Mirrors of the Self


Book Description

This definitive collection explores the many rich images of the inner world and how their creative and destructive aspects help to make us who we are. Readers will learn how to identify these forces within, how to decide which to nurture and which to change, and how to tap into their power to live more deeply.




House As a Mirror of Self


Book Description

House as a Mirror of Self presents an unprecedented examination of our relationship to where we live, interwoven with compelling personal stories of the search for a place for the soul. Marcus takes us on a reverie of the special places of childhood--the forts we made and secret hiding places we had--to growing up and expressing ourselves in the homes of adulthood. She explores how the self-image is reflected in our homes/ power struggles in making a home together with a partner/ territory, control, and privacy at home/ self-image and location/ disruptions in the boding with home/ and beyond the "house as ego" to the call of the soul. As our culture is swept up in home improvement to the extent of having an entire TV network devoted to it, this book is essential for understanding why the surroundings that we call home make us feel the way we do. With this information we can embark on home improvement that truly makes room for our soul.




The Mirror of the Self


Book Description

People in the ancient world thought of vision as both an ethical tool and a tactile sense, akin to touch. Gazing upon someone—or oneself—was treated as a path to philosophical self-knowledge, but the question of tactility introduced an erotic element as well. In The Mirror of the Self, Shadi Bartsch asserts that these links among vision, sexuality, and self-knowledge are key to the classical understanding of the self. Weaving together literary theory, philosophy, and social history, Bartsch traces this complex notion of self from Plato’s Greece to Seneca’s Rome. She starts by showing how ancient authors envisioned the mirror as both a tool for ethical self-improvement and, paradoxically, a sign of erotic self-indulgence. Her reading of the Phaedrus, for example, demonstrates that the mirroring gaze in Plato, because of its sexual possibilities, could not be adopted by Roman philosophers and their students. Bartsch goes on to examine the Roman treatment of the ethical and sexual gaze, and she traces how self-knowledge, the philosopher’s body, and the performance of virtue all played a role in shaping the Roman understanding of the nature of selfhood. Culminating in a profoundly original reading of Medea, The Mirror of the Self illustrates how Seneca, in his Stoic quest for self-knowledge, embodies the Roman view, marking a new point in human thought about self-perception. Bartsch leads readers on a journey that unveils divided selves, moral hypocrisy, and lustful Stoics—and offers fresh insights about seminal works. At once sexy and philosophical, The Mirror of the Self will be required reading for classicists, philosophers, and anthropologists alike.




Trick Mirror


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “From The New Yorker’s beloved cultural critic comes a bold, unflinching collection of essays about self-deception, examining everything from scammer culture to reality television.”—Esquire Book Club Pick for Now Read This, from PBS NewsHour and The New York Times • “A whip-smart, challenging book.”—Zadie Smith • “Jia Tolentino could be the Joan Didion of our time.”—Vulture FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE’S JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY AND HARVARD CRIMSON AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Chicago Tribune • The Washington Post • NPR • Variety • Esquire • Vox • Elle • Glamour • GQ • Good Housekeeping • The Paris Review • Paste • Town & Country • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews • BookRiot • Shelf Awareness Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time. Now, in this dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays, written with a rare combination of give and sharpness, wit and fearlessness, she delves into the forces that warp our vision, demonstrating an unparalleled stylistic potency and critical dexterity. Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly through a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Tolentino writes about a cultural prism: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the advent of scamming as the definitive millennial ethos; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the punitive dream of optimization, which insists that everything, including our bodies, should become more efficient and beautiful until we die. Gleaming with Tolentino’s sense of humor and capacity to elucidate the impossibly complex in an instant, and marked by her desire to treat the reader with profound honesty, Trick Mirror is an instant classic of the worst decade yet. FINALIST FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD FOR THE ART OF THE ESSAY




Mirror Meditation


Book Description

Discover the power of mirror meditation to help you awaken self-compassion, increase self-awareness, and gain the confidence needed to thrive. Seeing ourselves clearly isn’t always easy—especially in the age of social media. Technology has eroded our capacity for authentic self-reflection. As a result, we feel more anxious and depressed, have shorter attention spans, and have become more estranged from ourselves and each other. We’ve also become more critical of our physical appearance, and this self-criticism can damage our confidence and stand in the way of our happiness. In order to heal, we must come face to face with our true selves—not the images of ourselves that we alter and post online. If you're ready for self-reflection that has nothing to do with selfies, this book will reveal the way. Based in cutting-edge neuroscience, Mirror Meditation offers mindful practices for increasing your self-awareness, managing stress and emotions, developing self-compassion, and increasing your confidence and personal presence. Using the three principles of mindfulness meditation—attention to the present moment, open awareness, and kind intention toward oneself—you’ll realize just how much your self-criticisms are affecting you. Then you’ll have a choice—and a practice—to treat yourself with more self-acceptance. Self-awareness can help you break free from both your inner critic and the external world that stokes the fears and anxieties that we are never good enough, never have enough, and are never safe enough. The simple self-mirroring technique in this unique guide isn’t grounded in technology—just a commitment to be present with yourself.




