Falun Dafa the Second by longtrekhome

Essential Stretch: Gentle Movements for Stress Relief, Flexability and Overall Well-Being

Michelle LeMay

ISBN 0-300-52893-8

Amazon link

Essential Stretch by Michelle LeMay with the ISBN 0-399-52893-8 is featured in this post. Michelle has spent years developing and teaching her stretch techniques. The table of contacts includes the basics, the blessings, the techniques (oscillations, breath, heart activation, meditation and centering), the stretches (full body, lower body and upper body), and five different routines depending on the user’s skill level.

The five routines are: (1) full body routine for getting started, (2) full body routine for the seasoned stretcher, (3) short and sweet routines, (4) daily stretches, and (5) mind your mind.

Her centering process includes several helpful techniques. Centering is the ability to “tune out” inner and external stress and get in touch with your quietness inside you. We each have this center but this technique needs to be strengthened in order to lower our stress level. Remember it is our reaction to stress that uses the most useless energy. We want to bombard our stressor. But the centering process helps to use our energy the only place that we can make a difference—on ourselves.

The techniques for centering that she includes are: (1) increase your self-awareness, (2) quiet your mind, (3) focus inward, and (4) create a positive shift. The positive shift uses clarity, letting go of burdens, self-love, peace, mind/body connection, and being happy statements to be included with your stretch.

Excerpt from the book:

“Essential Stretch is a simple movement technique. Anyone can do it—no matter what your age or fitness level—and everyone can benefit from it, even super-fit athletes and dancers. Unfortunately, when it comes to exercise programs, stretch has been placed on the back burner, or related to the category of exercise for the elderly. But research reveals that stretching is often the missing link in successful exercise programs, As you will see, it is becoming apparent that it may be the missing link in our lives.”

Tags: centering, energy, exercises, peace, positive, self-awareness, stress relief, stressor, stretch

Summer Dreamland by Mulberry24

Quiet Mind, Fearless Heart

Brian Luke Seaward

ISBN 0-471-67999-2

Amazon link

From the author—

“Current statistics suggest that 1/3 of the American population is using anti-depressants. Alcoholism, drug addiction, self-mutilation, and suicide are just some of the more popular ways that people cope with their stress today. Through these tactics, people merely avoid the problems at hand, rather than work to resolve them. For stress to be dealt with effectively, no matter how much pressure is bearing down on us, avoidance is rarely a viable option.”

“If you listen closely to people’s conversations, you might notice how they tend to be stuck: not processing every aspect of a given situation to make sense of it, but rehashing thoughts and feelings, which, in turn, only validates their stress.”

“In what is often called the Universal Law of Attraction, a critical mass of negativity forms, and like a magnet, our mental focus begins to attract more things to complain about. As a result, we get caught in a whirlpool of negativity, from which is is really hard to escape. In the words of Marcel Proust, “The real act of discovery is not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.” Attitude, once again, is the paintbrush with which we color our world.”

From Chapter 5: The Human Equinox: Six Ways to Bring Balance into Your Life—

1) Work life balanced with personal life

2) Freedom balanced with discipline

3) Mental stimulation balanced with quietness

4) Right-brain thinking balanced with left-brain thinking

5) Technology balanced with nature

6) Ego balanced with Soul

“Rest assured, behind every unresolved personal drama lies an overactive ego trying to control, manipulate, or dominate whatever it can.”

“At its most rudimentary level, the ego is the bodyguard for the soul, to serve in the role of protector. The problem comes when the bodyguard forgets its primary position, eclipsing the soul’s splendor, to dictate a policy of human behavior.”

From the introduction:

“In the spirit of one of my heroes, Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth), a man who certainly understood the relationship between stress and spirituality, this book is divided into sections that resemble the classic template of what Campbell called “the Hero’s Journey.”

Part I: Into the Unknown frames our departure from the familiar into a brave new stressful world and the problems often associated with that departure.

