True to the title, this guidebook directs beginners on the spiritual journey. Author Jan Phillips, reared Catholic, has traveled through Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim cultures merging dualities of East and West. A popular workshop leader for decades, she is a dynamic, upbeat, straight-talking, wise old woman in her own right, and her prose reflects her character. In warm, engaging language, she presents basic spiritual concepts and practices for the multitudes of Americans who have left traditional religion and are searching for a full-bodied, mind-expanding, convincing spirituality The book consists of short essays and personal anecdotes. Each story incorporates the wisdom of various traditions, all suggesting the immanence of the Divine in our lives. Each chapter reframes the meaning of a typical road sign-such as YIELD for surrender, STOP for taking time for balance, LANE ENDS for giving up old notions. All in all, this lively book maps an adventurous trek from illusion to reality, fear to fulfillment, isolation to community. It invites us to go deeper and further, finding, at the end, that the journey is everything.
Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media by Professor Mel Alexenberg teaches people of all faiths how biblical insights can transform smartphone photography and social media into creative ways for seeing spirituality in everyday life. It develops conceptual and practical tools for observing, documenting and sharing reflections of biblical messages in all that we do. It speaks to Jews and Christians who share an abiding love of the Bible by inspiring the creation of a lively dialogue between our emerging life stories and the enduring biblical narrative.The author is an artist, educator and writer exploring the interface between biblical consciousness, creative process, and postdigital culture. His artworks are in the collections of museums worldwide. He was professor at Columbia University and research fellow at MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies. In Israel, head of Emunah College School of the Arts and professor at Ariel and Bar-Ilan universities. He is author of The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness.Through a Bible Lens speaks in the language of today's digital culture of smartphones and social media. It demonstrates to both young and old the most up-to-date thoughts on the interactions between The Bible and the impact of new technologies on contemporary life. Christians and Jews will enjoy sharing the book’s spiritual messages with their children and grandchildren.Professor Alexenberg draws on six Divine attributes in the biblical verse “Yours God are the Compassion, the Strength, the Beauty, the Success, the Splendor, and the Foundation of everything in heaven and earth” (Chronicles 1:29) to demonstrate how smartphone photographers become God’s partners in creation when photographing daily life through a Bible lens.He describes how the lives of biblical personalities exemplify these Divine attributes: Abraham and Ruth embody Compassion, Isaac and Sarah are models of Strength, Jacob and Rebecca represent Beauty, Success is demonstrated by Moses and Miriam, Splendor by Aaron and Deborah, and Foundation by Joseph and Tamar. There is a confluence emerging in the 21st century between biblical consciousness and a postdigital culture that addresses the humanization of digital technologies. Both share a structure of consciousness and its cultural expression that honors creative process and seeing with a different spirit, like Caleb who saw goodness in the Land of Israel while others could not (Numbers 14:24). We are fortunate to be living in age of digital technologies that gives us ways to experience invisible worlds becoming visible. These experiences give clues that help us appreciate the insightful imagination of ancient spiritual teachers who visualized invisible realms. Smartphones are gateways to the world that make invisible realms blanketing our planet become visible with a flick of a finger. Their imbedded cameras capture images, store them as invisible bits and bytes, and display them as colorful pictures. In all of human history, never has there been such a proliferation of images. A centuries-old Jewish method of Bible study called PaRDeS offers creative ways for looking beyond the surface of smartphone images by extending contemporary methods of photographic analysis to reveal spiritual significance. An exemplary blogart project, Bible Blog Your Life http://throughabiblelens.blogspot.com, turns theory into practice. The author and his wife Miriam created it to celebrate their 52nd year of marriage. For 52 weeks, they posted photographs reflecting their life together with a text of Tweets that relate to the weekly Bible portion. Selected blog posts from each of the first five books of the Bible demonstrate how to transform the ancient biblical narrative into a mirror for people today to see themselves. Fifty photographs from these posts are reproduced in color in the book.
At forty-two, Joan Stanford—a busy mother, innkeeper—discovered, to her surprise and delight, a creative process for insight and healing that allowed even her, a self-proclaimed “non-artist,” to start making art. In The Art of Play, Stanford shares her journey through art and poetry as an example of how taking—or, more appropriately, making—time to pay attention to the imagery our daily lives presents to us can expand our awareness and joy, and she offers readers suggestions for how to do this for themselves, inviting them to embark on their own journey.
