A Centre of Wonders
A Centre of Wonders

Author: Janet Moore Lindman

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-05-31

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 1501717634

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Images of bodies and bodily practices abound in early America: from spirit possession, Fasting Days, and infanticide to running the gauntlet, going "naked as a sign," flogging, bundling, and scalping. All have implications for the study of gender, sexuality, masculinity, illness, the "body politic," spirituality, race, and slavery. The first book devoted solely to the history and theory of the body in early American cultural studies brings together authors representing diverse academic disciplines.Drawing on a wide range of archival sources—including itinerant ministers' journals, Revolutionary tracts and broadsides, advice manuals, and household inventories—they approach the theoretical analysis of the body in exciting new ways. A Centre of Wonders covers such varied topics as dance and movement among Native Americans; invading witch bodies in architecture and household spaces; rituals of baptism, conversion, and church discipline; eighteenth-century women's journaling; and the body as a rhetorical device in the language of diplomacy.

The Wonder of Being
The Wonder of Being

Author: Jeff Foster

Publisher: New Harbinger Publications

Published: 2010-04-30

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1626257892

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A combined and fully revised edition of Jeff Foster's first two books Life Without a Centre and Beyond Awakening. What if life is infinitely simpler than you ever imagined? We spend our lives seeking wealth, success, love, fulfilment, and even "spiritual enlightenment" in the future. Yet right at the heart of life there is an intimacy, a simplicity, a wholeness that is totally beyond words—and which cannot be reached through any kind of effort. In our attempts to change, to improve ourselves, or become "enlightened," we end up ignoring this wordless intimacy which is our birthright and our true home. The Wonder of Being points to the eternal freedom which exists beyond the seeker and the sought, and shows us the hidden assumptions that underlie our seeking activities. With great humour, compassion and clarity, Jeff Foster reminds us of something we have always known—that life, as it is, is a miracle... and beyond our thoughts, we are already free.

Wonder and Skepticism in the Middle Ages
Wonder and Skepticism in the Middle Ages

Author: Keagan Brewer

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-01-29

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1317430344

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Wonder and Skepticism in the Middle Ages explores the response by medieval society to tales of marvels and the supernatural, which ranged from firm belief to outright rejection, and asks why the believers believed, and why the skeptical disbelieved. Despite living in a world whose structures more often than not supported belief, there were still a great many who disbelieved, most notably scholastic philosophers who began a polemical programme against belief in marvels. Keagan Brewer reevaluates the Middle Ages’ reputation as an era of credulity by considering the evidence for incidences of marvels, miracles and the supernatural and demonstrating the reasons people did and did not believe in such things. Using an array of contemporary sources, he shows that medieval responders sought evidence in the commonality of a report, similarity of one event to another, theological explanations and from people with status to show that those who believed in marvels and miracles did so only because the wonders had passed evidentiary testing. In particular, he examines both emotional and rational reactions to wondrous phenomena, and why some were readily accepted and others rejected. This book is an important contribution to the history of emotions and belief in the Middle Ages.

Sense of Wonder
Sense of Wonder

Author: Leigh Grossman

Publisher: Wildside Press LLC

Published: 2011-12-20

Total Pages: 7287

ISBN-13: 1434440354

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A survey of the last 100 years of science fiction, with representative stories and illuminating essays by the top writers, poets, and scholars, from Edgar Rice Burroughs and Samuel Butler to Robert A. Heinlein and and Jack Vance, from E.E. "Doc" Smith and Clifford D. Simak to Ted Chiang and Charles Stross-- and everyone in between. More than one million words of classic fiction and essays!

Ecology & Wonder in the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site
Ecology & Wonder in the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site

Author: Robert W. Sandford

Publisher: Athabasca University Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 1897425570

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Ecology and Wonder celebrates Western Canada's breathtaking landscape. The book makes several remarkable claims. The greatest cultural achievement in the mountain region of western Canada may be what has been preserved, not what has been developed. Protecting the spine of the Rocky Mountains will preserve crucial ecological functions. Because the process of ecosystem diminshment and species loss has been slowed, an ecological thermostat has been kept alive. This may well be an important defence against future impacts of climate change in the Canadian West.

Wonder and Education
Wonder and Education

Author: Anders Schinkel

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-11-12

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1350071919

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Many people, whether educators or not, will agree that an education that does not inspire wonder is barren. Wonder is commonly perceived as akin to curiosity, as stimulating inquiry, and as something that enhances pleasure in learning, but there are many experiences of wonder that do not have an obvious place in education. In Wonder and Education, Anders Schinkel theorises a kind of wonder with less obvious yet fundamental educational importance which he calls 'contemplative wonder'. Contemplative wonder disrupts frameworks of understanding that are taken for granted and perceived as natural and draws our attention to the world behind our constructions, sparking our interest in the world as something worth attending to for its own sake rather than for our purposes. It opens up space for the consideration of (radical) alternatives wherever it occurs, and in many cases is linked with deep experiences of value; therefore, it is not just important for education in general, but also, more specifically, for moral and political education.

The Yoga of Delight, Wonder, and Astonishment
The Yoga of Delight, Wonder, and Astonishment

Author: Jaideva Singh

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 1991-08-13

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1438420161

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book offers 112 dhāraṇās -- 112 meditations or techniques -- for experiencing the extraordinary and paradoxical reality of unbounded consciousness called Bhairava. In her initial question to Bhairava, the Goddess asks him to reveal his own essential nature to her. Bhairava praises her question as pertaining to the very essence of the Tantra, and he praises the transcendent aspect of the Supreme. The Goddess then beseeches Bhairava to teach her the method by which she may gain an understanding of this blissful, nondual reality. The methods offered here hint at a profound secret: only a subtle shift of attention is required in order to bring this astonishing reality into view. The shift will open a chink in the apparently impregnable smoothness of the ordinary world. Here are 112 secret gestures of attention that will reveal infinity. True to its tantric provenance, the Vijñāna-bhairava discovers Supreme Reality in unexpected and bizarre places. As one scans the great variety of methods it offers, one is struck by the contrast in tone between this text and the classical expositions of Yoga. While equally serious, the Vijñāna-bhairava has a playful approach anchored in the confidence that one can really never stray from the reality of Shiva. Because it is grounded in the tantric realization, the text has a freedom to explore meditational domains puritanically disdained by classical Yoga. All things, all experiences, all moments are bathed in the unassailable purity of the absolute consciousness. Only a shift of attention, a subtle refocusing, is required for that extraordinary reality to come into view. The Vijñāna-bhairava contains no sustained philosophical position. Rather, it is an instructional guide that continuously invites the practitioner to look more deeply and more subtly at her own experience. The blissful and shattering realizations that she will undergo as a result of its method serves as the only form of proof or justification. This is an initiatory manual that instructs in the intricacies of the advanced sport of Shiva.