As Howard Falco learned, the answers to these questions can ultimately be found in the answer to just one: "Who am I?" In late 2002, in the middle of an ordinary life, Falco-a thirty- five-year-old investment manager with a wife and two children-sought the answer to this powerful question and remarkably this quest resulted in a sudden and all-encompassing shift in his awareness that revealed more about life and how we each create it than he ever imagined knowing. Startled by this new understanding and its implications for his own life and the lives of all others, Falco set out to share his discoveries. The stunning result is this book.I AM takes readers on a life-changing journey in which they will discover the incredible power they have over their experience of life, finding that the doorway to eternal peace, happiness, and fulfillment lies in one of the shortest sentences in the written word but the most powerful in the universe: I AM.

    Now a new dawn is streaming through the windows of perception. This book is one of those windows. Drunvalo Melchizedek presents the Flower of Life Workshop, illuminating the mysteries of how we came to be.

    Lipton and political and cultural commentator Steve Bhaerman, we are surrounded by the proof that we are poised to take an incredible step forward in the growth of our species. On Spontaneous Evolution, you are invited to participate in an eye-opening examination of science and history--one that leads to a profound vision of the next "holistic" stage of human civilization.Join these two pioneers as they explore:The three perennial questions any belief system needs to address, and why the answers have changed throughout history - The four "Myth-Perceptions of the Apocalypse"--the unexamined pillars that support modern thought, and why each one of them is ready to crumble- Why the blueprint for a brighter future is literally inside you--encoded into each of your trillions of cells- What you can do to help usher in the greatest cultural shift since the Copernican revolutionMany of the ideas and institutions that define our culture today are breaking down--and that's a good thing, say Lipton and Bhaerman. This is a necessary part of the natural process of clearing out what no longer serves us, in order to make room for a new way of being that will carry us into the next age.Spontaneous Evolution is an insightful, playful, and ultimately hopeful look at the unfolding destiny of our species--and how you can play an active role as a co-creator of the world to come.

    A scathingly funny reinterpretation of the Ten Commandments from the larger, louder half of world-famous magic duo Penn and Teller reveals an atheist's experience in the world: from performing on the Vegas strip with Siegfried and Roy to children and fatherhood to his ongoing dialogue with proselytizers of the Christian Right and the joys of sex while scuba-diving, Penn has an outrageous sense of humor and a brilliantly entertaining opinion on, well, anything you care to think of.

    The talk is lively and fascinating as these leading minds grapple with age-old questions of compelling contemporary urgency. Daniel Goleman, the internationally bestselling author of Emotional Intelligence, provides the illuminating commentary--and reports on the breakthrough research this historic gathering inspired.Destructive Emotions Buddhist philosophy tells us that all personal unhappiness and interpersonal conflict lie in the "three poisons" craving, anger, and delusion. It also provides antidotes of astonishing psychological sophistication--which are now being confirmed by modern neuroscience. With new high-tech devices, scientists can peer inside the brain centers that calm the inner storms of rage and fear. They also can demonstrate that awareness-training strategies such as meditation strengthen emotional stability--and greatly enhance our positive moods.The distinguished panel members report these recent findings and debate an exhilarating range of other topics: What role do destructive emotions play in human evolution? Are they "hardwired" in our bodies? Are they universal, or does culture determine how we feel? How can we nurture the compassion that is also our birthright? We learn how practices that reduce negativity have also been shown to bolster the immune system. Here, too, is an enlightened proposal for a school-based program of social and emotional learning that can help our children increase self-awareness, manage their anger, and become more empathetic.Throughout, these provocative ideas are brought to life by the play of personalities, by the Dalai Lama's probing questions, and by his surprising sense of humor. Although there are no easy answers, the dialogues, which are part of a series sponsored by the Mind and Life Institute, chart an ultimately hopeful course. They are sure to spark discussion among educators, religious and political leaders, parents--and all people who seek peace for themselves and the world.The Mind and Life Institute sponsors cross-cultural dialogues that bring together the Dalai Lama and other Buddhist scholars with Western scientists and philosophers. Mind and Life VIII, on which this book is based, took place in Dharamsala, India, in March 2000.

