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Derek Beres

Derek Beres is a freelance writer. Based in Portland, Oregon, he has served in senior editorial positions at a number of tech companies and has years of experience in health, science, and music writing. He is the co-host of the Conspirituality podcast and co-author of Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracies Became a Health Threat.


A few weeks ago, when I published an article on vegetarianism as a political tool, I received emails and comments from people in India contesting the opening graphs, which were […]
Observing the Roman Empire crumble from North Africa in the fifth century, St Augustine of Hippo decided that while waging war against fellow Christians was sinful, throwing up arms against […]
Arguably the most dangerous of the seven deadly sins, pride acts like the invisible center of the wheel of transgression in which the other six revolve. Inextricably entwined in cases […]
On February 20, a conservative Christian group, the National Center for Law & Policy (NCLP), filed a lawsuit against the Encinitas School Board for teaching yoga in public schools. The […]
One of the more ubiquitous statements that has emerged over the last decade, ‘Spiritual, Not Religious’ is a self-affirming antidote to the traditional trappings of religion, the archaic and inflexible […]
Our attitude toward the pathologizing may be more destructive than the pathologizing itself.—James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology Trauma affects all of us. Types of trauma—physical, emotional, violent, intrusive, social, or the […]
Eben Alexander, author of the bestseller Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife, is only the latest in a long line of historical figures who has argued for […]
Long before Allen Ginsberg used the phrase ‘first thought, best thought’ to describe spontaneous, intuitive writing that seemed to spring unaware from ‘somewhere else,’ Buddhists had developed this maxim as […]
Humans experience joy in a multitude of ways, yet the varied forms of suffering—death, divorce, separation—return to one root principle: loss. What drives the fear of loss is something far […]
Over the last half-century we’ve emphasized physicality over philosophy. Yet a growing contingent of yogis has been asking questions such as: How can we take these ethical, philosophical and moral codes and apply them to our times? 
In general, I avoid free literature thrown my way on subways and street corners. Recently passing by a stack of cheaply printed books while leaving Samosa House in Culver City, […]
Security is perhaps the most well-known illusion human beings have contrived. From the cursory seduction of emotional stability to the wrathful manifestation of raging armies, the painful longing for complete […]