Part II: Crossing the Threshold highlights the ageless wisdom of the dance between stress and spirituality and features several stories of

everyday heroes who perform the dance masterfully.

Part III: Life in the Balance contains abundant how-to advice to help you build a solid foundation or an action plan, using effective coping skills to victoriously meet the challenge of life’s stress and thus celebrate your own heroic qualities.

Part IV: Back Home Again brings you home to a hero’s welcome, with a few inspirational stories that promise that you, too, can complete the journey and return home as “the master of two worlds.”

“To support the theme of balance, sprinkled throughout the book are exercises, action plans, photographs, meditations, and poems to engage the right brain, help the left brain to process and reintegrate the information, and remind us of what we already know. It is my hope that Quiet Mind, Fearless Heart can reawaken your slumbering spirit, help you build a foundation of balance in your life, and enable you to regain a sense of personal homeostasis, so that the winds of change become the winds of grace that will allow your spirit to soar!”

Excerpt from “The Health of the Human Spirit”:

Twenty-one Strategies for Letting Go of Stress:

· A bird’s eye view: keeping everything in perspective

· Flexing the funny bone: comic relief

· Physical exercise: flushing out the stress hormones

· Decompression: the art of calm

· Do not enter: establishing healthy boundaries

· Respond, don’t react: taming that ego

· Seeking a balance: complexity versus simplicity

· Good vibrations I: turning off the TV

· Anger management: learning to fine-tune expectations

· Meditation: take five or even ten

· Adopt an attitude of gratitude: counting your blessings

(and curses, too)

· Good nutrition: avoid putting gasoline on the fire

· Empowerment: remember, you’ve got the goods

· Friends in need: having a good support system

· Back to nature: getting and staying grounded

· Diversify your interests: place your eggs in more than one

Basket

· Amazing grace: the healing power of prayer

· Reserving judgment: the power of acceptance

· Seizing the day: the future is now

· Forgiveness: the last frontier

The Changemaker Library includes books for the following topics: core books, creativity, exercise, food, health, meditation, piece of mind, personal development, recovery, spiritual direction, and stress reduction.

For the Changemaker Library, we will be including the basic features of some books you may want to use. All of the books used are the choices of Changemaker without solicitation from any author or publisher. At the beginning of the post, we have listed the name of the book, the author, the ISBN number, and a link where you can order the book if you choose. The rest of the post includes actual content from that book for you to better be able to determine if this is a book for you.

I keep my special books together and use them frequently. I call them my textbooks as I seek direction time and time again from them. The Changemaker Library presently has 50+ books that we are recommending. This library can be acquired gradually either for your individual work or resources for the Changemaker Groups that you begin.

The Changemaker Library has ten separate topics. The topics are:

CORE BOOK TITLES

Complete Guide to Pilates, Yoga, Meditation Stress Relief

New Choices in Natural Healing for Women: Drug Free Remedies from the World of Alternative Medicine

The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook

Stress Control for Peace of Mind

CREATIVITY BOOK TITLES

The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

Fingerpainting on the Moon: Writing and Creativity as a Path to Freedom

Prosperity Pie: How to Relax About Money and Everything Else

The Vein of Gold: A Journey to Your Creative Heart (Companion to The Artist’s Way)

EXERCISE BOOK TITLES

8 Minutes in the Morning

Complete Guide to Pilates, Yoga, Meditation Stress Relief

Escape Your Shape: How to Work Out Smarter, Not Harder

Essential Stretch: Gentle Movements for Stress Relief, Flexibility and Overall Well-Being

Move Your Body Tone Your Mood

Shape Walking: Six Easy Steps to Your Best Body

Workouts for Dummies

The World’s Fittest You: Harness the Power of Interval Training-and Get On the Road to Fitness in Just One Month

Yoga for Weight-Loss: The Effective 4-Week Slimming Plan for Body, Mind and Spirit

Yoga: Three in One: Three Complete Home Workout Programs

FOOD BOOK TITLES

Barbara Kraus’s Calories and Carbohydrates

Change One: The Breakthrough 12-Week Eating Plan

Your Perfect Weight: The Diet-Free Method Developed by the World’s Leading Health Magazine

HEALTH BOOK TITLES

The Holistic Herbal Directory: A Directory of Herbal Remedies for Everyday Health Problems

New Choices in Natural Healing for Women: Drug Free Remedies from the World of Alternative Medicine

You The Owner’s Manual: An Insider’s Guide to the Body That Will Make You Healthier and Younger.

