Showing posts with label meditation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meditation. Show all posts

Toward a Meaningful Life, New Edition: The Wisdom of the Sages Review

Toward a Meaningful Life, New Edition: The Wisdom of the Sages
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Toward a Meaningful Life, New Edition: The Wisdom of the Sages ReviewSimon Jacobson's Toward A Meaningful Life is a true classic which pairs spiritual and intellectual concepts with advice and perceptions of everyday life: while its roots are in Judaism, its advice and insights will appeal to a wide audience and may be used as a self-help approach to finding wisdom in a chaotic modern life.Toward a Meaningful Life, New Edition: The Wisdom of the Sages Overview

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Meditation Secrets for Women: Discovering Your Passion, Pleasure, and Inner Peace Review

Meditation Secrets for Women: Discovering Your Passion, Pleasure, and Inner Peace
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Meditation Secrets for Women: Discovering Your Passion, Pleasure, and Inner Peace ReviewSome books are so brilliant you could easily give 100 reasons why you love them, and how they've improved, enriched, and deepened your life. So here, then, without much headscratching are my top 10 reasons for loving "Meditation Secrets for Women" with all my heart:
1. "Meditation Secrets for Women" is supremely easy reading. Its 292 pages (much meatier - and juicier! - than most meditation books) fly. Now this may not be important to some people, but, heck, who wants to battle through a dry, arid wasteland of intellectual ramblings? Fortunately, you'll find no such thing here. The writing is by turns funny, serious, sensuous, electrifying, and poetic, but never less than wise.
2. "Meditation Secrets for Women" is carefully broken down into 12 easily digestible chapters, with each chapter covering exactly one secret.
3. Secret. That's the key word. "Are they really `secrets'," you may wonder, "or is this just some hokey scam to get me to fork over my hard-earned dough?" No, they're secrets, all right. Not the kind of hush-hush secrets that have been passed down from master to pupil for thousands of years (far from it, in fact, as you will soon see), but the kinds of secrets that have been denied women too long.
4. You see the sad fact is that many contemporary women (and men!) have been taught meditation techniques designed for monks over a thousand years ago. And as the authors quite rightly point out, these techniques aren't just plain irrelevant to life in the 21st century, they're highly dangerous as well. If you've ever tried meditating to "kill your ego," "block your desires," "blunt your instincts," or "purge your mind of all thoughts," (to name just a few toxic objectives) you know how devitalizing and dehumanizing this type of meditation can be.
5. I'm delighted to say the authors Camille Maurine and Lorin Roche espouse a completely different kind of meditation. At last, here is approach full of love, joy, spontaneity, movement, sensuality, sexuality, daring, honesty, tenderness, instinct, passion, pleasure, adventure, and - last but certainly not least - FUN! I know this for a fact because I have been meditating under Lorin's tutelage for over a year, ever since reading his truly wonderful, "Meditation Made Easy," a beautiful and indispensible companion to "Secrets."
6. "Meditation Secrets for Women" provides not just one or two or even three meditations, but quite literally dozens, so you can pick and choose what suits your mood or temperament at any given time. I happen to stick to my favorite "Do Nothing" meditation, but occasionally switch to some other technique (or make up my own, which the authors heartily encourage) if the mood calls for it. And naturally all the meditations in the book are based on the same simple premise: meditation is fun and natural.
7. Also provided is a superb reference list (organized by chapter) for those who wish to delve even deeper into special areas of interest. Plus there's an invaluable listing of musical recommendations.
8. "Meditation Secrets for Women" is IDEAL for women AND men, beginners AND advanced meditators. There really is something here for everyone. And like all classic books (and this book will become a classic) it grows with you. Meaning, the more you explore your meditation, the more jewels the book reveals. A small aside: As a teenager I was poisoned by a couple of meditation books still available on the shelves today. Among many of their deflating techniques was this godawful drudgery: staring at an object for long periods of time while trying to banish all thoughts from your head. Try it. I guarantee you'll make yourself miserable!
9. So if you get just one thing out of this book it's that thoughts are good! Your brain, your body, your desires, your instincts, your universe, and yes, even your fears are good. "Meditation Secrets for Women" will give you the tools to observe these things from a position of great safety and serenity so that you can learn from them and experience more joy and peace and beauty and insight than you imagined possible. So that life itself can become your greatest teacher, and that you yourself can become the blazer of your own wonderful trails.
10. If you read this book today, chances are you'll be happily meditating a year from now and loving it. What else can you ask for?Meditation Secrets for Women: Discovering Your Passion, Pleasure, and Inner Peace Overview

