Aldea Spiritual Community

The Good, The True, and The Beautiful (Part 2): The True | Jake Haber

In Part 2 of The Good, The True, and The Beautiful, we step into the most challenging and transformative dimension of this series: Truth. In a world that's been called "post-truth", and certainly has it's fair share of chaos, we explore what it means to actually discern truth for ourselves — not just inherit it — and how discomfort, questioning, and even uncertainty can become sacred guides.
 
Truth isn’t always neat, literal, or easy to stomach. Sometimes it arrives as an uncovering, an expansion, or a disruption — inviting us to align our inner world with our outer lives. When we have the courage to trust experience, embrace paradox, and live authentically, goodness begins to flow and the most beautiful version of our lives emerges.
 
Quotes:
 
Niels Bohr
“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”
 
Flannery O’Connor
“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
 
David Bohm
“Truth is what stands the test of experience.”
 
Bronnie Ware (The Top Five Regrets of the Dying)
“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

The Good, The True, and The Beautiful (Part 1): The Good | Jake Haber

For thousands of years, philosophers and mystics have described reality through three transcendentals: the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. What if these are not abstract ideals, but living movements unfolding through evolution itself?
 
Through the frame of "evolutionary spirituality", we ask the question: could goodness, truth, and beauty be the spiritual trajectory of the universe?
 
For the first part of our new series, we reflect on "The Good", and how goodness is the invitation toward deeper compassion & love, showing up in a myriad of ways. May we celebrate the movement towards goodness however and whenever it shows up.
 
Quotes: 
“The Good is the cause of all that is right and beautiful… and the source of truth and reason.” — Plato
“Everyone who has felt the power of truth, the kindness of goodness, or the loveliness of beauty has had an experience of spirit.” — Steve McIntosh
“The Good is that which increases depth and span—greater interior awareness joined with greater compassion.” — Ken Wilber
“The good is not a fixed standard but a movement toward greater truth, light, and harmony.” — Sri Aurobindo
“Love is the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mysterious of the cosmic forces.” — Teilhard de Chardin
Luke 6:27–34:
27 “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32 If you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you?
 
 

Walking Each Other Home (Part 6): The Pathless Path | Jake Haber

In the finale of our Walking Each Other Home series, we arrive at The Pathless Path—a reflection on the paradox at the heart of spirituality. What if the journey we’ve been striving so hard to navigate ultimately dissolves beneath our feet? What if the path we thought we had to figure out, earn, perfect, or secure was never something to complete, but something to release? In this message, we explore spiritual reversals found in Christianity, Taoism, and mystical traditions—the idea that losing can be finding, letting go can be gaining, and that what we are searching for may already be present.
 
Drawing from Jung’s insight into the two halves of life and the wisdom of modern mystics, we consider what it means to move from achievement to arrival, from striving to trust, from becoming somebody to simply being. The Pathless Path invites us to see our winding roads, detours, deconstructions, and doubts not as mistakes, but as uniquely ours. In the end, perhaps the real secret is not mastering the journey but relaxing into it and realizing we’ve been home all along.
 
Quotes:
“You are searching for what you already have… When you give up all searching, you find it.” — Nisargadatta Maharaj 
“Truth is a pathless land.” — J. Krishnamurti 
“Enlightenment is the end of the search.” — Adyashanti 
“This is the real secret of life—to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.” — Alan Watts 
 

Walking Each Other Home (Part 5): The Sprint & The Marathon | Jake Haber

We’re often taught that life is a sprint: move fast, win big, get somewhere as quickly as possible. But what if that mindset is quietly exhausting us, distorting our sense of meaning, and even shaping the way we approach spirituality itself? In this installment of our Walking Each Other Home series, we explore the difference between sprinting through life and learning to inhabit it as a marathon: one that is messy, painful, beautiful, and profoundly communal.
 
Drawing on wisdom from endurance running, philosophy, and spiritual traditions, this talk invites us to loosen our grip on urgency, achievement, and escape. Whether you’re feeling stuck, burned out, discouraged, or increasingly aware of the finitude of life, this message offers permission to slow down, stay in the race, and rediscover meaning right here, in the living of it.
 
Quotes:
 
It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end
— Ursula K. Le Guin
The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves
— Alan Watts
I realized I could run for days if I stopped worrying about how far I had to go
— Dean Karnazes
Do not disturb yourself by imagining your whole life at once
— Marcus Aurelius
It is because of death that life is so full of meaning
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come
— Rabindranath Tagore
 

Walking Each Other Home (Part 4): The Way Of Presence | Roger Pierce & Jake Haber

What does it really mean to walk with someone through life’s hardest moments?
 
In this conversation, Jake sits down with Roger, a member of the Aldea community whose life’s work has centered on presence in moments most of us instinctively try to fix, explain, or escape. Drawing from decades of experience as a naval officer, military chaplain, and hospice chaplain, Roger reflects on what it looks like to accompany people through grief, trauma, uncertainty, and death—not with easy answers, but with steady presence.
 
Rather than offering spiritual formulas or tidy conclusions, Roger invites us into a deeper understanding of companionship—one rooted in listening, humility, and belonging. Whether you’re caring for someone else, facing your own threshold moments, or simply wondering how to be more present in a fragmented world, this conversation offers a quiet, grounded wisdom for the walk.
 
