bureaucracy, custom and dogma; it is a viewpoint one imagines must reflect the convictions of the author herself, in sympathy with the protagonists challenging the hidebound views of the Latin Church.

David and Margaret ache for that open space “between the heavens and the earth” where the “private man” is free to breathe, and where they can be “besouled of another” and come to “know” each other more fully in their complementarity and humanity — more fully than the ecclesiastical Caesars (“these higher-up men calcified by lack of life and absence of soul”) will allow. For them she is “a thief in the orchard”, “a Jezebel of ill-renown.” And David’s own impulse is to side with the “Catholics who refuse to be cabbages, paternalistically indoctrinated.” The strictures of the Church function as a garment that impedes them from a deeper knowledge — of their spiritual nakedness, as it were — and of a connecting space free of pharisaic judgments. But, to seek such private freedom can be (though it is not always so) “a radical political act.”

By highlighting the tensions between freedom and authority in the context of David‘s request to be relieved of his vows (“He was their creature, a creature of authority and hierarchy”) and of Margaret’s affront to ecclesiastical patriarchy (“she was just a woman”; “What use was she, with her breasts and education?”), the novel prompts the reader to question certain epistemological foundations, doctrinal formulations and recommended practices of the Church authorities. What are the sacred contours of human freedom and what is the legitimate role of any external or traditional authority to limit its expression? More specifically: Should celibacy be an institutional practice for ordained priests? If so, would limited experience or knowledge of women, marriage and life, limit a priest’s pastoral ability to guide his flock in these matters? Is not marriage an expansion of knowledge, and is not its sexual expression a foretaste of the soul’s participation in the divine mysteries? In a Christian tradition that prizes love, should priests like David be stigmatized for seeking to be relieved of their vows to allow them to expand their knowledge of love and the gifts of humanity beyond traditionally permitted confines, or should traditional views adapt to non-traditional loving relationships? Should women be considered equal and complementary to men both within the Church and in society, or be governed by the Church and by their male counterparts as subordinate creatures? Is the Church‘s rigid and patriarchal authority tantamount to an authoritarian and hypocritical betrayal of its true mandate of stewardship and care (“All of God’s intentions for us and Creation, he will say, can be summed up in two words from Genesis: ‘keep it’.”)? Is there a sacred place where love and dignity have more value than the claims of permitted freedom or assigned identity? These are some of the questions raised by the story.

The issues around celibacy and women’s roles of course have a historical context, and the novel references them occasionally, for example, the various Church councils (Nicaea, Lateran, Trent, and the Vatican). With respect to the role of women, Margaret notes “Women had moved in that century, across from the jurisdiction of chattel law to that of the person. They had suffrage now, polio vaccination programmes, the lubricated condom, the H-bomb. The great mass of the Church was lumbering out of a deep and dark frankincensy fug in order to meet a new century. The word being used was aggiornamento: mise à jour. A bringing up to date.” As the readers of this journal know, the Vatican reforms that emerged from Vatican II, while they had their champions, were not, indeed are not, without controversy. The need for amelioration of legitimate grievances by those such as women who have been poorly treated by the Roman Church, and for adapting practices to changing conditions, has spilled over into a modernist mentality that traditionalists say goes too far: the reforms fail to conserve values grounded in metaphysical principles of the sacred, and therefore become subversive. Sy-Quia tries to remain — as the author should — invisible behind the screen of her characters, but one suspects she takes the part of Margaret who dismisses David’s defence of priestly celibacy (“Clerical celibacy is how we priests practise sublimation”) as a “doctrinal fig leaf”, adding “Clerical celibacy only gets cemented at the Second Lateran, a mere eight hundred years ago. And even then, only as a means of countering corruption. Too many priests inheriting their churches from their fathers.” It is difficult not to side with her arguments. Indeed, priests were not celibate for nearly a millennium before Church doctrine changed, and celibacy is not common outside the Latin Church.

