Book picks similar to
Yoga Spandakarika: The Sacred Texts at the Origins of Tantra by Daniel Odier
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Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming
Stephen LaBerge - 1989
Based on Dr. Stephen LaBerge's extensive laboratory work at Stanford University mapping mind/body relationships during the dream state, as well as the teachings of Tibetan dream yogis and the work of other scientists, including German psycholgist Paul Tholey, this practical workbook will show you how to use your dreams to: Solve problems; Gain greater confidence; improve creativity, and more.
Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness
Bruce Rosenblum - 2006
Can you believe that physical reality is created by our observation of it? Physicists were forced to this conclusion, the quantum enigma, by what they observed in their laboratories.Trying to understand the atom, physicists built quantum mechanics and found, to their embarrassment, that their theory intimately connects consciousness with the physical world. Quantum Enigma explores what that implies and why some founders of the theory became the foremost objectors to it. Schr�dinger showed that it absurdly allowed a cat to be in a superposition simultaneously dead and alive. Einstein derided the theory's spooky interactions. With Bell's Theorem, we now know Schr�dinger's superpositions and Einstein's spooky interactions indeed exist.Authors Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner explain all of this in non-technical terms with help from some fanciful stories and bits about the theory's developers. They present the quantum mystery honestly, with an emphasis on what is and what is not speculation.Physics' encounter with consciousness is its skeleton in the closet. Because the authors open the closet and examine the skeleton, theirs is a controversial book. Quantum Enigma's description of the experimental quantum facts, and the quantum theory explaining them, is undisputed. Interpreting what it all means, however, is controversial.Every interpretation of quantum physics encounters consciousness. Rosenblum and Kuttner therefore turn to exploring consciousness itself--and encounter quantum physics. Free will and anthropic principles become crucial issues, and the connection of consciousness with the cosmos suggested by some leading quantum cosmologists is mind-blowing.Readers are brought to a boundary where the particular expertise of physicists is no longer a sure guide. They will find, instead, the facts and hints provided by quantum mechanics and the ability to speculate for themselves.
Reality Unveiled
Ziad Masri - 2017
Far from offering simple platitudes and general principles, Reality Unveiled immerses you into this surprising world of ancient and modern knowledge, and presents you with all the incredible evidence to support it.With a new profound understanding of existence, and answers to your long-held innermost questions, it gently goes on to show you how to tap into this inspiring wisdom in your practical everyday life, giving you the power to make a lasting transformation like never before, and to have the joy, peace, and true fulfillment you’ve always searched for.The book does something new and different in the spirituality genre, bringing scientific and empirical evidence to it in a way that reads like a gripping novel or documentary, while not losing the elements that touch one's soul.
A Course of Love: Combined Volume
Mari Perron - 2014
It is the way of direct experience of Truth. It is the way of the heart.It may be astonishing to hear that there is a continuation of A Course in Miracles, but it is true. Forty years ago Jesus dictated ACIM to the scribe Helen Schucman. More recently, over three years, he similarly dictated A Course of Love to Mari Perron. Students of ACIM will recognize the Voice. Students of truth, whatever their background, will find that ACOL resonates with the heart.In A Course of Love Jesus says: "This time we take a direct approach, an approach that seems at first to leave behind abstract learning and the complex mechanisms of the mind that so betray you. We take a step away from intellect, the pride of the ego, and approach this final learning through the realm of the heart. This is why, to end confusion, we call this course A Course of Love." (Prelude.44)ACIM and ACOL are complementary. The same Voice, more accessible. The same thought system, expanded.Like all non-dual teachings, ACOL is not about adding to one s life but about un-doing the ties that bind us to what it calls the "house of illusion." In ACOL we are gently guided to awaken, step by loving step. We find ourselves in the unlimited, eternal field of our own awareness, laughing and crying at the glory of what is.