Quotes:
 
“When we dare to stay with someone in their pain, without trying to take it away, we discover that love is stronger than suffering.”— Henri J.M. Nouwen
 
“To accompany someone in their dying is not to remove their fear, but to refuse abandonment.”
— Christina Puchalski 

Walking Each Other Home (Part 3): Further Together | Jake Haber

This week in our Walking Each Other Home series, we turn our attention from the journey itself to the people we walk it with. While it’s deeply human to want others to fix our problems or walk the road for us, real transformation happens when we learn how to walk alongside one another instead.
 
Quotes:
 
 
Martin Luther King Jr.
“All mankind is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of identity. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what I ought to be until I am what I ought to be - this is the interrelated structure of reality.”
Albert Camus
“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead. Walk beside me… just be my friend.” 
Paulo Freire
“No one liberates anyone else, and no one liberates themselves alone. People liberate themselves in communion.” 
Albert Schweitzer
“The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.” 
Thich Nhat Hanh
“Understanding someone else is not a matter of seeing them clearly, but of recognizing that they, like you, are a mystery.” 
Bruce Tuckman
“Storming is inevitable when people care enough to be honest.” 
Parker J. Palmer
“An authentic community is one in which we are free to bring the whole of who we are—and know that it will be received.”
 

Walking Each Other Home (Part 2): The Perilous Process | Jake Haber

Life isn’t a straight path — it’s a desert walk.
 
In this message from our Walking Each Other Home series, we explore what it means to actually engage with life rather than trying to manage, sanitize, or optimize our way through it. Growth doesn’t happen on perfectly marked trails. It happens through sunburns, scrapes, wrong turns, and moments where we realize we’re more lost than we’d like to admit.
 
We talk about the illusion of control, the pressure to look put-together, and the quiet truth that most of us are winging it more than we realize. The journey isn’t about avoiding difficulty — it’s about staying present when things get uncomfortable, inconvenient, or unclear.
 
The marks we carry — the wear, the scars, the dirt — aren’t evidence that we failed. They’re evidence that we showed up, stayed in the arena, and lived.
 
Quotes:
 
 
J. Krishnamurti
 
“If one is lost in a wood, what is the first thing one does? One stops, doesn’t one? One stops and looks around. But the more we are confused and lost in life, the more we chase around, searching, asking, demanding, begging. So the first thing is that you completely stop inwardly.”
M. Scott Peck
 
“Once you accept that life is difficult, it becomes much easier.”
 
 
John Keats
 
“(To be) capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
 
Rumi
 
 
“The wound is the place where the light enters you.”
 
Theodore Roosevelt
 
(Man in the Arena)
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
 
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe 
 
“It’s all messy: the hair, the bed, the words, the heart. Life.”

Walking Each Other Home (Part 1) | Jake Haber

To kick off our new series, Jake spent the entire message walking on a treadmill...a playful but sincere illustration of how life is a long journey. There are peaks and valleys, steep climbs and rewarding views, moments of exhaustion and bursts of clarity. This message touches on many of the themes we’ll be exploring more deeply throughout the series, making it the perfect place to begin.
 
Quotes:
“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” — Martin Luther King Jr. 
“The uphill path is often the one that shows you who you are.” — Parker J. Palmer 
“You don’t always know what you’re walking toward. Sometimes you only know you can’t stay where you are.” — David Whyte 
“We do not arrive at wisdom by standing still.” — Anne Lamott 
“God does not come to us by our staying still, but by our journeying.” — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
 

New Year, New Me | Jake Haber

The new year often carries two very different energies at the same time: hope and hesitation. Excitement and anxiety. Possibility and fear. Our first message of 2026 explores both sides honestly.
 
On one side, change is hard. It takes humility to admit where we’re stuck, where we’re tired, or where we don’t know what to do next.
 
On the other side, change is inevitable. Whether we welcome it or resist it, life moves forward. Time passes. Seasons end.
 
As we step into a new year, we’re invited to hold both truths at once: accepting ourselves exactly as we are, while remaining open to who we are becoming. We may not have clarity, certainty, or a perfect plan—but we can choose presence, grace, and courage as we cross the threshold.
 
Quotes:
 
Carl Rogers
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
 
Anne Lamott
Grace happens when we’re honest about our limits.
 
James Clear
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.
 
Daniel Kahneman
Until we articulate what we want, our behavior stays reactive rather than intentional.
 
Heraclitus
No one ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and they’re not the same person.
 
John O’Donohue
For loss brings a space of emptiness into your life that opens a new place within your soul.
 
Mary Oliver
The beauty of the living thing is the immeasurable quality of its being—its fleetingness.

Christmas Eve 2025 | Jake Haber

Check out our 2025 Christmas Eve message—a reflection on the manger as a symbol of something ordinary, even beneath notice, becoming sacred because of what it holds.
 
Like us: human beings who are messy, complicated, and often mundane, and yet also infinite—capable of profound love, beauty, and truth.
 
This Christmas, our invitation to you and your family is to encounter the story not as distant history, but as a reminder of the light that shines within every one of us.