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

Oceanic Mind - The Deeper Meditation Training Course: for Beginning and Advanced Students of Meditation and Yoga Review

Oceanic Mind - The Deeper Meditation Training Course: for Beginning and Advanced Students of Meditation and Yoga
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This is a great book for readers who sincerely want to learn and apply the information. It is practical, covers many techniques, and gives much insight into the central and specific issues concerning the practice of meditation. The author's style is personal and humorous, making for a refreshing read.

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Daily meditations for women who love too much Review

Daily meditations for women who love too much
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This book, a daily devotional for we women who base our value on our love lives with our men is a real eye opener. I couldn't wait to read to the next day. It helps to see what you already deep down know in your heart to be true...it validates all the feelings that you have. For those of you that are dependant on men for completion...get this book.

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To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings Review

To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings
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John O'Donohue died peacefully in his sleep on January 8 of this year. He was working on a book on the late medieval mystic Meister Eckhart. Hopefully, enough of it was completed to warrant a posthumous publication. In the meantime, his To Bless the Space Between Us is O'Donohue's parting gift.
The book is a collection of blessings. That doesn't necessarily sound too exciting until one recognizes the deep-down meaning of a blessing, and O'Donohue's introduction provides some guidance. In our overly busy culture, he writes, we frequently race over the "crucial thresholds in our life" without pausing to take note of their significance. We no longer have "rituals to protect, encourage, and guide us as we cross over into the unknown" (p. xiv). A blessing is precisely one of those protecting, encouraging, and guiding rituals. It memorializes our transitions, connects us with a wider community (since none of us really ever travels alone), and strives to "present a minimal psychic portrait of the geography of change it names" (ibid).
Blessings, then, are all-important. They serve to orient us in our life's journey, establish fellowship with fellow travelers, and remind us of what we too often forget: that we are pilgrims, not haphazard wanderers.
Because there are all kinds of thresholds that lead to new stages of the journey, O'Donohue has written all kinds of blessings: for obvious thresholds such as birthdays, parenthood, adulthood, old age, and death; for interior thresholds such as courage, grief, addiction, suffering, loneliness; for the thresholds of callings to the priesthood, marriage, farming; and for the thresholds that our yearnings for love, peace, and friendship can nudge us towards. Some of the blessings O'Donohue gives us are breath-takingly beautiful; others, not so much. As he himself confesses, blessings are difficult things to write. They're not poems, because they're not oblique, but rather are direct addresses "driven by immediacy and care." Yet they're not utterly unpoetic, either, because in their immediacy they must also be evocative.
Given O'Donohue's passing, it's not amiss to quote a bit of one of his most beautiful and haunting blessings (p. 72): "For Death."
From the moment you were born,
Your death has walked beside you.
Though it seldom shows its face,
You still feel its empty touch
When fear invades your life,
Or what you love is lost
Or inner damage is incurred...
That the silent presence of your death
Would call your life to attention,
Wake you up to how scarce your time is
And to the urgency to become free
And equal to the call of your destiny.
That you would gather yourself
And decide carefully
How you now can live
The life you would love
To look back on
From your deathbed.

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A Life Less Anxious: Freedom from panic attacks and social anxiety without drugs or therapy Review

A Life Less Anxious: Freedom from panic attacks and social anxiety without drugs or therapy
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A Life Less Anxious: Freedom from panic attacks and social anxiety without drugs or therapy (Volume 1)
I have been struggling with Anxiety/Panic attacks since I was a teenager. I have read so many books, Listen to tons of CD's and bought an expensive Video program. None have ever helped me. Steves books is so well written, I read half the book the first night. Even thou I knew I wasnt the only one who struggled with Anxiety,this book shed a new light for me. I have yet to read a book where the Author so totally described my symptoms and understood what I am going thru. I am so glad I bought this book. Yesterday during a snow storm we were out doing errands I tried Steves breathing technique.. IT worked! I had gotten myself so worked up about the snow and fearing the "WHAT IFS" we slid off the road~~ I wasnt sure how I would ever make it home. I then started breathing as Steve says in the books and for the first time in my life,, I was able to get my anixety attack under control. Thank you Steve for writing this book. I highly recommend this bookfor anyone who is struggling with anxiety.