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Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, Second Edition Review

Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, Second Edition
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Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, Second Edition ReviewEmerson wrote of Shakespeare, "his mind is the horizon beyond which, at present, we do not see," and the same may be said of Ken Wilber. Wilber wrote SEX, ECOLOGY, SPIRITUALITY (hereafter, "SES") during a "three-year silent retreat"--"I lived the hermit's life; I saw exactly four people in four years," he recalls (p. xii), and in SES he lays the foundation for his integral philosophy, which he develops more fully in his subsequent books. Wilber was seeking "a world philosophy," in writing SES, he explains. "I sought an integral philosophy, one that would believably weave together the many pluralistic contexts of science, morals, aesthetics, Eastern as well as Western philosophy, and the world's great wisdom traditions. Not on the level of details--that is finitely impossible, but on the level of orienting generalizations: a way to suggest that the world really is one, undivided, whole, and related to itself in every way: a holistic philosophy for a holistic Kosmos: a world philosophy, an integral philosophy" (p. xii).
In SES, Wilber unfolds "a broad orienting map of men and women's place in the larger Kosmos (of matter, life, mind, and spirit)" that "naturally touches on a great number of topics that have recently become 'hot,' from the ecological crisis to feminism, from the meaning of modernity and postmodernity to the nature of "liberation" in relation to sex, gender, race, class, creed; to the nature of techno-economic developments and their relation to various worldviews; to the various spritual and wisdom traditions the world over that have offered telling suggestions as to our place in a larger scheme of things" (p. 6). SES is a "cry of anger and anguish" (p. xxiii) against homogenized "flatland" paradigms, and is likely to alarm ecophilosophers, feminists, and fundamentalists, alike. We are on the "verge of planetary transformation" (p. 204), and Wilber is investing his hope in the "integrative power of vision-logic." He writes, "it is vision-logic with its centauric/planetary worldview that, in my opinion, holds the only hope for the integration of the biosphere and noosphere, the supranational organization of planetary consciousness, the genuine recognition of ecological balance, the unrestrained and unforced forms of global discourse, the nondominating and noncoercive forms of federated states, the unrestrained flow of worldwide communicative exchange, the production of genuine world citizens, and the enculturation of female agency (i.e., the integration of male and female in both the noosphere and biosphere)--all of which, in my opinon, is nevertheless simply the platform for the truly interesting forms of higher and transpersonal states of consciousness lying yet in our collective future--if there is one" (p. 192). Wilber covers a lot of ground in SES, making it difficult to summarize. Immensely challenging at times, and drawn from "voluminous research material," at the center of Wilber's philosophy, "surfaces extend; interiors intend--it's still almost as simple as that" (p. 134) he explains. "Going within = going beyond = greater embrace" (p. 263). SES should be read and then reread as an essential, visionary handbook for the new millennium.
G. MerrittSex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, Second Edition Overview

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Mindfulness and Hypnosis: The Power of Suggestion to Transform Experience Review

Mindfulness and Hypnosis: The Power of Suggestion to Transform Experience
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Mindfulness and Hypnosis: The Power of Suggestion to Transform Experience Review"Our attention and every words we say to ourselves and others serve as virtual posthypnotic suggestions that alter our perception of reality itself - for good or ill." ~ Lama Surya Das
Dr. Michael D. Yapko believes that guided mindfulness meditation is a form of hypnosis. In his book he attempts to put the reader's mind at ease by explaining the similarities and promoting both mindfulness meditation and hypnosis for use to create a better life for patients. Since both mindfulness meditation and hypnosis are highly suggestive processes he addresses the phenomenon of suggestibility. While he spends some time discussing Buddhism he also has a lot of helpful advice on how to introduce hypnosis to clients. He especially explains why authoritarian suggestions should be used infrequently. Overall this book is a good introduction to the topics of mindfulness and hypnosis and would be beneficial to medical professionals interested in changing their patients lives for the better.
~The Rebecca ReviewMindfulness and Hypnosis: The Power of Suggestion to Transform Experience Overview

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Mother Earth Spirituality: Native American Paths to Healing Ourselves and Our World (Religion and Spirituality) Review

