The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times Review

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(More customer reviews)In the current age of anxiety, Pema Chödrön is both a refreshing and challenging voice. Basically, she encourages us to see problems as spiritual opportunities. Instead of trying to run from discomfort, she advocates staying put and learning about ourselves. Instead of habitually reaching for whatever palliative gives relief -- always temporary -- she suggests feeling and observing our discomforts, becoming more fully present in our lives, learning how to be truly here now. Only through this process, she says, can we experience the deep joy of being alive.
This is a great companion volume to her book "When Things Fall Apart." It elaborates on themes introduced there, describing several practices of Tibetan Buddhism, some ancient and long forgotten, which help us not only cope with anxiety but use it to overcome fearfulness. This is an important spiritual effort because while we typically think of hate as the enemy of love, it is really fear that makes love difficult. Fear immobilizes us, makes us pull the covers over our heads, and isolates us from others.
Chödrön, a student of Chögyam Trungpa, encourages the consistent practice of meditation. And she discounts the usual results-driven expectations people associate with it, pointing out that as we confront our true selves in meditation, it often becomes more and more difficult, not easier. And for those who have found meditation fiercely frustrating, as I have, she has alternatives. The practice of "tonglen" is one simple spiritual ritual that can be done anywhere, anytime, providing a dramatic and freeing shift in emotional perspective. Learning not to let disappointment, anger, and hurt trigger our personal melodramas, which sap our energy, we can find our way to greater equanimity and become a less destructive presence in the world.
I strongly recommend this book as a welcome spiritual tonic in troubled times, whether that trouble originates elsewhere or from within. As with her other books, you can read and reread it, each time discovering much to learn and reflect on -- and in her words, "this is news you can use."

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Oneness With All Life: Inspirational Selections from A New Earth Review

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(More customer reviews)The first thing I noticed about Eckhart Tolle's Oneness with All Life: Inspirational Selections from a New Earth, is that it is a beautifully bound hard cover book (ribbon bookmark included,)with an old-time feel. The inside is beautifully laid out with flower illustrations. It actually conveys a feeling of peacefulness to hold the book.
"Your inner purpose is to awaken," says Tolle. This is the essence of the book, and what my own spiritual teacher tries to instill in her students. Each chapter works on this lofty spiritual plane.
Tolle recommends that you read A New Earth before Oneness with all Life, as this book is a distilled version of the first and contains fairly advanced spiritual lessons. He suggests reading a random section or single chapter at a time. The point is to read, reflect, and allow the messages to resonate within your soul.
"The informational content of this book is of relatively little importance," he writes. "You read it not so much to learn something new, but to go deeper, become more present, awaken out of the stream of incessant and compulsive thinking."
This sums up the book for me: "If you come across passages in this book that you feel are powerful, I want you to realize that what you are feeling is your own spiritual power. That is to say you are in your essence."
This book is like having your own spiritual teacher to turn to whenever you need some clarity.
A typical passage: "How to be at peace now. By making peace with the present moment."
Highly recommended.
By the author of the award winning book, HARMONIOUS ENVIRONMENT: BEAUTIFY, DETOXIFY & ENERGIZE YOUR LIFE, YOUR HOME & YOUR PLANET.

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The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability Review

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(More customer reviews)As do other current writers such as Thomas Homer-Dixon and David Korten, James Speth sees us heading for catastrophe in the way we're over-using and over-polluting the earth, but holds out hope that we may yet turn back from the brink of destruction. He attributes our predicament to an economic system based on little more than constant growth, which in turns requires ever more extraction from the earth; weak or nonexistent government leadership; and an environmental movement that has been less "movement" and more an insider operation that down deep believes a) the government can and will eventually do the right thing and b) there won't be need for drastic redirection of our economic and political systems or serious change in our way of living.
Speth calls for a rediscovery of the true meaning of life (relationships, service, enjoyment of leisure, etc.)--and orienting our economic pursuits around this; a new form of participatory democracy that takes back our country from the corporate-led government we currently "enjoy"; ending over $850 billion in annual global subsidies for "perverse" practices such as overfishing the seas; developing an economic model that incorporates environmental care, human rights and worker well-being at its core; and international treaties with "teeth" to enforce environmental protection of critical habitats and endangered species and ecosystems.
This is a depressing book in that it clearly lays out the challenges facing us; it is hopeful in that it does provide a "bridge" to get us from this world to the next. It's up to us to build it and then be ready to walk over it.
Telling quote: "When the crisis occurs, the actions taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, and to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable."


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