This beautifully illustrated book is about spirituality, consciousness, and the "awakening" experience. A perfect book for the newly awakened. In this book, NaNut Ix takes us on her initiation journey, where she reflects on esoteric and metaphysical subjects. What is the nature of reality? What is consciousness? These and other topics are explored while navigating the awakening journey from an empath's perspective. And as she concludes, the awakening process is never ending. This is a short book written mostly in prose, with artistic illustrations, and a few original poems by the author.
The stories are legendary, the characters unforgettable, the world horrible and disturbing. Howard Phillips Lovecraft may have been a writer for only a short time, but the creations he left behind after his death in 1937 have shaped modern horror more than any other author in the last two centuries: the shambling god Cthulhu, and the other deities of the Elder Things, the Outer Gods, and the Great Old Ones, and Herbert West, Reanimator, a doctor who unlocked the secrets of life and death at a terrible cost. In Lovecraft Unbound, more than twenty of today's most prominent writers of literature and dark fantasy tell stories set in or inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft.
Mentoring is the primary vehicle for spiritual insight and holistic growth today, and Talisman is written from the perspective of a mentee reflecting on the teachings of his/her mentor. It ends with the mentee becoming the mentor. This is why the second edition of this book is shorter, with the second section significantly revised. Originally, the second section took the reader back in time, to follow some of the dialogue Echo remembered. Most readers, however, were intrigued by Echo and wanted to go forward in time. They intuited correctly that the voice of “Echo” was a composite of real people. What happened to Echo? So the first section of this book remains an assessment of the spiritual quest for God in the postmodern world. It explores the significance of incarnation, but in the context of the power and depth of being rather than any dogmatic point of view: experience and mystery over knowledge and certainty. The goal is not to answer questions of existence, but to sustain the courage to be and provide reason to hope. The second section of the book introduces a methodology to reflect on one’s position vis-à-vis the “eternal” in any particular “now.” Echo not only continues to grow personally, but helps other spiritual travelers understand their own quest for God: Life-on-the-Edge, Life-in-Between, and Life-at-Peace. Meditation on the principles expressed through the “talisman” helps the spiritual traveler see where they have been, and discern where they are going. A talisman can be any form (object, song, data, etc.) that is grasped by Unconditional Being to become a portal linking finite yearning to infinite meaning. Here the talisman is a six-pointed star which has mystical significance for many religions. But whatever your talisman is, it will help you experience the nearness of God, in your unique cultural context, and find hope.
Near-death experiences? Past-life regression? Reincarnation? Are these sorts of things Jewish? With a blend of candor, personal questioning, and sharp-eyed scholarship, Rabbi Elie Kaplan Spitz relates his own observations and the firsthand accounts shared with him by others, experiences that helped propel his journey from skeptic to believer that there is life after life. From near-death experiences to reincarnation, past-life memory to the work of mediums, Rabbi Spitz explores what we are really able to know about the afterlife, and draws on Jewish texts to share that belief in these concepts—so often approached with reluctance—is in fact true to Jewish tradition. “The increasing interest and faith in survival of the soul may grow into a cultural wave that is as potentially transformative for society as the civil rights movement and feminism. A renewed faith in ‘the soul’s journeys’ will call for a reassessment of our priorities, and will enable traditional religions to renew and transform their adherents.” —from the Introduction
A single dramatic software failure can cost a company millions of dollars - but can be avoided with simple changes to design and architecture. This new edition of the best-selling industry standard shows you how to create systems that run longer, with fewer failures, and recover better when bad things happen. New coverage includes DevOps, microservices, and cloud-native architecture. Stability antipatterns have grown to include systemic problems in large-scale systems. This is a must-have pragmatic guide to engineering for production systems. If you're a software developer, and you don't want to get alerts every night for the rest of your life, help is here. With a combination of case studies about huge losses - lost revenue, lost reputation, lost time, lost opportunity - and practical, down-to-earth advice that was all gained through painful experience, this book helps you avoid the pitfalls that cost companies millions of dollars in downtime and reputation. Eighty percent of project life-cycle cost is in production, yet few books address this topic. This updated edition deals with the production of today's systems - larger, more complex, and heavily virtualized - and includes information on chaos engineering, the discipline of applying randomness and deliberate stress to reveal systematic problems. Build systems that survive the real world, avoid downtime, implement zero-downtime upgrades and continuous delivery, and make cloud-native applications resilient. Examine ways to architect, design, and build software - particularly distributed systems - that stands up to the typhoon winds of a flash mob, a Slashdotting, or a link on Reddit. Take a hard look at software that failed the test and find ways to make sure your software survives. To skip the pain and get the experience...get this book.