Goldmining the Shadows
Pixie Lighthorse - 2019
We have grown socially accustomed to looking for a magic pill to mask it, and all other symptoms of deeper unrest. Yet becoming intimate with pain, but not possessed by it, enables us to feel, sense, and hear the wise teachings held within it. Emotional, physical, mental, sexual, and psychic pain, as well as collective pain carried for Earth during this time of great transition, contains valuable wisdom.Shadow is a term for the discarded within ourselves that informs our lives. It offers the potential to reveal what we previously thought was unsuitable, so unsuitable that we imprisoned it and forgot it. The aim is to know the shadow well, appreciate it, seek to integrate it—not leave it neglected to rot in a cell beneath the surface, where it is inevitably clanging its tin cup against the bars asking for acknowledgement and honoring—to make a place for it as part of your life story, but not let it be the operating manual.In this book, we'll explore:The keys to working with your shadowsHow to engage your shadow to heal generational patternsThe acts of liberation for individuals and all members of society and cultureWhat it would look like to break the repetitive loop of sufferingLanguage prompts to help navigate the shadowsShadow work is one of many keys to breaking the cycles of suffering. It prioritizes healing and offers empathy for one another.
The Seat of the Soul
Gary Zukav - 1989
Argues that humans are evolving from a species that seeks power based on the perception of the senses to one seeking power based on spiritual values.
Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective on Wholeness
Mark Epstein - 1998
We are taught that the ideal is a strong, individuated self, constructed and reinforced over a lifetime. But Buddhist psychiatrist Mark Epstein has found a different way. Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart shows us that happiness doesn't come from any kind of acquisitiveness, be it material or psychological. Happiness comes from letting go. Weaving together the accumulated wisdom of his two worlds--Buddhism and Western psychotherapy--Epstein shows how "the happiness that we seek depends on our ability to balance the ego's need to do with our inherent capacity to be." He encourages us to relax the ever-vigilant mind in order to experience the freedom that comes only from relinquishing control. Drawing on events in his own life and stories from his patients, Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart teaches us that only by letting go can we start on the path to a more peaceful and spiritually satisfying life.About The Author: Mark Epstein, M.D., is a psychiatrist in private practice and the author of Thoughts Without a Thinker . He is a contributing editor to Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and clinical assistant professor of psychology at New York University. He lives in New York City.
Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing
Robert Wolff - 2001
Deep in the mountainous jungle of Malaysia the aboriginal Sng'oi exist on the edge of extinction, though their way of living may ultimately be the kind of existence that will allow us all to survive. The Sng'oi--pre-industrial, pre-agricultural, semi-nomadic--live without cars or cell phones, without clocks or schedules in a lush green place where worry and hurry, competition and suspicion are not known. Yet these indigenous people--as do many other aboriginal groups--possess an acute and uncanny sense of the energies, emotions, and intentions of their place and the living beings who populate it, and trustingly follow this intuition, using it to make decisions about their actions each day. Psychologist Robert Wolff lived with the Sng'oi, learned their language, shared their food, slept in their huts, and came to love and admire these people who respect silence, trust time to reveal and heal, and live entirely in the present with a sense of joy. Even more, he came to recognize the depth of our alienation from these basic qualities of life. Much more than a document of a disappearing people, Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing holds a mirror to our own existence, allowing us to see how far we have wandered from the ways of the intuitive and trusting Sng'oi, and challenges us, in our fragmented world, to rediscover this humanity within ourselves.
The Tibetan Book of Meditation
Christie McNally - 2009
In The Tibetan Book of Meditation, Lama Christie McNally demonstrates that meditation also provides a much greater gift. It awakens our innate potential to shape our reality, to make moments of joy last forever, and to bring us the peace and contentment that we all ultimately seek. Written in an instructional yet intimate style, the author guides readers through a progression of meditations, from the simple concept of compassion to the transformative concept of emptiness. Teaching technique and content at the same time, this book is unique in its comprehensive approach and will find a special place in the hearts of novice and experienced meditators alike. Christie McNally, a renowned master teacher and lecturer who has studied with some of the greatest Indian, Tibetan, and western Buddhist masters, explains the central tenets of Buddhism and reveals how they apply to everyday life. Combining ancient wisdom and contemporary teachings, she leads readers along the path to a richer, fuller life through resonant examples and eye-opening insights.Her engaging tone and fresh approach to the art of meditation will appeal to followers of Pema Chödrön and to readers of Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, and Jon Kabat-Zinn. This down-to-earth guide to meditation brings the wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism to a new generation.
