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Hidden in the darkness is an ancient secret suppressed by every aspect of our light-drunk modern worldthere is a Great Mother from the bottom of time who has always guided us through perils and calamities. Now is the hour of Her return.An exigent, affecting summons to rediscover the night.Kirkus ReviewsIs darkness synonymous with ignorance and evil? Or is it the original matrix from which all life emerges, and the Mother to whom it returns? Higher and higher levels of artificial illumination have suppressed our contact with the numinous since the Industrial Revolution, with dire consequences for society, our planetary ecology, and our souls. This mystical testament weaves together paleobiology, memoir, history, science, and spiritual archaeology to lead readers back into the lost mysteries of the dark. Not sinceThe Teachings of Don JuanorIshmaelhas a book diagnosed with such urgency and cultural coherence the problems at the heart of modern life.InWaking Up to the Dark, Clark Strand offers penetrating insight into the spiritual enrichment that can be found when we pull the plug on our billion-watt culture. He argues that the insomnia so many of us experience as the Hour of the Wolf is really the Hour of Goda wellspring of rest and renewal, and an ancient reservoir of ancestral wisdom and inspiration. And in a powerful yet surprising turn, he shares with us an urgent message for the world, received through a mysterious young woman he calls Our Lady of Climate Change (aka THE VIRGIN MARY), about the challenges we all know are coming.

This biography and military history of Islamic resistance to the French occupation of Algeria lends valuable insight into current US/Muslim relations.

Reiki master Brett Bevell shares simple techniques for directly harnessing the power of the mind to heal oneself and others.

Offers letters of the Sanskrit alphabet as key to understanding Yoga and the DivineThese original meditations on the Sanskrit letters range from personal narratives to metaphysical and theological speculations, linguistic play, and inter-spiritual allusions to other works and traditions, all relevant to living a contemplative life in the contemporary world.Sowder’s book is anchored in the devotional Tantrik, Śaiva-Śakta tradition, focused on the Divine Feminine, but allusions to western mystics (Christian, Jewish, Muslim) also appear frequently. No other book like this exists.

“Between God and the soul, there is no in-between,” said Julian of Norwich, a 14th-century mystic, and that idea frames the poems in this collection.Norris’ central idea is that mystery is the core of being. It is in us and around us. Given a chance, something deep inside will show up as longing, something that can’t be explained but needs expression. This is what she begins to call “soul singing.”A well-known writer and poet now in her eighties, Gunilla Norris offers this collection of short prayers, tender moments of awareness, even humming, that express her yearning for and experience of connecting with the Source of all. Norris’ expressions have a universal feel, and speak across a spectrum of traditions. Above all, Soul Songs shows how sometimes we simply can’t help but lift our hearts and sing for the soul’s sake.

Longtime Zen abbott relays wisdom of his teacher who brought Zen to the West and wrote the classic Zen Mind Beginner's MindLes Kaye studied with Suzuki Roshi in the 1960s, and is now abbot emeritus of Kannon Do Zendo in Mountain View, California (where Norman Fischer is acting abbot). Born and raised in Manhattan, Les moved to California in his twenties to work for IBM. He became Suzuki Roshi’s disciple while working in the corporate world, at the same time leading the practice at Kannon Do.This is Kaye’s memoir, in the form of dharma talks that reveal many subtle integrations of Zen practice into a life involving work and family, fascinating memories of Suzuki Roshi, and short writings about events including the time Steve Jobs visited Les for guidance integrating work and spiritual practice, and about the founding of the iconic Haiku Zendo in Silicon Valley.I Had a Good Teacher provides an introduction to Zen in daily life, a warm portrait of a great Zen guru, and a credible reminder to all meditators to return to basics, keep their meditation real, and continue the practice of awareness all day long.

In a time when abuse at the hands of religious leaders is too common comes this guide to making the most of the Zen tradition while protecting and empowering yourself“This is a thoroughly engaging exploration based on deep knowledge of the tradition as well as contemporary research.” —Martine Batchelor, author, Principles of ZenWhile the liberation that Zen offers is real, it must be engaged with carefully, explains this sensei. Her book is neither a memoir about a single case of abuse nor a bloodless academic study. Nelson reflects on the multiple dangers in Zen, from firsthand experience in Boston—where documented abuse recently took place—integrating her discussion at every step with core Zen teachings.“Practicing Safe Zen imparts a lesson we all will have to learn if we want to truly mature in our spiritual practice.” —Barry Magid, author, Ending the Pursuit of Happiness

Zen as the idea path for those who have left institutional religion behindIn this liminal moment, when the grip of our old religions has loosened, a prominent Zen practitioner asks: What is religion? What is spirituality? And what is it all about?Ford begins by invoking the ideas of Aldous Huxley, welcoming what he calls a “naturalistic perennialism.” Ford believes there are currents of religion that are rooted in our biology. And as something natural, it is something that people can find within all religions, in fact, the heart birthing of all religions.Then, true to the book’s title of the book, Ford asks and answers, “Why then, Zen?” and demonstrates how pure Zen is as simple as noticing and waking: an expression of an intimate way of life.Four noble truths, ox herding pictures, samadhi, koan, lovingkindness, and many other Zen essentials are here, in succinct and conversational prose that offers a lifeboat to anyone who feels something missing in the absence of religious life.

