Books Archive – Page 16 of 18

The Lifelong Activist

The Lifelong Activist is a guide to living a joyful and productive life that includes a strong progressive mission. It offers simple and clear instructions that help you figure out the form your authentic life should take, and live that life with a maximum of joy and productivity, and a minimum of fear, guilt, and shame.

The book’s sections are:
– Managing Your Mission (figuring out your authentic mission)
– Managing Your Time (building a schedule that allows you to realize that mission)
– Managing Your Fears (beating perfectionism, procrastination, and blocks to success, so you can follow your schedule)
– Managing Your Relationships (leveraging your strengths with those of others)

The Lifelong Activist is for liberal activists, artists, campaign workers, labor organizers, volunteers, students, teachers, human services workers, and entrepreneurs, but anyone can use it and learn from it. It can act as a useful handbook for students and young people at the beginning of their careers; those contemplating a career or path change; and those at risk for burnout will find it particularly useful.

The Common Heart

For twenty years, a group of spiritual seekers from many religious traditions met in various places around the United States under the rubric of the Snowmass Conferences to engage in the deepest form of interreligious dialogue. The experience was intimate and trusting, transformative and inspiring. To encourage openness and honesty, no audio or visual recording was made of, and no articles were written about, the encounters.

When these encounters came to an end, it was agreed that reflections on what had happened emotionally, spiritually, philosophically, and theologically during the Snowmass dialogues should be written down. The result is The Common Heart.

Here is an extraordinary exploration of the wealth of the world’s spiritual traditions combined with dialogue from the heart about the differences and similarities between their paths of wisdom. Participants include Fr. Thomas Keating, Roshi Bernie Glassman, Swami Atmarupananda, Dr. Ibrahim Gamard, Imam Bilal Hyde, Pema Chodron, Rabbi Henoch Dov Hoffman, and many others. The foreword is by Ken Wilber.

Five Spirits

The Five Spirits are the Taoist map of the human psyche. The system provides a view of the nervous system and forms the basis of Chinese medical psychology. It also describes a precise and efficient technology for spiritual transformation, the process through which a human being rediscovers their essential wholeness and innate connection to the divine.

The Five Spirits themselves can be understood as the Taoist version of the chakra system of Vedic India. Like the chakras, the spirits exist as centers of consciousness in the subtle body rather than as structures in the physical body. Just as each chakra relates to a particular level of consciousness, each spirit relates to a particular aspect of human awareness, a particular vibration or frequency of psychic energy. An understanding of the Five Spirits is the key that opens the doorway to the mysteries of Taoist psycho-spiritual alchemy. By taking advantage of the discoveries of Western archetypal psychology and new discoveries about the mind and nervous system, we can decipher the Five Spirits and reorganize the system in a way that has proven to be clinically invaluable in treating psychosomatic, emotional, and psychospiritual distress.

“In her first book, Dechar aims to identify the essential tenets of acupuncture and Chinese medicine, melding the mythic practices with the philosophy and techniques taught to modern practitioners. Central to her practice, as illustrated here, is her notion of ‘Alchemical Acupuncture’—the blending of acupuncture, the Five Spirits of traditional Chinese medicine, and the psychosomatic healing of Taoist psychology. Dechar presents case studies throughout, illustrating principles from her practice. She strives not to translate Chinese medicine into a Western form of understanding but instead supports Western expansion of consciousness to allow for an understanding of this type of reality. Her depth of understanding is evident, and this impressive goal may best be placed into the hands of existing practitioners. Dechar’s book is admirable in its scope but difficult in its detail. The concepts are explained well, but the average consumer may find it all a bit overwhelming. Recommended for public libraries and alternative medicine collections and highly recommended for students in the field.”—Andy Wickens

The Vegan Family Cookbook

Now that you’ve become a vegan, you’re learning lots of ways to prepare tofu, but you or someone you love is really starting to miss macaroni and cheese, turkey dinners, pumpkin pie and birthday cake. Maybe you and your family feel self-conscious (and hungry) at holidays, picnics, and parties. Or maybe just one person in the family is vegan, but you need to create meals that everyone will eat.

Since the day Brian McCarthy and his wife, Karen, chose a vegan diet for their family ten years ago, Chef McCarthy has created over 400 simple vegan recipes with easy-to-find ingredients for traditional favorites like biscuits, corn bread, stews, pastas, pizzas, cakes, pies, and even egg(less) nog. All the recipes come from the McCarthy home kitchen and have passed the test of many family meals. For individuals or families who are concerned about animals, the environment, or their health, mealtimes just got a whole lot easier.

The Holocaust and the Henmaid’s Tale

In a thoughtful and thought-provoking contribution to the study of animals and the Holocaust, Karen Davis makes the case that significant parallels can—and must—be drawn between the Holocaust and the institutionalized abuse of billions of animals in factory farms.