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American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation How Indian Spirituality Changed the West Review

American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation How Indian Spirituality Changed the West
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In 1963 the United States opened the door to immigrants from Asia,and when they did, lots of gurus, swamis, lamas and roshis poured through to share their cultures' various wisdoms. Some of them had integrity and some of them didn't, but they all changed the way we look at the world and helped shape our present worldview. After nearly fifty years of experimenting with the mystic East, Americans are wiser in many ways; unfortunately, they sometimes fell prey to charlatans, but that was all part of the growth curve. Phil Goldberg's book is an exceptional introduction to the journey into Hindu traditions that many have taken, through meditation, yoga, and other techniques of consciousness expansion. The book is filled with extraordinary stories and entertaining analysis. It is a book for everyone who has studied with an Indian teacher, or thought about it. It is simultaneously a warning and an enticement. His humor and insight make this a wonderful ride, and an accurate telling of what went down. It is certainly the best book today on the subject.

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Until Today : Daily Devotions for Spiritual Growth and Peace of Mind Review

Until Today : Daily Devotions for Spiritual Growth and Peace of Mind
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This was so moving for me. I am just recently out of a bad relationship, one of many. A friend shared with me a copy of this book before I bought it myself. Iyanla touches on the deepest parts of my heart, and shows me that I am not alone. Coming from a not so good childhood...and thinking as I grew up that men were always going to hurt me in the end, therefore never allowing myself to honestly open up and trust one, I have just been going through the motions of a relationship for years. Never understanding why it is that I just cant seem to find "happiness". And she, very vividly, explains that we all have a past but we can't allow it to ruin our future! And only now in retrospect, with the aid of this book showing me and allowing me to really understand, can I see that I was doing just that. If you are not sure about where to go for help, or unsure of how you can get beyond your "skeletons in the closet", like many of us, than this is definitely for you! She is helping me to find myself all over again from the inside out....Healing the mind, body and soul.

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Getting in the Gap: Making Conscious Contact with God Through Meditation (Book with CD) Review

Getting in the Gap: Making Conscious Contact with God Through Meditation (Book with CD)
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and don't know where to start, this is a great book and CD to get your feet wet. The Japa meditation is simple, calming, and beneficial for mental clarity and peace.
I mostly bought this book because it also contains a CD of a guided meditation called "Japa". I have never formally meditated before with guided imagery, so I thought I would give it a try, especially since I was familiar with Dyer's books and loved his personal style and wisdom. Japa meditation focuses on the sound "Ah", which Dyer notes is a sound common in all names of God, such as Yahweh, Allah, Ra, Jehovah, Krishna, Kali, Yeshua, and so on.
His gentle and soothing voice guides you to visualize 1the first 10 words of the Lord's Prayer (Our Father Who Art In Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Name), and then focus on the "gap" between words where there is space and silence. Then, you voice the "Ah" sound along with Dyer. I realize that sound is very healing and sacred, but I personally don't like to verbalize the "Ah" sound along with Dyer. However, by hearing Dyer chant "Ah" between the gaps of the Lord's Prayer, it helps me center in on that "gap" and feel the vibration and Presence of God. I tend to be more visual, so imagining the "space between" helps to cease the mind's incessant chatter.
I highly recommend this book and accompanying CD for greater mental clarity and overall feelings of peace--especially if you have reservations about guided meditations or have never used one before. Getting in the Gap also contains a section of testimonials from those who have had remarkable experience using the Japa meditation.

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The practice of meditation takes us on a fabulous journey into the gap between our thoughts, where all the advantages of a more peaceful, stress-free, healthy, and fatigue-free life are available, but which are simply side benefits. The paramount reason for daily meditation is to get into the gap between our thoughts, and make conscious contact with the creative energy of life itself. Dr. Wayne W. Dyer explains the soul-nourishing meditation technique for making conscious contact with God, which the ancient masters have told us about. You have the potential to be an instrument of the highest good for all concerned and to be a literal miracle worker in your own life. No person, government, or religion can legitimately claim to do this for you. "In fact," says Dr. Dyer, "I agree with Carl Jung who said, 'One of the main functions of formalized religion is to protect people against a direct experience of God.'" When you master getting into the gap and staying there for prolonged segments of meditation, and experience what you bring back to the material world, you will know your answer to the question: "Why meditate?"


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Quiet Mind: One-Minute Retreats from a Busy World Review