Caspar David Friedrich


Book Description

A revelatory look at how the mature work of Caspar David Friedrich engaged with concurrent developments in natural science and philosophy Best known for his atmospheric landscapes featuring contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies and morning mists, Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) came of age alongside a German Romantic philosophical movement that saw nature as an organic and interconnected whole. The naturalists in his circle believed that observations about the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms could lead to conclusions about human life. Many of Friedrich’s often-overlooked later paintings reflect his engagement with these philosophical ideas through a focus on isolated shrubs, trees, and rocks. Others revisit earlier compositions or iconographic motifs but subtly metamorphose the previously distinct human figures into the natural landscape. In this revelatory book, Nina Amstutz combines fresh visual analysis with broad interdisciplinary research to investigate the intersection of landscape painting, self-exploration, and the life sciences in Friedrich’s mature work. Drawing connections between the artist’s anthropomorphic landscape forms and contemporary discussions of biology, anatomy, morphology, death, and decomposition, Amstutz brings Friedrich’s work into the larger discourse surrounding art, nature, and life in the 19th century.




Mirrors of Self-Manifestation


Book Description

“Know your strengths and weakness first then fight hard until you succeed” William is an ordinary boy in this book, who is on his quest to self-revelation. The father helps him, know the mirrors that can help him achieve self-manifestation. Today, I think at every door step there is a William who is struggling to find a true version of himself. I have met many students and career aspirants who are unaware of how best they can be at their talent, intelligence, hobbies, motivation, moral values. In short, they don’t know about their strengths. When you stand in front of the mirror, it actually asks you questions. Which are these questions that are actually going to help you out? I am very glad to offer you this story of 10 mirrors. This is not just a fiction. The mirrors here challenge you with 50 different questions and if you are able to give correct answers to them, I definitely feel, it will help you see yourself with head upright in the same mirror and thus manifest yourself and face the world with definitely a makeover.




Mirrors in the Earth


Book Description

A nature therapy session for the soul--encounter the benevolence of the living world through 12 essays on the Earth-healing powers of self-compassion and empathy. When healing is needed at the deepest level, nature will always call us back home--not only to the oak woods or water-filled coves, but to the homes within ourselves. In a series of 12 lyrical nature essays, herbalist, writer, and Earth intuitive Asia Suler illuminates the healing power of the living Earth--and gives us permission to nurture self-compassion and empathy as forces for personal and ecological healing. In a time of unprecedented ecological devastation, it’s easy to feel hopeless and disconnected. It’s easier still to mask our inherent goodness--to imagine that our unique and precious gifts simply aren’t enough, or forget the power of our inborn empathy. For those of us who are highly sensitive, innately attuned to the workings and whispers of the natural world, it can be hard to embody the belief that we’re enough as we are--and that can heal the Earth. Here, Suler reveals the opposite: our goodness, our empathy, our intuitive connections, and our capacity for self-compassion are more than personal traits or antidotes to despair: they are, in fact, our most potent vehicles for planetary transformation. And as we learn to more deeply nurture and accept ourselves, we unlock living, healing connections to Earth. Combining poetic nature writing with exercises and reflection prompts at the end of each essay, Mirrors in the Earth coaxes us to come as we are: to discover and tend the inherent brilliance and medicine that lives in each of us. From the manatee-calm springs of wild Florida to the flower-dotted coves of the world’s most biodiverse mountains, Mirrors in the Earth is an invitation and encounter with the benevolence of the living world--and a nature therapy session for the soul.




Mirrors in the Brain


Book Description

When we witness a great actor, musician, or sportsperson performing, we share something of their experience. It become clear just how this sharing of experience is realised within the human brain. This text provides an accessible overview of mirror neurons, written by the man who first discovered them.




The Mirror and the Mind


Book Description

How the classic mirror test served as a portal for scientists to explore questions of self-awareness Since the late eighteenth century, scientists have placed subjects—humans, infants, animals, and robots—in front of mirrors in order to look for signs of self-recognition. Mirrors served as the possible means for answering the question: What makes us human? In The Mirror and the Mind, Katja Guenther traces the history of the mirror self-recognition test, exploring how researchers from a range of disciplines—psychoanalysis, psychiatry, developmental and animal psychology, cybernetics, anthropology, and neuroscience—came to read the peculiar behaviors elicited by mirrors. Investigating the ways mirrors could lead to both identification and misidentification, Guenther looks at how such experiments ultimately failed to determine human specificity. The mirror test was thrust into the limelight when Charles Darwin challenged the idea that language sets humans apart. Thereafter the mirror, previously a recurrent if marginal scientific tool, became dominant in attempts to demarcate humans from other animals. But because researchers could not rely on language to determine what their nonspeaking subjects were experiencing, they had to come up with significant innovations, including notation strategies, testing protocols, and the linking of scientific theories across disciplines. From the robotic tortoises of Grey Walter and the mark test of Beulah Amsterdam and Gordon Gallup, to anorexia research and mirror neurons, the mirror test offers a window into the emergence of such fields as biology, psychology, psychiatry, animal studies, cognitive science, and neuroscience. The Mirror and the Mind offers an intriguing history of experiments in self-awareness and the advancements of the human sciences across more than a century.