Creative Visualization: Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want in Your Life
Shakti Gawain - 1978
Now considered a classic, Creative Visualization teaches readers how to use their imaginations to manifest their deepest desires.
Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives
Dan Millman - 1980
Guided by a powerful old warrior named Socrates and tempted by an elusive, playful woman named Joy, Dan is led toward a final confrontation that will deliver or destroy him. Readers join Dan as he learns to live as a peaceful warrior. This international bestseller conveys piercing truths and humorous wisdom, speaking directly to the universal quest for happiness.
The Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali: A New Translation with Commentary
Chip Hartranft - 2003
Compiled in the second or third century CE, the Yoga-Sutra is a road map of human consciousness—and a particularly helpful guide to the mind states one encounters in meditation, yoga, and other spiritual practices. It expresses the truths of the human condition with great eloquence: how we know what we know, why we suffer, and how we can discover the way out of suffering. Chip Hartranft's fresh translation and extensive, lucid commentary bring the text beautifully to life. He also provides useful auxiliary materials, including an afterword on the legacy of the Yoga-Sutra and its relevance for us today.
Who Is My Self?: A Guide to Buddhist Meditation
Ayya Khema - 1997
Ayya Khema, author of the best-selling Being Nobody, Going Nowhere, uses one of the earliest Buddhist suttas to guide us along the path of the oldest Buddhist meditative practice for understanding the nature of "self." By following the Buddha's explanation with clear, insightful examples from her years of teaching meditation, she guides us back and forth between the relative understanding and higher realizations of the Buddhist concept of "self." Her thoughtful contemplation of the Buddha's radical understanding of "self" and her practical advice for achieving insight offer the reader a profound understanding of the "self." Both beginning and advanced practitioners will greatly benefit from Ayya Khema's warm and down-to-earth exposition of the Buddha's meditation on "self."
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice
Shunryu Suzuki - 1970
Seldom has such a small handful of words provided a teaching as rich as has this famous opening line. In a single stroke, the simple sentence cuts through the pervasive tendency students have of getting so close to Zen as to completely miss what it’s all about. An instant teaching on the first page. And that’s just the beginning.In the forty years since its original publication, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind has become one of the great modern Zen classics, much beloved, much reread, and much recommended as the best first book to read on Zen. Suzuki Roshi presents the basics—from the details of posture and breathing in zazen to the perception of nonduality—in a way that is not only remarkably clear, but that also resonates with the joy of insight from the first to the last page. It’s a book to come back to time and time again as an inspiration to practice, and it is now available to a new generation of seekers in this fortieth anniversary edition, with a new afterword by Shunryu Suzuki’s biographer, David Chadwick.
Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives
Michael Newton - 1994
Newton discovered some amazing insights into what happens to us between lives. Journey of Soulsis the record of 29 people who recalled their experiences between physical deaths. Through their extraordinary stories, you will learn specifics about:How it feels to die What you see and feel right after death The truth about spiritual guides What happens to disturbed souls Why you are assigned to certain soul groups in the spirit world and what you do there How you choose another body to return to Earth The different levels of souls: beginning, intermediate, and advanced When and where you first learn to recognize soulmates on Earth The purpose of life Journey of Souls is a graphic record or travel log by these people of what happens between lives on Earth. They give specific details as they movingly describe their astounding experiences.After reading Journey of Souls, you will gain a better understanding of the immortality of the human soul. You will meet day-to-day challenges with a greater sense of purpose. You will begin to understand the reasons behind events in your own life.Journey of Souls is a life-changing book. Already, over 600,000 people have taken Journey of Souls to heart, giving them hope in trying times.