The 7 Secrets of Slim People

MEDITATION BOOK TITLES

Complete Guide to Pilates, Yoga, Meditation, Stress Relief

The Meditation Year: A Seasonal Guide to Contemplation, Relaxation, and Visualization.

Taming the Tiger Within: Meditations on Transforming Difficult Emotions

Wherever You Go There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life.

PEACE OF MIND BOOK TITLES

Peaceful Mind: Using Mindfulness and Cognitive Psychology to Overcome Depression

Quiet Mind, Fearless Heart

Serenity in Motion: Inner Peace: Anytime, Anywhere

Taming the Tiger Within: Meditations on Transforming Difficult Emotions

Turning the Mind Into An Ally

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT BOOK TITLES

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

Adult Children of Alcoholics

Coach Yourself to Success: 101 Tips From a Personal Coach for Reaching Your Goals at Work and in Life

Journal to the Self: Twenty-two Paths to Personal Growth

Keep Your Paycheck, Live Your Passion

The Little Book of Letting Go: A Revolutionary 30-day Program to

Cleanse Your Mind, Life Your Spirit and Replenish Your Soul

Love First: A New Approach to Intervention for Alcoholism and Drug Addiction

More Language of Letting Go

Naomi’s Breakthrough Guide: 20 Choices to Transform Your Life

More Language of Letting Go

SPIRITUAL DIRECTION BOOK TITLES

The 12 Steps for Adult Children

Barefoot on Holy Ground: Twelve Lessons In Spiritual Craftsmanship

Callings: Finding and Following An Authentic Life

The Gift of Change: Spiritual Guidance for Living Your Best Life

The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions

Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics: Lifestyles for Self-Discovery

Quiet Mind, Fearless Heart: The Taoist Path Through Stress and Spirituality

Simplicity: Finding Peace By Uncluttering Your Life.

STRESS REDUCTION BOOK TITLES

Complete Guide to Pilates, Yoga, Meditation Stress Relief

Essential Stretch: Gentle Movements for Stress Relief, Flexibility and Overall Well-Being

The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook

Stand Like Mountain Flow Like Water

Stress Control for Peace of Mind

Stress: 63 Ways to Relieve Tension and Stay Healthy

Photo credit.

The Emerald Waters by Chi-King

The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

Julia Cameron

ISBN 0-87477-694-5

Amazon link

Julia Cameron teaches the methods she created from The Artist’ s Way in Hollywood, California. The co-founder of “The Artist’s Way Wookshop” is Mark Byron. She recognizes that the path to unblocking creativity is a spiritual path.

Spiritual Electricity: The Basic Principles begins the book and includes such knowledge as: Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy. Creativity is God’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.

The two pivotal tools in creative recovery are the morning pages (a daily journal) and the artist date. The morning pages are the primary tool of creative recovery. An artist date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist. Doing the moring pages is sending your thoughts, dreams, etc. and the artist date is receiving inspiration, insight, and guidance.

The rest of the book is divided into chapters about recovering a sense of: safety, identity, power, integrity, possibility, abundance, connection, strength, compassion, self-protection, autonomy, and faith.

She require her students to sign a creativity contract and includes one for her book students.

