Demystifying Awakening


Book Description

See the potential that is within each of us—the realization and embodiment of our true nature With Demystifying Awakening, senior meditation teacher Stephen Snyder skillfully marks the subtle path of the Awakening process. With loving care, personal examples, and gentle suggestions, Stephen plants the seeds of practice and meditation by: - explaining Awakening in an accessible way that draws on Zen and Theravada Buddhist traditions; - guiding readers through more than thirty foundational and advanced meditations and practices that support each step on the path of realization; - offering advice for identifying and working with resistances to Awakening; and - encouraging the embodiment and lived expression of realization through an exploration of the pāramīs, the Buddhist perfections of behavior. Demystifying Awakening transmits a practice path for Awakening in this lifetime.




Buddha’s Heart


Book Description

An inspiring and healing guide to immersive meditation in the ancient Buddhist heart practices—the brahmavihāras. With Buddha’s Heart, senior meditation teacher Stephen Snyder reveals an original and clear path to the powerful brahmavihāras. These practices offer rich, soothing support for the soul and a portal to spiritual awakening and deepening self-realization. Informed by Snyder’s experiential understanding, and suitable for those at any level of meditation practice, Buddha’s Heart leads us step-by-step through - traditional teachings on wholesomeness and concentration meditations to establish a supportive bedrock for our personal discovery; - guided, heart-opening meditations on loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity; further guided practices for deepening awareness, including gratitude, forgiveness, and opening to the Oneness of Reality; - exploratory exercises for each meditation practice, illuminating the psychological blocks to accessing our deeper nature’s heart qualities; and - embracing mindfulness and warm attunement in everyday life—opening our hearts to the profound depths of reality and the Absolute. Buddha’s Heart teaches what seems counterintuitive but is undeniably true: the more we open our hearts, the more resilient and flexible we are. And the more authentically vulnerable we are, the safer and more protected we become.




Practicing the Jhanas


Book Description

Two experienced American meditators explain the stages and techniques of concentration meditation, as taught by the Buddhist master Pa Auk Sayadaw This is a clear and in-depth presentation of the traditional Theravadin concentration meditation known as jhāna practice, from two authors who have practiced the jhānas in retreat under the guidance of one of the great living meditation masters, Pa Auk Sayadaw. The authors describe the techniques and their results, based on their own experience.




Trust in Awakening


Book Description

A unique and fulfilling map to realization and Awakening offered by one of today’s finest spiritual teachers. With Trust in Awakening, Zen and Theravada Buddhist teacher Stephen Doetsu Snyder presents a fresh and powerful reworking of the 7th century Zen poem, the Xin Xin Ming. This poem has guided and inspired serious Zen practitioners on the path to Awakening for centuries. Structuring its stanzas in koan-like meditations, Snyder interprets the poem’s directions to seeing the Absolute, the source, fully manifesting in each of us—to Awakening. In addition, Snyder gives an insightful line-by-line commentary and questions us after each stanza, provoking an internal examination. He points us in the direction of the Absolute, in its many expressions, the source of all universes and realization. This distinct approach creates the space for us to dwell on each line, open ourselves to its significance, and take another step on the path of no path. Trust in Awakening transmits the reality of the Absolute while encouraging us to keep following its map, unfolding the path to Awakening.




Awakening Wholeness


Book Description

Embark on an extraordinary adventure with "Awakening Wholeness," designed for trailblazers aged 15-35, and the young at heart. More than a book, "Awakening Wholeness" is a living invitation to join others in reclaiming a world brimming with compassion and love. Within its transformative pages lies a roadmap that illuminates how listening to your inner guidance, caring for yourself, others, and Mother Earth are potent tools for transformative change that serves all beings. As you navigate through the anxieties and challenges of everyday life, this book is your silent guide and compass to recognize your role as a Wholesome Leader. One who has the potential to co-create a sustainable future, explore new ways of caring, and is in sync with what LIFE (Love in Full Expression) is calling you to do. Through resources, real life stories, journaling exercises and more in the book, you're not just a reader, but an active participant in reclaiming a world already resonating with peace, joy, and boundless abundance. A world that is calling you to Awaken to Wholeness.




Awakened Relating


Book Description

“Full of wisdom as well as practical guidance about how to bring spiritual illumination into the very heart of our humanness.” —John Welwood, author of Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships and Journey of the Heart Our natural state is to love and be loved. From deep within, we’re compelled to seek connection. Yet relationships remain a struggle—even for the most spiritually enlightened among us. Traumatic experiences, insecure attachment, and especially the false but commonly held belief that we are separate, both from each other and from the love we seek, can cause endless problems in relationships. As long as our connections are built on this untruth, lasting love and harmony in relationship will elude us. Awakened Relating can help. Written by a licensed therapist and pioneer in bringing the most direct teachings of non-duality into the practice of psychotherapy, this book offers practical guidance for improving relationships through “awakened relating”—a more enlightened experience of falling in love, communication, conflict resolution, and sexuality. With examples, guidelines, and experiential inquiries for realizing your true nature, this book will dispel common myths and mistaken beliefs about intimacy and help you cultivate a loving relationship with yourself and others. Including inspirational stories of people who practice awakened relating in their own lives, this book will show you how to identify, transform, and resolve the deep psychological issues that prevent you from having the harmonious, loving relationships you seek. Now is the time to realize the deep and ever-present love that exists within and all around you.