    Some things are both waves and particles. . .at the same time. Electrons simply disappear . . . all the time. If the universe is this wild and unpredictable, so full of possibility, why are your thoughts about your own life so limited? Hundreds of years ago, science and religion split apart; they became antagonists in the great game of explanation and discovery. But science and religion are two sides of the same coin. They both help explain the universe, our place in the great plan and the meaning of our lives. In fact, they can only begin to do that adequately when they work together.What the Bleep Do We Know?!TM is a book of amazing science. With the help of more than a dozen research and theoretical scientists, it takes you through the looking glass of quantum physics into a universe that is more bizarre and alive than ever imagined. Then it takes you beyond, into the outer-inner edges of our scientific knowledge of consciousness, perception, body chemistry and brain structure. What is a thought made of? What is reality made of? And most importantly, how does a thought change the nature of reality?This science leads not just to the material world, but deep into the realm of spirituality. If observation affects the outcome, we aren't merely part of the universe, but participants in it. If thoughts are more than random neural firings, than consciousness is more than an anatomical accident. A higher power exists, but is it truly out there? Where is the dividing line between out there and in here?This is not a book of definitive answers. This is a book of mind stretching questions. It is a book that shows you not the path, but the endless possibilities. Do you think you have to go to the same job every day, do the same errands, think the same thoughts, feel the same way? Well, think again.

    Today, it is the most common form of officially classified mental illness. Scott Stossel gracefully guides us across the terrain of an affliction that is pervasive yet too often misunderstood. Drawing on his own long-standing battle with anxiety, Stossel presents an astonishing history, at once intimate and authoritative, of the efforts to understand the condition from medical, cultural, philosophical, and experiential perspectives. He ranges from the earliest medical reports of Galen and Hippocrates, through later observations by Robert Burton and Søren Kierkegaard, to the investigations by great nineteenth-century scientists, such as Charles Darwin, William James, and Sigmund Freud, as they began to explore its sources and causes, to the latest research by neuroscientists and geneticists. Stossel reports on famous individuals who struggled with anxiety, as well as on the afflicted generations of his own family. His portrait of anxiety reveals not only the emotion’s myriad manifestations and the anguish anxiety produces but also the countless psychotherapies, medications, and other (often outlandish) treatments that have been developed to counteract it. Stossel vividly depicts anxiety’s human toll—its crippling impact, its devastating power to paralyze—while at the same time exploring how those who suffer from it find ways to manage and control it. My Age of Anxiety is learned and empathetic, humorous and inspirational, offering the reader great insight into the biological, cultural, and environmental factors that contribute to the affliction.

    The book is divided into two parts, "The Mystic Fact" and "The Mystic Way." In the first part Underhill explores the theological, psychological, and philosophical underpinnings of mysticism from a historical perspective. In the second part Underhill examines the application of mysticism in one's life as a means for spiritual growth. Evelyn Underhill's Mysticism is both a fantastic introduction to the search for spirituality through mysticism and an almost encyclopedic examination of the subject.

    Recent research in the neurosciences and neurocardiology identifies the four neural centers of our brain and indicates that a fifth such center is located in the heart. This research reveals that the evolutionary structure of our brain and its dynamic interactions with our heart are designed by nature to reach beyond our current evolutionary capacities. We are quite literally, made to transcend. Pearce explores how this biological imperative drives our life into ever-greater realms of being--even as the cultural imperative of social conformity and behavior counters this genetic heritage, blocks our transcendent capacities, and breeds violence in all its forms. The conflict between religion and spirit is an important part of this struggle. But each of us may overthrow these cultural imperatives to reach unconflicted behavior, wherein heart and mind-brain resonate in synchronicity, opening us to levels of possibility beyond the ordinary.