An excerpt from Week 1: Recovering a Sense of Safety:

“One of our chief needs a creative beings is support. Unfortunately, this can be hard to come by. Ideally, we would be nurtured and encouraged first by our nuclear family and then by our ever-widening circles of friends , teachers, well-wishers. As Young artists, we need and want to be acknowledged for our attempts and efforts as well as for our achievements and triumphs. Unfortunately, many artists never receive this critical early encouragement. As a result, they may not know they are artists at all.”

Cameron uses quotations in the margins of the pages for inspiratin and also includes many experiences she has had in helping others to regain the creative path. I say recreate because I believe we are each born with creativity and I believe life to be a return to bing our joyful, playful, creative child.

In the chapter in the first week, she dwells on the foundation upon which we each live—our beliefs. If you are telling yourself that you can’t—you are probably helping to make that come true. None of your core beliefs that are negative needs to be true. Beliefs aren’t facts. Your allies for replacing negative beliefs with postitive ones are creative affirmations. She lists several suggestions for these. At the end of each chaper, she assigns tasks (homework) to be completed before moving on the next chapter. Some of the tasks for week 1 are: to take $5.00 and go to a discount store and buy goold stars, stickers, glitter, glue crayons—buy what you’d like to play with.

wonderlane

While doing the research for the 50+ books I selected for the Changemaker Library, I realized that I love writing about good books. I have been reading for 60 years so I have a long history of what books can influence lives.

I don’t do book reviews. Instead, I give the book title, the author, the ISBN number and a link to Amazon to buy it. I also include excerpts from the book chosen so that a reader can decide if this book is a good match for him/her.

Quiet Mind, Fearless Heart

Brian Luke Seaward

ISBN 0-471-67999-2

Amazon link

From the author—

“Current statistics suggest that 1/3 of the American population is on anti-depressants. Alcoholism, drug addiction, self-mutilation, and suicide are just some of the more popular ways that people cope with their stress today. Through these tactics, people merely avoid the problems at hand, rather than work to resolve them. For stress to be dealt with effectively, no matter how much pressure is bearing down on us, avoidance is rarely a viable option.”

“If you listen closely to people’s conversations, you might notice how they tend to be stuck: not processing every aspect of a given situation to make sense of it, but rehashing thoughts and feelings, which, in turn, only validates their stress.”

“In what is often called the Universal Law of Attraction, a critical mass of negativity forms, and like a magnet, our mental focus begins to attract more things to complain about. As a result, we get caught in a whirlpool of negativity, from which it is really hard to escape. In the words of Marcel Proust, “The real act of discovery is not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.” Attitude, once again, is the paintbrush with which we color our world.”

From Chapter 5: The Human Equinox: Six Ways to Bring Balance into Your Life—

1) Work life balanced with personal life

2) Freedom balanced with discipline

3) Mental stimulation balanced with quietness

4) Right-brain thinking balanced with left-brain thinking

5) Technology balanced with nature

6) Ego balanced with soul

“Rest assured, behind every unresolved personal drama lies an overactive ego trying to control, manipulate, or dominate whatever it can.”

“At its most rudimentary level, the ego is the bodyguard for the soul, to serve in the role of protector. The problem comes when the bodyguard forgets its primary position, eclipsing the soul’s splendor, to dictate a policy of human behavior.”

From the introduction:

“In the spirit of one of my heroes, Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth), a man who certainly understood the relationship between stress and spirituality, this book is divided into sections that resemble the classic template of what Campbell called “the Hero’s Journey.”

Part I: Into the Unknown frames our departure from the familiar into a brave new stressful world and the problems often associated with that departure.

Part II: Crossing the Threshold highlights the ageless wisdom of the dance between stress and spirituality and features several stories of everyday heroes who perform the dance masterfully.

Part III: Life in the Balance contains abundant how-to advice to help you build a solid foundation or an action plan, using effective coping skills to victoriously meet the challenge of life’s stress and thus celebrate your own heroic qualities.

Part IV: Back Home Again brings you home to a hero’s welcome, with a few inspirational stories that promise that you, too, can complete the journey and return home as “the master of two worlds.”