A memoir about how solitude can deepen a life.In his twenties, writer and activist Michael McGregor traveled to the remote Greek island of Patmos to spend two months alone. It was 1985, before cellphones or the internet, when even a phone call home was costly. Those days transformed his understanding of himself, his God, and his purpose—and in this book he offers, for others, how finding a place of solitude can change a life.McGregor had spent three years writing about the world’s poorest people and five months traveling when he chose, at 27, to live for two months in total solitude, 6,000 miles from home. He went primarily to write a novel, but from the moment he stepped onto the ferry to begin the 11-hour ride to Patmos, he knew his time would be meaningful. As he settled into a routine that included hours of writing each day, walks through fierce wind in the evenings, and nights that brought on dreams, memories, and unexpected spiritual encounters, he soon realized that solitude can be difficult and even dangerous but also awe-inspiring and life-altering.McGregor immerses the reader in particulars of the simple life he lived for two winter months on an island where he knew no one. He reflects on authors and spiritual teachers before showing the ways in which his returns to solitude in subsequent decades reflected or altered his earlier experiences of being alone.In the book’s final section, McGregor returns to Patmos during the same January dates he visited four decades earlier. He attempts to replicate his earlier experience. His reflections on the changes in his life, the island world, and his understanding of both God and solitude add another dimension to this multifaceted book.

Reviving the teachings and practices of Swami Kripalu“Richard Faulds brings Swami Kripalu alive in a book that illumines the breadth and depth of yoga.” —Stephen Cope, author, Yoga and the Quest for the True SelfLike the Indian sages in whose footsteps he walked, Swami Kripalu taught yoga as a wisdom tradition in which disciples maintain a close personal relationship to their guru and demonstrate their fitness to receive each level of its esoteric curriculum through the intensity of their study, practice, and devotion. He adopted this approach for an important reason, as the single-minded dedication it required was meant to bring forth the best from his top students, preserving yoga’s spiritual depth and enabling them to pass on its transformative potency. Yet this approach also had a downside in that it failed to make the full scope of his teachings accessible to a multitude of seekers unable to join his circle of intimates.Swami Kripalu’s Yoga of Success and Self-Realization presents Swami Kripalu’s teachings in a contemporary framework that any reader can understand and put into practice. John Mundahl calls it “a clear, engaging writing style infused with stories.” Supplementing the narrative are extensive quotations, excerpts, and teaching stories that remain as close as possible to Swami Kripalu’s words. Every effort has been made to retain his distinctive voice and subtlety of expression.

For four decades Rabbi Bonder was immersed in spirituality and sought out by people who needed comfort. He has now transformed some of these cases into fiction.A Romanian woman, resident of Copacabana, wants to marry her dead fiancé. The discovery of a manuscript from the Inquisition, written to defame a woman, has the power to awaken lust and perversion in whomever reads it. A boy who scares his parents with paranormal powers prepares for his bar mitzvah. These are the subjects of Nilton Bonder’s imagination in this collection of short stories. He writes in the tradition of the best of Isaac Bashevis Singer.Each story comes from a place bordering reality with the unusual and inexplicable, revealing the little that’s required to transform the ordinary into extraordinary. With starting points from real situations (including the author himself as a young man, seriously bored in the house of Abraham Joshua Heschel), each story moves into another reality.Previously published in Portuguese.

Succinct, inspiring biography of a bridge-building Jewish leader, supplemented by 25 black-and-white photographsOn March 21, 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights organizers led 8,000 protesters on a 54-mile march from Selma to Montgomery. They invited a distinguished group of national religious figures to join them in the front lines. One of these was Abraham Joshua Heschel—a gifted Jewish scholar, teacher, and speaker, whose recent book, The Prophets (1962)—a detailed study of the ancient biblical champions of justice and mercy—was a source of great inspiration to Dr. King and others.As Heschel walked arm-in-arm with his colleagues, he was easy to spot in the crowd: He was a short, stocky man with flowing white hair, a bushy beard, who wore a dark yarmulke (Jewish head covering). Like the prophets of old, Heschel believed that standing up for others—particularly the most vulnerable members of society—is a sacred obligation. He later wrote, the religious person must seek to hold God and humankind “in one thought at one time,” suffering “harm done to others,” making “compassion” one’s “greatest passion.”Heschel first learned these essential values as a child in Eastern Europe. This little book is his story.