    The heart of her work on her national public radio program and podcast, On Being, has been to shine a light on people whose insights kindle in us a sense of wonder and courage. Scientists in a variety of fields; theologians from an array of faiths; poets, activists, and many others have all opened themselves up to Tippett's compassionate yet searching conversation.   In Becoming Wise, Tippett distills the insights she has gleaned from this luminous conversation in its many dimensions into a coherent narrative journey, over time and from mind to mind. The book is a master class in living, curated by Tippett and accompanied by a delightfully ecumenical dream team of teaching faculty.   The open questions and challenges of our time are intimate and civilizational all at once, Tippett says – definitions of when life begins and when death happens, of the meaning of community and family and identity, of our relationships to technology and through technology. The wisdom we seek emerges through the raw materials of the everyday. And the enduring question of what it means to be human has now become inextricable from the question of who we are to each other.   This book offers a grounded and fiercely hopeful vision of humanity for this century – of personal growth but also renewed public life and human spiritual evolution. It insists on the possibility of a common life for this century marked by resilience and redemption, with beauty as a core moral value and civility and love as muscular practice. Krista Tippett's great gift, in her work and in Becoming Wise, is to avoid reductive simplifications but still find the golden threads that weave people and ideas together into a shimmering braid.   One powerful common denominator of the lessons imparted to Tippett is the gift of presence, of the exhilaration of engagement with life for its own sake, not as a means to an end. But presence does not mean passivity or acceptance of the status quo. Indeed Tippett and her teachers are people whose work meets, and often drives, powerful forces of change alive in the world today. In the end, perhaps the greatest blessing conveyed by the lessons of spiritual genius Tippett harvests in Becoming Wise is the strength to meet the world where it really is, and then to make it better.

    He eviscerates the major arguments for religion, and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence.The God Delusion makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong, but potentially deadly. It also offers exhilarating insight into the advantages of atheism to the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe's wonders than any faith could ever muster.

    The bestselling author of The New Fascists speaks out against religious and secular fundamentalism as he explores the New Atheists: those who attack religion to advance their causes.

    S. Lewis's wife, the American-born poet Joy Davidman. In her introduction to this new edition, Madeleine L'Engle writes: "I am grateful to Lewis for having the courage to yell, to doubt, to kick at God in angry violence. This is a part of a healthy grief which is not often encouraged. It is helpful indeed that C. S. Lewis, who has been such a successful apologist for Christianity, should have the courage to admit doubt about what he has so superbly proclaimed. It gives us permission to admit our own doubts, our own angers and anguishes, and to know that they are part of the soul's growth."Written in longhand in notebooks that Lewis found in his home, A Grief Observed probes the "mad midnight moments" of Lewis's mourning and loss, moments in which he questioned what he had previously believed about life and death, marriage, and even God. Indecision and self-pity assailed Lewis. "We are under the harrow and can't escape," he writes. "I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get. The old life, the jokes, the drinks, the arguments, the lovemaking, the tiny, heartbreaking commonplace." Writing A Grief Observed as "a defense against total collapse, a safety valve," he came to recognize that "bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love."Lewis writes his statement of faith with precision, humor, and grace. Yet neither is Lewis reluctant to confess his continuing doubts and his awareness of his own human frailty. This is precisely the quality which suggests that A Grief Observed may become "among the great devotional books of our age."

    No matter who we are, we feel fulfillment, happiness, and purpose inside of ourselves. These qualities are not felt outside of ourselves, and cannot be found in external things or circumstances. Similarly, knowledge of ourselves and our purpose cannot be found in external things, but are found inside. By knowing what is in our hearts and minds, by seeing what we usually ignore, we learn not only what we are capable of, but also what prevents us from developing our full potential. By knowing ourselves, we acquire the knowledge of how to change for the better. As we improve ourselves and awaken to our true nature, we spontaneously begin to radiate the light of divinity in everything we do, increasing our own happiness, and spreading it to others. This is how we begin to live the Gnostic message, which states that the light of the Divine is within us. By knowing ourselves, we also learn about that light, and can bring it into the world to benefit everyone. "All things, all circumstances that occur outside ourselves on the stage of this world, are exclusively the reflection of what we carry within. With good reason then, we can solemnly declare that the 'exterior is the reflection of the interior.' When someone changes internally-and if that change is radical-then circumstances, life, and the external also change." - Samael Aun Weor This book reflects and illuminates the spiritual psychology of all genuine religions and mystical traditions. With the practical guidance in this book, anyone can awaken to see the light for the Divine for themselves.

    But what does all that mean to the modern Hindu today? Why do Hindus call themselves so? Is it merely because their parents were Hindus? In what way does the faith speak to those who profess to follow it? What does Hinduism mean to the everyday-practicing or sometimes-accessing ordinary Hindu? Away from the raucous debate around religions, this is the journey of a common Hindu—an attempt to understand why, for so many Hindus, their faith is one of the most powerful arguments for plurality, for unity in diversity, and even more than the omnipresent power of God, the sublime courage and conviction of man. Being Hindu is the exploration of Hinduism in a way you have never seen before—almost through your own eyes.