Mother Earth Spirituality: Native American Paths to Healing Ourselves and Our World (Religion and Spirituality)
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Mother Earth Spirituality: Native American Paths to Healing Ourselves and Our World (Religion and Spirituality) ReviewAfter reading "Black Elk Speaks" I picked up this book because I believe that Native American ways of living have much to offer us. We neglect their wisdom at our peril. It is a great privilege that we have access to their knowledge on how we can live in harmony with Mother Earth. The author starts with the question why he should teach non-Indians about Native American spirituality and answers that it is time to share that spirituality because it does not belong to the Indians alone but to others with the right attitude; we all live in one world. If kept within the Indian community their old wisdom will not be allowed to work its environmental medicine on the world where it is desperately needed. A spiritual fire that promotes a communal commitment to a worldwide environmental undertaking is needed. Native or primal ways will fuel that fire and give it great power. Mother Earth can be revered, respected and protected.
He then quotes the letter from Chief Seathl (Seattle) to the President of the United States of America in 1854 - one of the most unusual and eloquent letters that a President can have received. "How can we buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?" The truth is that we could really stop here, go into a quiet room and reflect on those three sentences and we will surely discover the root cause of many of our ills. We put a price on everything the Indians think has no value and we place no value on everything the Indians think is valuable. Sparkling water in a stream flowing through a wood has no value to us but it is the essence of life to the Indian. Having polluted our rivers and killed the fish we are at long last starting to ask ourselves those very questions that Chief Seattle asked of the President 150 years ago.
Another point made by Chief Seattle haunts me. "...to harm the earth is to heap contempt on the Creator. The Whites too shall pass; perhaps sooner than all other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste." How many of us today are saying somewhat similar things to our deaf leaders? But the heart and soul of the Indian way of life lies at the end of Seattle's letter, "So, if we sell our land, love it as we've loved it. Care for it as we've cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you take it. And with all your strength, with all your mind, with all your heart, preserve it for your children, and love it ... as God loves us all. One thing w know. Our God is the same God. This earth is precious to Him. Even the white man cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We shall see....." How many of us would claim that we have loved the land as the Indians loved the land, or cared for the land as the Indians cared for the land? If we answer 'no', then surely that means that we have something to learn from the Native Indians. I am sure that if Chief Seattle were here today he would cry to see what we have done to those lands the Indians held sacred. He would cry for the pain inflicted on the earth. He would cry for us who in our greed and selfishness have wrought such damage on ourselves and our children.
I agree with and applaud Ed McGaa. A spiritual fire that promotes a communal commitment to a worldwide environmental undertaking is needed. Native or primal ways will fuel that fire and give it great power. We should all learn something from this book. But not just read and think and speak. But act. This book is nothing if we do not act on it. This is what Stephen Covey was telling us in "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change" that first we have to change ourselves, and only then we can change others and the world.
Einstein told us that we need a higher level of thinking to get ourselves out of the mess than the thinking that got us into the mess. Stephen Covey tells us that in such situations as we are in today we need a quantum change that can only be brought about by a completely new paradigm. Our current way of living is the paradigm that got us into the mess. The Indian approach is probably the paradigm that will get us out of the mess. If we read this book with an open mind and without prejudice, I believe that the Native American paradigm should be at the top of the shortlist of new paradigms from which we should make our selection for building the world we want for our children.Mother Earth Spirituality: Native American Paths to Healing Ourselves and Our World (Religion and Spirituality) Overview

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The Quantum and the Lotus: A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet Review