Quiet Mind: One-Minute Retreats from a Busy World
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"Welcome to a new way to cope with the demands of a too-busy life. Welcome to a way that requires no difficult skills, adds no new burdens, and accommodates all spiritual systems and life-styles. Welcome to all who want to do nothing-more often, more creatively, with joy, and without guilt. Welcome to one-minute retreats that can be yours at any time of the day or night." - From the book
According to author David Kundtz, a mindful posture centered from the quiet state of your being is *crucial* for any undertaking. In fact, he asserts, if we do not take the time to pause with purpose, disappointment and failure awaits us.
In his book Quiet Mind, Kundtz invites us to do nothing-but to "do" it with purpose, meaning, and value. That is, to take time for ourselves, to rest, to find peace, to awaken, to remember, and to find ways to recognize what we may have forgotten, and how not to forget again.
At 370-pages, Quiet Mind: One-Minute Retreats from a Busy World is brimming with dozens of meditations designed to promote thoughtfulness, calm, and quietude. The mini-retreats, one and a half to two pages long, feature a sage quote and Kundtz's wise and gentle commentary. At the end of each, the author offers one-sentence encouragement, inviting readers to observe life and apply the wisdom found in the meditation.
Kundtz has organized these meditations under fourteen general categories, including:
*Making Room for Life
*Creating Opportunities for Serenity
*Defining Your Values
*Finding Peace at Work
*Knowing Thyself
*Awakening to Wonder
*Giving Back to the World
Under the category Finding Peace at Work, for example, is a meditation about Weariness. Beginning with a quote from Eric Hoff saying, "Our greatest weariness comes from work not done", Kundtz observes:
"...what tires us most is not work, but the anticipation of work still to do. Here is a time when living in the present moment is vital. The past is gone, the future is a just a concept and a projection of our minds. All you have is now. It's all you need..."
In the section Making Room for Life, a meditation called What's Going on Here begins with a quote by George Wilson: "Things are seldom about what they seem to be about." Kundtz notes that all too often we narrowly focus on accomplishing a particular task that we overlook the obvious cause of pain and distress in those around us. He relates the story of a frustrated mother bringing her son to him for counseling. The boy refused to go to school, and neither the son nor the mother was very communicative as to possible causes. Kundtz couldn't figure out what was at the heart of the problem! When he suggested they come back next week the mother replied that they could not come back next week because they were moving across the country. Aha! At last, a window into the boy's world: he was grieving the loss of his friends and all things familiar.
Quiet Mind by David Kundtz is a delightful book, providing a much-needed respite from overloaded senses, cluttered thoughts, and hurried lives.

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More than a meditation book, Quiet Mind is a series of reflections that can illuminate every aspect of life. It offers readers guidance on using the moments between activities -- which the author calls "stillpoints" -- as opportunities to focus on becoming more fully awake to who they are. "These times are the 'spaces in between' the events of your life," writes Kundtz, "spaces often lost, or worse -- filled with anxiety. And these spaces in between are just waiting to bring you the calmness and clarity that an over-demanding schedule steals from you." A welcome respite for anyone whose gear shift is perpetually in overdrive, Quiet Mind is an invitation to rest, find peace, awaken, and remember. It offers deceptively simple wisdom to help readers sharpen their senses and make room for life.

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Sayings of the Buddha: New Translations from the Pali Nikayas (Oxford World's Classics) Review