“To support the theme of balance, sprinkled throughout the book are exercises, action plans, photographs, meditations, and poems to engage the right brain, help the left brain to process and reintegrate the information, and remind us of what we already know. It is my hope that Quiet Mind, Fearless Heart can reawaken your slumbering spirit, help you build a foundation of balance in your life, and enable you to regain a sense of personal homeostasis, so that the winds of change become the winds of grace that will allow your spirit to soar!”

Excerpt from “The Health of the Human Spirit”:

Twenty-one Strategies for Letting Go of Stress:

· A bird’s eye view: keeping everything in perspective

· Flexing the funny bone: comic relief

· Physical exercise: flushing out the stress hormones

· Decompression: the art of calm

· Do not enter: establishing healthy boundaries

· Respond, don’t react: taming that ego

· Seeking a balance: complexity versus simplicity

· Good vibrations I: turning off the TV

· Anger management: learning to fine-tune expectations

· Meditation: take five or even ten

· Adopt an attitude of gratitude: counting your blessings

(and curses, too)

· Good nutrition: avoid putting gasoline on the fire

· Empowerment: remember, you’ve got the goods

· Friends in need: having a good support system

· Back to nature: getting and staying grounded

· Diversify your interests: place your eggs in more than one

Basket

· Amazing grace: the healing power of prayer

· Reserving judgment: the power of acceptance

· Seizing the day: the future is now

· Forgiveness: the last frontier

Sunrise by FlyNutAA

Essential Stretch: Gentle Movements for Stress Relief, Flexability and Overall Well-Being

Michelle LeMay

ISBN 0-300-52893-8

Amazon link

Essential Stretch by Michelle LeMay with the ISBN 0-399-52893-8 is featured in this post. Michelle has spent years developing and teaching her stretch techniques. The table of contacts includes the basics, the blessings, the techniques (oscillations, breath, heart activation, meditation and centering), the stretches (full body, lower body and upper body), and five different routines depending on the user’s skill level.

The five routines are: (1) full body routine for getting started, (2) full body routine for the seasoned stretcher, (3) short and sweet routines, (4) daily stretches, and (5) mind your mind.

Her centering process includes several helpful techniques. Centering is the ability to “tune out” inner and external stress and get in touch with your quietness inside you. We each have this center but this technique needs to be strengthened in order to lower our stress level. Remember it is our reaction to stress that uses the most useless energy. We want to bombard our stressor. But the centering process helps to use our energy the only place that we can make a difference—on ourselves.

The techniques for centering that she includes are: (1) increase your self-awareness, (2) quiet your mind, (3) focus inward, and (4) create a positive shift. The positive shift uses clarity, letting go of burdens, self-love, peace, mind/body connection, and being happy statements to be included with your stretch.

Excerpt from the book:

“Essential Stretch is a simple movement technique. Anyone can do it—no matter what your age or fitness level—and everyone can benefit from it, even super-fit athletes and dancers. Unfortunately, when it comes to exercise programs, stretch has been placed on the back burner, or related to the category of exercise for the elderly. But research reveals that stretching is often the missing link in successful exercise programs, As you will see, it is becoming apparent that it may be the missing link in our lives.”

By Madison Guv

Adult Children of Alcoholics

Janet Geringer Woititz

ISBN 1-55874-112-7

Amazon link

Janet Woititz wrote her dissertation for her doctorate in the middle 1970s about “Self-Esteem in Children of Alcoholics”. She started the first 12-step program for those of any age who had grown up in a dysfunctional home. This group was called ACOA-Adult children of Alcoholics. The book about ACOA, Adult Children of Alcoholics, was first published in 1983 and sold only by mail order. Book stores only carried after the public demand was high. By 1987 the book was on the New York Times bestsellers list.

The basic principles about ACOA people are the following:

1) Adult children of alcoholics guess at what normal behavior is.

2) Adult children of alcoholics have difficulty following a project through from beginning to end.