Carefully setting forth the conditions that must be met when one instance of oppression is used metaphorically to illuminate another, Davis demonstrates the value of such comparisons in exploring the invisibility of the oppressed, historical and hidden suffering, the idea that some groups were “made” to serve others through suffering and sacrificial death, and other concepts that reveal powerful connections between animal and human experience—as well as human traditions and tendencies of which we all should be aware.

“Brilliant, devastating in its analysis and hopeful in its premise.”—Carol J. Adams, author, The Sexual Politics of Meat

“Compelling and convincing. . . . Not to think about, protest against, and learn from these twin atrocities—one completed in the middle of the last century, the other continuing every day—is to condone and support the fascist mentality that produced them. I thank Ms. Davis for writing this bold, brave book.”—Charles Patterson, author, Eternal Treblinka

Manifesting God

Manifesting God is about the principles of contemplative prayer—the retreat into the “inner room” mentioned by Jesus in Matthew 6:6, where the individual is able to meet God. In the inner room, the silent space in which God unloads the burdens and false selves that govern our individuality and our daily lives, God acts as a divine therapist, healing us and forcing us to recognize how many barriers we put up between ourselves and an authentic relationship with God. The process whereby this happens is the foundation of centering prayer—a technique of prayer that Keating and other contemporary mystics have revived out of the ancient mystical traditions of the Desert Fathers and the medieval mystics.

Abbot Keating explores in this book what it means to enter the inner room and the transformation that takes place there. It explains the guidelines of centering prayer and offers advice on how to develop the relationship more deeply.

Senior Fitness

The senior years don’t have to be filled with aches and pains. At age seventy, Ruth Heidrich has the bone mass density of a woman in her early thirties and a resting heart rate of forty-four. Since being diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of forty-seven, she has won more than nine hundred athletic trophies and medals and has been cancer-free for more than twenty years.

In Senior Fitness, the “other” Dr. Ruth shows how to maintain and even increase physical and sexual fitness at any age—and dramatically reduce the risk of prostate cancer, varicose veins, osteoporosis, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, and a host of other ailments and diseases. Full of detailed medical information, this inspiring handbook is the ideal resource for all those seeking to make life after fifty full of fun and dynamism.

Yoga of Heart

Truth is not something we have to seek out. It is not something that is absent and far away, requiring great effort to find. Truth is present within you as the Life that is you. In Yoga of Heart, Los Angeles–based yoga instructor Mark Whitwell takes us back to the time when yoga was first developed—to the shamanic past of the Upanishads, when yoga was practiced as a means of acknowledging, enjoying, and participating in the very source of Life.

Whitwell explores the deeper tantric dimensions of hatha yoga—how yoga’s purpose is to link the mind to the wonder of our own condition. He shows how hatha yoga is participation in life’s polarities already in union—through the male surrender to the female principle. Yoga of Heart shows how we can forge that union of polarities within our body: above and below, front and back, left and right, male and female.

Yoga of Heart focuses especially on clearing the energy centers and meridians, fostering dynamic health and allowing practitioners to create a deeper intimacy with both their partners and the energetic life forces in the universe.

St. John of the Cross for Beginners

“Since the conduct of beginners in the way of God is much involved in the love of pleasure and self, God desires to withdraw them from this inferior way of loving.” —St. John of the Cross

Fr. William Meninger, OCSO, is one of the leading figures in the centering prayer movement. In this concise and beautifully written exposition, he guides the reader through two of the basic works of inner development by one of the most significant and influential of all Christian mystics, St. John of the Cross (1542–1591). These two texts—The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night of the Soul—explore the inner spiritual journey in all its revelations and challenges, its moments of joy and its moments of profound torment. Fr. Meninger unfolds for contemporary contemplative seekers the essence of these classical texts, section by section. St. John of the Cross for Beginners is an invaluable introduction for anyone entering or considering Christian inner work, or wishing to go further on their path of development.

The Great Compassion

Buddhism ought to be an animal rights religion par excellence. It has long held that all life forms are sacred and considers kindness and compassion the highest virtues. Moreover, Buddhism explicitly includes animals in its moral universe. Buddhist rules of conduct—including the first precept, “Do not kill”—apply to our treatment of animals as well as to our treatment of other human beings.

Consequently, we would expect Buddhism to oppose all forms of animal exploitation, and there is, in fact, wide agreement that most forms of animal exploitation are contrary to Buddhist teaching. Yet many Buddhists eat meat—although many do not—and monks, priests, and scholars sometimes defend meat-eating as consistent with Buddhist teaching.

The Great Compassion studies the various strains of Buddhism and the sutras that command respect for all life. Norm Phelps, a longtime student of Buddhism and an acquaintance of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, answers the central questions of whether Buddhism demands vegetarianism and whether the Buddha ate meat. He is not afraid to examine anti-animal statements in Buddhist lore—particularly the issues of whether Buddhists in non-historically Buddhist countries need to keep or to jettison the practices of their historical homelands.