Sayings of the Buddha: New Translations from the Pali Nikayas (Oxford World's Classics)
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Unlike the Abrahamic religions, Buddhism does not have an equivalent to the Torah, the Bible or the Qur'an. What we know of the Buddha's teaching comes largely from a vast collection of writings called the Tipitaka ("three baskets") in an ancient Indian language called Pali (thus, the Tipitaka is also referred to as "the Pali canon"). Of these, the second basket - the Sutta Pitaka ("Basket of Well-Spoken Utterances") - is the most famous. It contains the purported discourses (in Pali: suttas) of the Buddha himself, and are the oldest remaining documents in an Indian language to preserve his philosophy. Readers now have at least three very good English-language anthologies of suttas to choose from. By far the most comprehensive is Bhikku Bodhi's In the Buddha's Words. The other anthology of note is John J. Holder's scholarly Early Buddhist Discourses.
This new anthology is by Rupert Gethin of the University of Bristol, and current president of the Pali Text Society. It also happens to be an especially attractive edition, part of the newly revamped Oxford World's Classics series. As one would expect from both Gethin's credentials and the Oxford series, the introduction, explanatory notes and supplementary materials are scholarly and insightful, aimed toward a discriminating general reader more so than a Buddhist practitioner. Gethin is positioned at the forefront of Buddhist scholarship and, if you are interested in historical Buddhism, you will find his insights extremely fascinating.
The book includes a highly informative general introduction in which Gethin bypasses the mythology surrounding the Buddha's life for a refreshingly spare exploration of the development of Buddhism in India. Each sutta is prefaced with an insightful introduction outlining its content as well as its relative importance within the Pali canon. The translations of the suttas themselves are beautiful: modern, vivid and refreshingly free of archaism. Buddhists as well as the general reader have much to gain from Gethin's transparent translations. Scholarly translations of Pali literature can sometimes be unreadable. See, for example, John Ross Carter and Mahinda Palihawadana's translation of The Dhammapada (also in the Oxford World's Classics series), which is probably among the most accurate available but unfortunately incomprehensible in places. Gethin strikes the right balance between readability and accuracy.
Readers new to Buddhist scripture may be surprised to find a rich and vivid literature of fascinating and compelling characters. Stories in which, for instance, a distraught king travels to the Buddha with five hundred wives each mounted on one of five-hundred she-elephants on a beautiful moonlit night. Or the Buddha's exhortation to his monks to observe the various stages in which a corpse decomposes. Or a vivid and touching portrayal of an aging and ailing Buddha anticipating the coming of his own death. What also comes across in Gethin's translations that sometimes gets lost in others is a characteristic humor. For example, in the discourse entitled "The Fruits of the Aescetic Life", the aforementioned king has asked guru after guru what the rewards of a life of renunciation would be in the here and now. All except the Buddha give him a longwinded exposition of their respective philosophies. The king remarks, "it is as if someone asked for an explanation of a mango gave and explanation of a breadfruit." (Get it? "Fruits" of the Ascetic Life? Well, I found it funny.)
The selection of suttas is strategic: included are the Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta ("Turning the Wheel of Truth" - the Buddha's first teaching in which he outlines the middle path and the four noble truths, the Samannaphala Sutta ("The Fruits of the Ascetic Life"), the Mahaparinibbana Sutta ("The Buddha's Final Enlightenment"), as well as the invaluable Satipatthana Sutta ("Establishing Mindfulness") among many, many others. The anthology as a whole culls from four of the five of the nikayas ("collections"), opting to skip out on material from the Khuddaka Nikaya (the so-called "minor collection"). Gethin's aim appears to have been to offer a representation of Early Buddhism as a whole, as opposed to a streamlined collection for Buddhist practitioners. What emerges is a Buddhism that is somewhat intermediate between indigenous Indian spirituality (there is much talk of karma, reincarnation and gods and demons - largely missing from many of the more Westernized introductions to Buddhism) and the agnostic/nontheistic adaptations of Buddhism developing later.
Of the three anthologies mentioned, Holder's would probably make the best textbook for a university course. It is scholarly, but much better focused on the philosophical foundations of Buddhism. Bhikku Bodhi's collection is indispensable for practitioners - the commentary and translations are extremely insightful. Gethin's lies somewhere in between: not as scholarly as Holder's and not quite as focused and streamlined for the modern-day Buddhists as Bodhi's. Still, I recommend it to anyone interested in getting a more accurate view of what early Buddhism may have looked like. The readability of the translations themselves are certainly worth the price of the volume.


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A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Selected from the World's Sacred Texts Review

A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Selected from the World's Sacred Texts
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One of my favorites! I have a daily process, which includes morning reading of several great works. It didn't take long for this book to rise to the top. Tolstoy has done a great service to mankind through his collection of great insights and wisdom. Nicely translated by Peter Sekirin, this book is a treasure awaiting discovery! Tolstoy put a tremendous effort into his concept of "A wise thought for every day of the year, from the great philosophers of all times and all people." It took him over fifteen years of searching to compile this final version of which Tolstoy himself would consult daily for the rest of his life. Wisdom from the likes of Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal, Jesus, Confucius, Emerson, Kant, Ruskin, Seneca, Socrates, Thoreau and many more. Tolstoy's love and passion for his work shines through as he writes in his introduction..."I hope that the readers of this book may experience the same benevolent and elevating feeling which I have experienced when I was working on it's creation, and which I experience again and again when I reread it every day, working on the enlargement and improvement of the previous edition." I am sure that this book will be one of your all time favorites too!

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Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga Review

Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga
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Mediations from the Mat is a one-a-day vitamin for the yogic soul. There are 365 essays here designed to nourish you on your journey off and on the mat.
If you practice yoga, you will appreciate this book. If you like thought-provoking quotes, you'll find them here. If you're on a path toward spiritual and emotional well being, this book is for you.
Grasping Patanjali's 8-limb path is a daunting task. Gates, along with gifted writer/editor Katrina Kenison, simplifies these lessons by presenting them through examples of his own life experiences and discoveries.
What I like best about this book is that it's simple and it's Real. Anybody can relate to these stories of suffering, joy, tragedy, and love, regardless of whether they practice yoga. So with each daily reading, we begin to realize that yoga is not some esoteric, mountain-top guru thing, but a means of meeting ourselves and learning our truth -- simply by showing up on our mats and in our lives.
Gates doesn't claim to have answers. He gives us what he has to give: the lessons he has learned through the erratic, grace-filled ride he's had so far. As the essays gradually build on one another, we begin to understand that amid our suffering, fear, and doubt, we can "experience a visceral sense of belonging in a universe held together by love."
If you take in one of these essays each day, you will nourish your soul. No doubt about it. I'm only on Day 31 and I feel the difference already!

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