It is not a monkey but it hangs by its tail.It has teeth like a meat eater but it eats fruits and flowers.It's rarely seen but it's not shoy.It has no wings but it pollinates flowers.What is it?.......A kinkajouPoet Karen Seyfert loves rhyme and the world of nature. She uses both to introduce you to this elusive animal. Ankita Sikari Sunuwar's illustrations are both beautiful and accurate.

Glimpses into Beelzebub's Tales offers peeks into Gurdjieff's view of the world as a living, unified, and understandable whole. Although he gives sage advice for a spiritual journey, revealing our place and purpose in the universe, Gurdjieff's psychological and cosmological treasures are hidden from view by our own habits of thinking and feeling. These days-when we no longer teach our children how to write by hand and people communicate using acronyms, emojis, and abbreviations-his use of language and syntax may be "indigestible" without a little explication.Glimpses into Beelzebub's Tales should be thought of as a companion reader or a beginner's guide to the ultimate self-help/how-to reference book on spiritual development. By going chapter-by-chapter through Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, Glimpses focuses on a few ideas in each in an effort to scratch a toehold into Gurdjieff's opus for anyone seeking a new hope-filled paradigm to live by.

This book is a chronological journey of the kitchens in Julie Kalt Gale's life. The book is a memoir of her life through the stories and recipes of the family and friends who raised her. The stories center on the delicious food prepared and the characters who cooked them. The original drawings have been designed specifically for this book by the author and her son, Tobias. There are 110 recipes that represent foods of the times, from the 1950s to the present day. The recipes include many family heirlooms that were preserved on little scraps of paper that would have disintegrated if they had not been preserved in this book. The recipes run through the alphabet-from Apple Dumplings to Zucchini Tempura.

A memoir of a half-century search for the meaning of life through meditation, visions and study with three spiritual teachers of India"I was no longer aware of my room or my desk. I was standing atop a cliff, facing a body of water, a fjord, a small bay surrounded by stony cliffs. The water was sparkling in golden sunlight. On the water was a tall ship with square sails curved out with wind behind them. It was coming to take me aboard with other people, to carry us to that mysterious thing that I had lost-that we all had lost. I still heard the music of the French horns, but now it came from the ship, echoing off the cliffs: I was being called."¿¿David Edmondston's memoir opens with that visionary experience at the age of seventeen. Now, at the age of eighty, while a coordinator at a meditation center in Bowling Green, Virginia, David shares an unusual perspective on reality-one that's informed by an ancient wisdom. After an eight-year search for truth, David found the first of three spiritual teachers from India who opened to him a world of understanding. In prose and verse, David speaks frankly, as both a dedicated student of mysticism and as a rational thinker. It's a story of his first-hand experiences, longings, fears, and visions-a story of how he was taught and what he learned.

"This poetry addresses the interconnection of individual, communal, and global trauma, towards collective liberation. In Hebrew, the words for wilderness, speaker, and speaks are spelled the same and share the same root letters. Goodman Herrick's title, from a poem in the collection, references the Torah's BaMidbar (in the wilderness or desert) and her ancestor's ritual practice of elevating etymology, roots, and folk word associations as spiritual meditation. The author returns to her roots and original wholeness through reconnecting language: "Wilderness speaks/ A speaker is a wilderness." Goodman Herrick survived sexual assault in her teens by a classmate, and left home at 14. The grandchild of an Auschwitz survivor, she's been a New York City club kid, MTV writer-producer, a peacemaker around the world, nun at a Vedanta convent, and student of Chassidic rabbis. This expansiveness lives in her poems. The book invites readers to reconsider prayer and blessing as an ongoing, fluid, language, holding space for the reverent and irreverent as prophetic"--

"On the centennial of the first appearance (1923) of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, award-winning translator Mark Burrows reveals their depth and meaning with a brilliant new introduction and translation. This new translation captures the lyric beauty of Rilke's poems, honoring their syntactic peculiarities and grammatical complexities as few translators have dared to do. Burrows' versions maintain the essential strangeness of language and abruptness of metaphor by which the sonnets attain their distinctive character in German. Burrows' approach replicates what one reviewer describes as the poems' "dazzling obscurity," refusing to resolve the deliberate difficulties Rilke's formulations present. The effect invites readers to linger with these sonnets, allowing themselves to be shaped in their encounter with them"--