Purpose Awakening


Book Description

Purpose Awakening, the breakout book of international speaker Touré Roberts, is about that transformational moment when you are awakened to the purpose of your life. Your life began with a brilliant thought in God's mind. Your purpose, therefore, is the awakening to that thought. In this groundbreaking book, Touré introduces a new way to perceive the meaning of purpose. As he says: "You don't find purpose; purpose finds you." In fact, purpose conceived you; it was the catalyst for your birth. This thought-provoking book opens with the revolutionary concept that "Every life began as an epic idea." This new way of finding your purpose will empower you and change your life forever. You haven't even begun to live until you find out why you are here. Touré uses personal stories, humor, and eye-opening analogies to take you on a transformational journey. You will learn how to discover your unique purpose, know God's voice, identify and choose purpose mates, end wrong relationships, put an end to fear, grow your faith, and so much more. Purpose Awakening will also give you a relatable and practical guide that will instill confidence, peace, and fulfillment by demystifying the journey to purpose, and enabling you to discover your own unique awakening. Being more than just a "feel good book," Purpose Awakening provides true direction and gives parameters that guide the purpose-seeker. It will set you on a life-changing course to discovering the good idea concerning your life and the joys of seeing it fulfilled.




Demystifying Ukuthwasa


Book Description

A memoir of a spiritual awakening journey from an African perspective. Paving your own spiritual path is not easy, it requires courage. It is not religion or even our traditional African shamanic journeying where you are often told what to believe. Creating your own path means you become the teacher and the student at the same time. The journey leads to self discovery, healing and transformation.




Shamanic Awakening


Book Description

One woman’s mystical path through grief into renewal, expanded awareness, and discovery of her own healing capabilities • Offers a lens into a wide variety of wisdomkeeping traditions and alternative healing paradigms throughout the Americas and Europe • Shows how the mystical path enables us to find renewal in times of profound loss • Details the author’s awakening to the energies of the cosmos, which can guide us toward our destiny, balanced between our soul’s dark and light energies How do you find renewal after loss, especially the loss of a child? How do you find purpose and courage when loss is your constant teacher? After weeks of profound grief following the loss of her young daughter, Sandra Corcoran found herself inexplicably at a life-changing workshop on indigenous teachings and energy healing. With the first glimpse of the light that called her to the workshop, Corcoran found herself beginning a 30-year metaphysical journey within, initially to heal her grief but eventually leading her from the darkness into the light of her own soul’s evolution. Working with Native elders and indigenous wisdomkeepers throughout North, Central, and South America, Corcoran opened her heart to the immensity of the living energies of the cosmos and discovered her shamanistic gifts as an intuitive counselor, dreamtime decoder, and facilitator for others’ self-healing. As she learned to discern these living energies and work with them, she also discovered the middle path between the soul’s dark and luminous energies, striking the balance that allows us to fulfill our destiny. Sharing the core teachings of her many indigenous and esoteric mentors, including lessons in synchronicity, metaphysics, the extraordinary power of the heart, multi-dimensional realms, and energy healing, Corcoran leads readers on an adventure across continents through birth, death, ceremony, and ritual to renewal and the frontiers of expanded consciousness. She shows that no matter how far outside of the familiar we are led, we are guided back to ourselves and offered another opportunity to embrace our world and, ultimately, find our place in it.




Ecopsychology, Phenomenology, and the Environment


Book Description

This book seeks to confront an apparent contradiction: that while we are constantly attending to environmental issues, we seem to be woefully out of touch with nature. The goal of Ecopsychology, Phenomenology and the Environment is to foster an enhanced awareness of nature that can lead us to new ways of relating to the environment, ultimately yielding more sustainable patterns of living. This volume is different from other books in the rapidly growing field of ecopsychology in its emphasis on phenomenological approaches, building on the work of phenomenological psychologists such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This focus on phenomenological methodologies for articulating our direct experience of nature serves as a critical complement to the usual methodologies of environmental and conservation psychologists, who have emphasized quantitative research. Moreover, Ecopsychology, Phenomenology and the Environment is distinctive insofar as chapters by phenomenologically-sophisticated ecopsychologists are complemented by chapters written by phenomenological researchers of environmental issues with backgrounds in philosophy and geology, providing a breadth and depth of perspective not found in other works written exclusively by psychologists.