3) Adult children of alcoholics lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth.

4) Adult children of alcoholics judge themselves without mercy.

5) Adult children of alcoholics have difficulty having fun.

6) Adult children of alcoholics take themselves very seriously.

7) Adult children of alcoholics have difficulty with intimate relationships.

8) Adult children of alcoholics over-react to changes over which they have no control

9) Adult children of alcoholics constantly seek approval and affirmation.

10)  Adult children of alcoholics usually feel that they are different from other people.

11) Adult children of alcoholics are super responsible or super irresponsible.

12) Adult children of alcoholics are extremely loyal, even in the face of evidence that the loyalty is undeserved.

13) Adult children of alcoholics are impulsive. They tend to lock themselves into a course of action without giving serious consideration to alternative behaviors or possible consequences. This impulsivity leads to confusion, self-loathing and loss of control over their environment. In addition, they spend an excessive amount of energy cleaning up the mess.

Sunset at Oceanside by surfcrs

The Vein of Gold: A Journey to Your Creative Heart (Companion to The Artist’s Way)

Julia Cameron

ISBN 0-87477-836-0

Amazon link

This journey to your creative heart begins with a chapter about setting out on your journey. The basic tools of morning pages, weekly artist date, cluster list, walking daily, walking an hour-long walk weekly, walking prayerfully, manifesting, and your creativity commitment.

The main chapters of the book take us to the kingdoms of: 1) story, 2) sight, 3) sound, 4) attitude, 5) relationship, 6) spirituality, and 7) possibility.

The last chapter deals with breaking camp. In this chapter, the artist’s tribal rules are given.

The tribal rules are:

Survival rule number 1 is acceptance. “I seem to want to be an artist.” Accept the fact that you’re an artist and stop second guessing yourself. Just do it.

Survival rule number 2: Don’t Judge It. Focus on process, not product.

Survival rule number 3: Defend your process. Sooner or later, you’re going to run into somebody who won’t want you to do it, or will want you to do it only a certain way. Consider the source. Are the making your art? Do what you need to do.

Survival rule number 4: Never Let Anybody Tell You What To Create. Create for you. Create something every day.

Survival rule number 5: Maintain Your Creative Health. Artists are athletes. Creativity is like distance running. Log ten slow miles for every one fast mile. Consistency—process—builds stamina, what horse people call “bottom”, what we may call the bottom line. This brings us to:

Survival rule number 6: Grieve Your Losses. In any creative life there are losses. Some of them are grievous. Only one thing makes them go away—more creativity.

Survival rule number 7: Create for Revenge. Be a spiritual midget. Skewer the bastards. Create right at them.

Survival rule number 8: Remember That the Part of Us That Creates is An Inner Youngster. Allow your creative child to have playmates and playthings.

Survival rule number 9: Find Your Believing Mirrors and Stick Close to Them. You deserve a cheering section.

Survival rule number 10: Ignore the Odds. We are all equally sourced in an abundant Universe. Our dreams come from the God within, and that God has the power to fulfill them. Trust yourself. Accept divine help from whatever human source offers it, remembering always that God is the Great Creator—and artists love other artists.

Tags: acceptance, creativity, God, grieve, journey, manifesting, play, process, walking

Vince Millett

Teach Yourself World Faiths

Paul Oliver

ISBN 0-07-138448-0

Amazon link

Although I am a Christian, I have used other spiritual practices for 30 years. I started meditation techniques in 1984. My first introduction about deep breathing came from Herbert Benson’s book, The Relaxation Response, which he wrote in 1975. The present edition is co-authored with Miriam Klipper (Amazon link). Deep breathing is my first response when I am flooded with emotion. I do a very deep breathing halt to these emotions. So I have felt free to experience the practices from other world faiths including meditation, self-forgetfulness, and visualizations with guided imagery.