Among books that discern people's reason for living, this one is exceptional for its interfaith perspective and clear text readily accessible to people of all backgrounds. Reverend Poos-Benson mines the wisdom of the great spiritual heroes — Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed, Lao Tzu — to reveal a pattern in how God works in the world. He believes that God has sent us to fulfill a unique destiny; in order to find meaning in life, we must understand why we have been sent and then fulfill that purpose. Having been one of the first responders after the Columbine school shootings, he is well qualified for his focus on the thorny issue of great trauma, empowering readers to become aware of how the divine is moving through their lives in spite of tremendous suffering and evil. He also provides questions for individuals and groups to ponder, resulting in a vibrant text that leads to healing and self-transformation.
“You have breast cancer.” These words begin a life-altering journey to live with and beyond cancer. You’ve experienced a myriad of emotions and have ongoing questions and concerns. In Your Journey beyond Breast Cancer, author Dr. Louise B. Lubin offers an interactive, how-to guide for women at any milepost on their breast cancer journey. She offers practical tools to manage uncertainty and loss, relationship changes, the importance of living in the present, and directly facing mortality, as well as how to find your inner strength and resiliency. Each of these challenges is addressed with specific tools to increase knowledge of your body and how to care for it, identify how the power of your mind and thoughts can work for you, and embrace the wisdom of your spirit to find balance and wholeness. Dr. Lubin, a clinical psychologist with forty years of experience, presents these life skills recognizing that each woman is a unique individual and not just a statistic. This integrative whole-person approach is the necessary path to find a healing balance and wholeness for your life with and beyond cancer.
My Journey down the Reincarnation Highway is the first book of the author’s four book spiritual memoir series. In this personal account, Frank Mares details how he discovered the fact of reincarnation and explores what he did in some of his prior lives. More people than you would believe have prior life memories. This book tells how the author acquired psychic ability in his middle age. With this new gift, he recovered facts about nine of his prior lives, most of which involved violent, bloody deaths. The most recent life was that of a young German Wehrmacht sergeant who was ambushed and killed by Russians during the night of May 1, 1944, in a dark Estonian farmhouse. Not being satisfied with just discovering his past lives, Mares goes on a spiritual mission to find out why he kept dying violently. The answers do not come easily, but by using a team of three world class psychics he eventually tracks down the shocking reason for all his brutal deaths. The psychic team finds that within the soul of this normal small businessman resides a brutal, stone-cold killer from the 1600s who surprisingly was the revered founder of a gentile noble family. As part of his souls continuing quest for redemption, Mares hopes to salvage the dark time in his soul’s past into something that could help others today. His experiences show that death is only a transition phase, and that it should not be feared. His book also reveals that reincarnation is actually a well-designed, organized system that allows souls to learn personalized life lessons over a surprising number of lives. If you read this book, you will never look at life (and death) in the same way again.
In this era of "life makeovers," personal coaches, and success-oriented mission statements, many people are working hard to get it together. They're looking for a good life, which at its core includes wanting their time to count for something, to be meaningful and mindful. But as Christine and Tom Sine point out, "more and more people are missing the best and settling for less." Living on Purpose presents a true life-changing strategy--one rooted in God's greater purposes for our lives, not merely our own desires for success. The book has a laser-focus on God's mission and vocation for each of his children, and it shows how staying on his course will lead to the very richest and most fulfilling life. Questions for reflection and discussion make Living on Purpose ideal for group use. The Sines help readers make the connection between their everyday pursuits and goals and God's will for their lives. They show how to draft a personal or family mission statement to reinvent "timestyle" and lifestyle, using relevant examples from the Bible and other writings. Packed with inspiring stories and practical how-to, Living on Purpose leads readers to a more relaxed, festive, and meaningful life that truly counts--for today and eternity.
In this book I share my personal testimony of how I was born, raised and baptized as one of Jehovahs Witnesses. I spent my entire youth going door to door, conducting Bible studies, converting people to the Jehovah Witness faith. I served at various Kingdom Halls and even helped build Kingdom Halls. As one of Jehovahs Witnesses, I was happy and believed I had the truth until I was literally Tapped on the Shoulder by God, told to leave the Kingdom Hall and I started down The Path He paved for me.
Socially, economically, politically, and technologically our world is evolving in ways we could scarcely imagine even a few years ago. Now, more than ever, we need to close the gap between our professional and personal lives, bridge commerce to compassion, sustainability to profitability, and move from insight to action. This book is a brilliant guide to original thinking, inspired living, and visionary leadership - a hands-on guide to becoming a thought leader. Phillips challenges us to question assumptions, free ourselves from illusions, dispel myths, and question the origins of our thoughts. Phillips' artful blend of storytelling, real-world examples, insightful interviews, and research sheds light on people, groups, and businesses around the world that are profiting exponentially through conscious choices and creative collaborations.
