Most of us carry a feeling we don’t like but secretly return to. It hurts, it limits us, and yet it feels strangely familiar. In a quiet, unconscious way, it can even feel comforting. This is what some have called our favorite bad feeling.

Entropy can not only diminish our spirituality; it can also affect the body.

We often speak of spiritual or psychological entropy, but our flesh, too, is subject to this quiet diminishment. They say we lose muscle mass as we age. I didn’t believe it until one day I found that I could not lift our luggage with the ease I always had. Entropy, the natural tendency of all matter to disperse and weaken, shows itself unmistakably in the body.

The first sign of entropy isn’t collapse… 

It feels like easing into warm water after a long day. Nothing is wrong. Nothing hurts. And yet, almost imperceptibly, something vital begins to dim. We find that it is not water we are in, but quicksand.

When a difficulty arises, we can cope by sliding into our unchecked ego’s favorite reaction, which is the path of least resistance, and of course, spiritual entropy. The ego is well-practiced in invading us with thoughts, assumptions, and defenses triggered by our fixation. And we are so used to our fixation’s running commentary that we swallow it hook, line, and sinker. Then our behavior unconsciously expresses the fixation.

This reflection includes a story about entropy and a person who regularly trapped me in conversation. Do I fall into spiritual entropy by taking the easy way out and leaving them in mid-sentence, or do I take a more difficult approach? 

Entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, is the tendency for a system to lose order or predictability, causing a decline into disorder. This phenomenon explains why things naturally spread out and disperse, like melting ice, decomposing plants, or perfume aroma spreading rather than staying in one conglomeration of vapor.

Psychiatrist, spiritual author, and teacher M. Scott Peck makes this startling claim in The Road Less Traveled: the original sin of humankind is not hatred, envy, or even a failure to love. It is laziness; what he calls entropy. Peck names entropy as the root of disintegration because it quietly pulls us toward the path of least resistance.

May 17, 2025

When you reach adolescence, you come to a biological and psychological milestone, or node. Adolescence is a time of storm and stress when we must find our identity apart from the rest of our family. We might not yet know who we are, but we know we are different from our brothers, sisters, and family. Our task in adolescence is to determine the way we will move in the world.

March 21, 2025

The infinitesimally small atom is made of even smaller subatomic particles, the smallest of which are its non-reducible quarks. Isn’t it amazing that when split, the tiny atom and its tinier subatomic particles unleash the most powerful energy known to humankind? It’s a paradox but the smallest creates the greatest. 

February 12, 2025

Memories are stored and accessed on three levels: the subconscious, the pre-conscious, and the conscious. All three levels are important. Memories held in the subconscious are not in our conscious awareness. These are forgotten memories that are deposited or stored in our subconscious. Also in our subconscious are memories that have been suppressed and repressed. These can be recalled through dreams, hypnosis, guided imagery, and other means. Memories can be stored in the pre-conscious, a special territory between the subconscious and the conscious. Because pre-conscious memories are just below the surface of the conscious level, they can be re-membered more readily. Memories in the conscious level of our mind are the most readily accessible to us. 

January 18, 2025

Viking Cruises Chairman Torstein Hagen believes that time is the only thing you don't have enough of. He says," When you philosophize about life, you realize that time is the most precious commodity anyone can possess, so spending that time wisely is important." Torstein's answer to spending time wisely is to explore the world.