This book, Teach Yourself World Faiths, is a concise book for 12 of the worlds religions. The faiths that Oliver examines are Confucianism, Taoism, Shinto, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Baha’ism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, the religion of the Parsis, and Sikhism. Each religion follows the template created by the author by including: (1) History of the faith, (2) the Belief System of the faith, (3) Organization of the faith, and (4) is concluded with an excellent Summary.

The book includes the following excerpt:

From Mystical elements in world faiths:

“In many, but not all, world faiths can identify an unorthodox strand of doctrine and teaching and also a perhaps less orthodox element, which might be referred to as “mystical”. The latter might be rather loosely described as a tradition within the mainstream faith which seeks to gain a direct and immediate experience of the divine. This is not, however, to underestimate in any way the orthodox traditions in religion, to the extent that they may aspire to a direct appreciation of god. The term “mysticism” is certainly very difficult to define in a precise and all-inclusive manner. This is at least partly because the mystical experience is something which may be felt in a subjective sense, before one can understand it. In other words, it is not completely susceptible to objective, empirical analysis. Hence it is not easy to define a phenomenon which some people find difficult, in any case, to express in words.”

“The most usual definition involves a tradition or religious path whose aim is a union of the individual soul or self with the divine. Mystical experience is also usually defined, by those who are able to do so, as involving feelings of great bliss and happiness and also a sense of overwhelming inner peace and harmony. It may also be described as a sense of the individual being able to reach spiritually a realm that would otherwise be inaccessible.”

“The role of the teacher in mystical training is regarded as very important. Gaining mystical training is not regarded as simply acquiring a measure of doctrinal knowledge. Mystical understanding, almost by definition, can only be authenticated by someone who has themselves acquired at least some degree of understanding and spiritual development.”

1. “There is a reasonable degree of commonality concerning the range of techniques used within mystical traditions. A common method involves the use of the mantra, or holy syllable, which is repeated over and over again. The steady repetition has perhaps a similar effect to breathing meditation, in that it helps to calm the mind in preparation for other forms of meditation.

In the Conclusion, the future of religion, Mr. Oliver writes:

“One of the most interesting developments in world faiths which has happened over the last 50 years, dating approximately from the end of World War II, has been the enormous diffusion of different religions across the world. Most of this happened because of post-war migration and resettlement, but, in addition, there has been the effect of television and lately the Internet, which has brought a much widened consciousness of different faiths around the world….People nowadays have a choice of faith, which was in effect lacking in previous generations. We are now aware of competing value systems and religious practices, with which only a minority of people were previously familiar. The cultures associated with other faiths have also had an impact upon society.”

Reflections by lensburg.chandru

Prosperity Pie: How to Relax About Money and Everything Else

SARK

ISBN 0-7432-2920-7

Amazon link

SARK (which is short for Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy) has written several highly-creative books. They are published in her handwriting—or, in someone’s handwriting—and contain drawings carttons, lists, etc. I love mind-mapping so this book appealed to me as a way to remember to color outside the lines.

Prosperity Pie, as explained in the author’s foreword, means plenty of everything, with enough to share. As with most books that guide us toward greater self-discovery, she begins by talking about our inner critics. She states that as soon as we improve in area of our lives that our inner critics have been harping on, the critics start harping on something else.

Some of her statements from this book are:

1) Whatever has happened to us has contributed to us.

2) You are enough. You have enough. You do enough.

3) You are not alone.

4) Even when we are surrounded by and with love, we must still face ourselves alone every day. How much love gets inside?

5) As humans, we need to give ourselves mental, physical, emotional and spiritual care on a daily basis.

6) There are specific ways to practice healthy self-talk, and I frequently use writing to calm and center myself.

7) Challenges help us grow in prosperity and every challenge is a teaching.
We can relax into our tension.

The chapter headings for Prosperity Pie are: self—challenges—love—work—money—time—inspiration—teachers—adventures—and, prosperity pie.

More about her and her work can be found at www.planetsark.com.

The website is as creative as her books. Enjoy!