The Quantum and the Lotus: A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet
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The Quantum and the Lotus: A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet Review"If there is any religion that could respond to the needs of modern science," Einstein said, "it would be Buddhism" (p. 282). Drawn from their extraordinary dialogues, Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Thuan explore Buddhist teachings and modern science in THE QUANTUM AND THE LOTUS. "Buddhism is basically a science of enlightenment," Ricard writes in the Introduction to this book. Before becoming a Buddhist monk and translator for the Dalai Lama, Ricard trained as a moleculor biologist and worked with a Nobel prize-winning scientist. Thuan, a Vietnamese Buddhist, became an acclaimed astrophysicist after studying at the California Institute of Technology. "Buddhism contends that if we want to grasp the true nature of reality, we must engage much more fully with the philosophical conundrums that quatum physics has revealed" (p. 113). This is the basic premise of THE QUANTUM AND THE LOTUS.
The Buddha discouraged blind faith. In fact, he said, "Investigate the validity of my teachings as you would examine the purity of gold, rubbing it against a stone, hammering it, melting it. Do not accept my words simply out of respect for me. Accept them when you see that they are true" (p. 10). In their compelling dialogues, Ricard and Thuan explore life's big questions. Why are we alive? Why do we die? Why do we suffer? How did the universe begin? Is there an all-knowing Creator responsible for the remarkable harmony and precision of the universe? Is the phenomena of the universe interdependent and nonseparable? Why is the science of elementary particles important to everyday life? Why should the impermanence of phenomena incite us to live life differently? What is consciousness and where does it come from? Why does the human brain question the meaning of life and our place in the world? What are the limitations of analytical and contemplative thought, and can science ever reveal an "ultimate truth"? Are there any common grounds between Buddhist teachings and modern science? For Ricard, "the most fascinating part of this confrontation between the natural sciences and Buddhism is in the analysis of the ultimate nature of things" (p. 269). For Thuan, "these conversations form part of an ongoing dialogue between science and Buddhism. The most important thing that they taught me was that there is a definite convergence and resonance between the Buddhist and scientific visions of reality. Some of Buddhism's views on the world of phenomena are stikingly similar to the underlying notions of modern physics--in particular, its two main grand theories: quantum mechanics, which is the physics of the infinitely small; and relativity, the physics of the infinitely large" (p. 276).
Perhaps this is the book Fritjof Capra envisioned writing someday after his TAO OF PHYSICS, integrating Buddhism and modern science. Like Capra's 1975 classic, THE QUANTUM AND THE LOTUS reveals that, "made of stardust, we share the same cosmic history as the lions on the savannas and the lavendars in the fields. We are all connected through time and space, and thus interdependent" (p. 280). And like Capra, coauthors Ricard and Thuan reveal, in non-technical terms, "Science can operate without spirituality. Spirituality can exist without science. But man, to be complete, needs both" (p. 282).
G. MerrittThe Quantum and the Lotus: A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet Overview

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2012: A Clarion Call: Your Soul's Purpose in Conscious Evolution (Worldshift Books) Review

2012: A Clarion Call: Your Soul's Purpose in Conscious Evolution (Worldshift Books)
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2012: A Clarion Call: Your Soul's Purpose in Conscious Evolution (Worldshift Books) ReviewReview for Amazon:
What could be worse than seeing our world heading for destruction, and feeling that there is no hope for change?
Reading 2012 A Clarion Call: Your Soul's Purpose in Conscious Evolution by Nicolya Christi, I felt like I had been conscripted (but voluntarily!) into a magnificent army of humans who are uniting to transform our world--even though some of us are living on opposite ends of the world and may never even know each other's names.
I have known that there were many people involved in the work of moving beyond the conditioned ego-self, but since reading Christi's book I feel myself to be a vital part of the change that evolution is asking humanity to make--the great sacrifice of that lesser, survival-based self for the truer "enlightened" Being that often lies hidden, and overlooked, within us.
This is not an easy shift to make, but Christi's description of the process and her beautiful letter to the dying ego, clearly captures the essence of the journey and offers both encouragement and tools to assist us on our way.
Hers is a voice that pierces right through the heart of our deepest hopelessness, feelings of inadequacy and our often paralyzing fear of change-- to let us know that there is no time to waste and that each one of us is needed here and now in response to our current crisis. (And the fact that she shares her own struggles with, and triumphs over, self-doubt empowers us to move past our own self-limiting and self-sabotaging thoughts and behaviors to honor whatever contribution we feel led to make.)
Most importantly, Christi implores us to expose, confront and ultimately transcend the addiction to suffering which fuels the ego and keeps us in its grip. In my experience, until I could move beyond my fear of happiness/proclivity to pain, I spent my time recycling old, negative patterns. It is imperative to see how we actually believe that suffering protects us, before we can "release" ourselves into our inherently joyful and fun-loving Selves.
As the introduction to her book indicates: "This book offers you a promise that in knowing and aligning with your unique role as we approach 2012, you will never have felt more alive, purposeful or connected with yourself...."
I have personally felt "held" in that "aliveness" she speaks of since receiving the "Clarion Call" and realize that I had not understood the full extent of the ego's loneliness and isolation until I had felt the sense of engagement and sense of purpose that I now feel.
I implore you to read this amazing and inspired work, and allow it to inspire you to make a difference for yourself, your loved ones and our world.
2012: A Clarion Call: Your Soul's Purpose in Conscious Evolution (Worldshift Books) Overview

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