At one point Margaret tells David that “Marriage is a mode of witness, an epistemology. To bar people from marriage is to prevent them from this way of knowing. And a means to maturity, too.” She argues that “God’s house is the world before it is the church.” Instead of ignoring or devaluing God’s creation based on a false eschatology (“If we think there is another life, she said, what is the point of this one, other than to try and earn our place in the next? And conversely … if Judgement Day is a finite event, then there is no need to try and stave off this gradual poisoning of the earth, the decimation of all that creep and crawl upon it.”), would it not be better rather to treat this life as heaven (“Heaven is at hand”)? She asks, “Are our bodies not the matter of miracles? What is it that is being enshrined?” She proposes a different perspective: “Family and marriage not as the drudgery of the factory floor, of production, but of vocation in the truest sense. With its proper ecstasies.” What she is proposing is a vocational and sacramental approach to love that strains against the “antiquated thinking” of the Church.

David wonders if love is a complete revelation (“Like the road to Damascus. Knowledge.”) but Margaret offers him a different vision, more modest and accepting of the human limitations that are necessary for one to accommodate as part of its flowering, leaving room for grace: “It’s like driving in the dark. You do your best to the limit of your sight.” It is the concrete life of real human love that Margaret offers him, the glow that is present, not the awaited eternity: “All his life, he has been taught to yearn for eternity. Yet here is this singular brilliance, consigned to a small span of years. He places the two side by side in the scales.” The quiet life they seek is “To live in the suchness of things, with no shame.” Is this what the Church can be persuaded to offer, the reconciling of the spirit with its forms, recognizing that “Love is at its base the effort of dignity”?

The limitations of Church dogma and the arrogance of its apparatchiks (“Why does the Roman Church have to rule her people, the people of God, by fear and repression? One student of mine told me that her student friends in other non-Roman Catholic colleges said to her, ‘Your Church is just like Soviet Russia, sending people to Siberia.’”) in the end curtail the eucharistic embodiment of life, its deep joys. Margaret understands the harm this does: “All that damage done. All those souls curtailed. She renounced it all. The vast history of Catholicism was folding and unfolding all around her, and folding her into it. It was in the mineral memory of the land. When stripped down to its barest, it was the history of being, of evolving personhood, the notion thereof, and its validity. She stood for this. She stood for herself.”

This is not a Nietzschean proclamation of individualism, but of Christic personhood, the ‘selfhood’ of Gerard Manley Hopkins in As Kingfishers Catch Fire:

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; 

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, 


Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

Though this review has focussed on the main characters and themes, the novel presents several other characters and situations that portray human relationships in ways that indirectly, but no less importantly, add to the moral weight of premiating love and dignity. The issues (such as the demands of elder care, the ethic of service, balancing war with humanity, finding the right life partner, choices to made between career and family, being female in a male world, maintaining bonds with family and strangers, the role of art and beauty and nature in self knowledge, of religion in life) are presented organically through the storyline in ways that highlight their complexity. For example, a discussion among priests at an archbishop’s cocktail party presents different viewpoints on the role of women in the Church (“married people need a married clergy. Experience alone can equip us with the wisdom we need”; “She cannot possibly have the sobriety required to penetrate into the Church’s mysteries. Those belong to us, he said, including them all with a sloshing half-moon of his glass. Us and us alone”), and, though a moral voice emerges, it is not forced or didactic. The author resists the temptation to close off issues by presenting easy conclusions or answers. If the reader senses where the rightness lies it is because the human predicaments point to something the heart recognizes as true.

A precocious and sensitive intelligence is at work here. The novel is a fine debut by a writer whose future work one will be keen to follow as it develops the arc of ideas explored in her first two books — an arc that one hopes will fulfill its promise of deepening into the sacred ground of the dignity of love (symbolized by the amniotic relationship with the primordial and pure ‘womb’ [‘rahma’] of the sacred, and by the receptivity of the soul to the transcendent Spirit) rather than pursing its antinomian expressions.


[[1]]: See interview titled ‘In conversation with Stephanie Sy-Quia‘ posted online on 1 July 2022: https://forwardartsfoundation.org/in-conversatiopn-with-stephanie-sy-quia/

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