"A questioning novice nun's coming-of-age story. Readers will be moved to reflect on the universal human experiences of being broken and the pull to be part of something bigger than themselves. At the age of 25, just a month into her novitiate as a Franciscan Sister, Julia Walsh fell from a cliff and became disfigured. While working toward healing, she felt pulled to religious community life, but also toward unresolved feelings regarding her own sexuality, identity, and injustice. For Love of the Broken Body is a story of pain, questioning, recovery, and discovery. What does it mean to exist as a broken body? Why would a young woman dedicate herself to the Catholic Church-to a life as a Franciscan Sister-while others are leaving churches in droves? The number of women choosing to enter religious life across the U.S. is shrinking rapidly, so Walsh encounters a lot of curiosity about her choice. In this memoir, she writes honestly about feeling drawn to men and to sex, as well as what it means, in this age of self-discovery and hook-ups, for a young woman-physically broken and still very much attracted to the world-to join a celibate, religious community"--

"This authoritative "go-to" publication aims to educate women on how to express their rights within Islam. Perfect for enabling activists to integrate an egalitarian Islamic belief system into their movements. The most effective means of improving Muslim women's lives is connecting them to their deeply held beliefs that affirm human dignity and gender equality at the core of the Islamic faith. But Muslim women lack this information that enlightens and vouches for their sacred rights, and they have no accessible tools that encourage faith-based activism consistent with the Islamic faith. To protect them from being misrepresented by or outside their communities, there is a need to provide pre-packaged, easy-to-understand literacy tools to women so they can lead lives of choice, dignity, and opportunity. 30 Rights of Muslim Women aims to fill this gap"--

First-person accounts from pioneers of the Hip Culture of Santa Cruz in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.This series of books derives from an oral history project on the creation and evolution of the Hip Culture of Santa Cruz in the formative years of the 20th century. Much more historical information may be found on the websites:www.ralph-abraham.org/1960swww.hipsantacruz.org

"Mark Matousek was a nonbeliever when he met Mother Meera in 1985. Yet, in her presence, he experienced inexplicable occurrences that forced him to challenge his worldview. Mother Meera, born Kamala Reddy is believed by her thousands of devotees to be an embodiment of the Divine Mother. But who is Mother Meera, really? Now, in this deeply moving and wise book, Matousek brings us as close as possible to this extraordinary woman. He takes us on a mysterious quest into the "unseen world" where the divine and human intersect"--

"A riveting story of how one brave and adventurous woman turned her life upside down for God. Firestone teaches us, through the joys and sorrows of her life, how our ancient traditions are calling out to us for renewal, and how, through faith, honesty, and struggle, we are learning to respond. At age seventeen, Tirzah Firestone left the oppressive home of her Orthodox Jewish parents and set off on a spiritual odyssey. With Roots in Heaven is the story of that journey, a fascinating and moving account of her evolution from rebellious young seeker to renegade rabbi. This is an inspiring, true account of a courageous woman with strong convictions and a passion to know and feel God. It is also a book that goes beyond one person's story of wandering and redemption to explore the dangers of modern religion and the joys and conflicts of intermarriage and raising interfaith children. An unforgettable story of love, sacrifice, and transformation-of grace sought and found-With Roots in Heaven offers hope, wisdom, and encouragement to anyone seeking deeper spiritual meaning in today's world"--

In this highly readable book, Master Gou Jun brings Chan’s powerful and profound teachings to the page in a way that is accessible and warm. This is a book for those new to Chan, and for seasoned practitioners.Essential Chan Buddhism is the rare unearthing of an ancient and remarkable Chinese spiritual tradition. Master Guo Jun speaks through hard-won wisdom on Chan's spiritual themes familiar to Western readers, such as mindfulness and relaxation in meditation, as well as profound, simply expressed teachings and insightful explorations of religious commitment. Essential Chan Buddhism filters formal spiritual practices through the lens of mundane and everyday life activities. The work captures the lyrical beauty and incantatory style of Guo Jun’s spoken English from the talks he gave at a fourteen-day retreat near Jakarta in 2010 and in subsequent conversations with his editor Kenneth Wapner.

"Mother Teresa's collected writings offer inspiration and guidance for all spiritual seekers. St. Teresa of Calcutta, the woman we all knew as Mother Teresa, was a devout Catholic nun, deeply devoted to Jesus. She expressed her ceaseless devotion in many ways, central among them her well-known work with the poor and the sick. Her lesser-known expressions of faith included her deep respect for all religions and her burning wish for all people to grow closer to God. With a longing to reach as many souls as possible, she wrote, "I've always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic." This carefully arranged collection of Mother Teresa's writings promises to both inspire and guide all people, from any or no faith tradition, who are seeking to find and walk a spiritual path"--

"First published in 1993 by Station Hill Literary Editions, under the Institute for Publishing Arts, Inc. Barrytown."

Originally published in 2000 by Riverhead Books.