The Enlightenment Quest and the Art of Happiness


Book Description

Award-winning actor and playwright John Maxwell Taylor builds on the success of his previous book, The Power of I Am, in this eloquent call to awaken from our collective trance and to claim the transformative power and happiness that is our birthright. Drawing on his forty years’ experience in spiritual self-transformation, Taylor offers a potent array of practical tools, stories, and life lessons that help us reorder the events in our lives, the way people respond to us, and the impact we have on the world. The Enlightenment Quest and the Art of Happiness shows us how to master ourselves so that we can harness the energy of higher power to surmount the chaos of the modern world and provides strategies for “sociological aikido” that allow us to deal effectively with negative people, narcissists, and egotists. Informed by Taylor’s incredibly varied background—from European pop star, to student of Paramahansa Yogananda, Gurdjieff, and Mantak Chia, to resident at the pioneering Findhorn Community, to playing Carl Jung on stage for many years—this book demonstrates how, by understanding the powers active in creation, we can become instruments through which higher power continually flows to advance our evolution toward consciousness. In doing so, we not only transform ourselves, we become powerful agents for changing the world. Readers learn how to: • Deal with negative people and egotists • Use higher power to redirect the world around one to one's own advantage • Stay sane in an insane world by understanding true spiritual psychology • See the world as it is instead of spiritually daydreaming that "things are going to get better" • Move beyond conspiracy theories and conspire instead to create a united world of consciousness • Gain fresh insights into the work of Campbell, Jung, Paramahansa Yogananda, Gurdjieff, and others • Apply the Findhorn principles of miraculous manifestation as practiced by the author since 1973




The Enlightenment Quest and the Art of Happiness


Book Description

Award-winning actor and playwright John Maxwell Taylor builds on the success of his previous book, The Power of I Am, in this eloquent call to awaken from our collective trance and to claim the transformative power and happiness that is our birthright. Drawing on his forty years’ experience in spiritual self-transformation, Taylor offers a potent array of practical tools, stories, and life lessons that help us reorder the events in our lives, the way people respond to us, and the impact we have on the world. The Enlightenment Quest and the Art of Happiness shows us how to master ourselves so that we can harness the energy of higher power to surmount the chaos of the modern world and provides strategies for “sociological aikido” that allow us to deal effectively with negative people, narcissists, and egotists. Informed by Taylor’s incredibly varied background—from European pop star, to student of Paramahansa Yogananda, Gurdjieff, and Mantak Chia, to resident at the pioneering Findhorn Community, to playing Carl Jung on stage for many years—this book demonstrates how, by understanding the powers active in creation, we can become instruments through which higher power continually flows to advance our evolution toward consciousness. In doing so, we not only transform ourselves, we become powerful agents for changing the world. Readers learn how to: • Deal with negative people and egotists • Use higher power to redirect the world around one to one's own advantage • Stay sane in an insane world by understanding true spiritual psychology • See the world as it is instead of spiritually daydreaming that "things are going to get better" • Move beyond conspiracy theories and conspire instead to create a united world of consciousness • Gain fresh insights into the work of Campbell, Jung, Paramahansa Yogananda, Gurdjieff, and others • Apply the Findhorn principles of miraculous manifestation as practiced by the author since 1973




The Art of Happiness


Book Description

Through conversations, stories, and meditations, the Dalai Lama shows us how to defeat day-to-day anxiety, insecurity, anger, and discouragement. Together with Dr. Howard Cutler, he explores many facets of everyday life, including relationships, loss, and the pursuit of wealth, to illustrate how to ride through life's obstacles on a deep and abiding source of inner peace. Based on 2,500 years of Buddhist meditations mixed with a healthy dose of common sense, THE ART OF HAPPINESS is a book that crosses the boundaries of traditions to help readers with difficulties common to all human beings. After being in print for ten years, this book has touched countless lives and uplifted spirits around the world.




The Art of Happiness


Book Description

Drawing on more that 2,500 years of Buddhist tradition and teaching, the spiritual leader demonstrates how to confront the negative emotions, stresses, and obstacles of everyday life in order to find the source of inner peace.




The Quest for Enlightenment


Book Description

At the dawn of time, Brahma sat in trance, seeking inspiration to create the universe. Who am I?' he wondered. Where have I come from? What should I do? Then the Supreme Being, Krsna, revealed Himself, flooding Brahma's heart with transcendental knowledge. Passed down since Brahma's time through an unbroken chain of gurus and disciples, that same profound knowledge is ours in The Quest for Enlightenment.The author of Quest is His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, whom scholars and spiritual leaders worldwide recognize as the most distinguished teacher of Indian culture and philosophy of the modern age. With his spiritual lineage reaching back through Brahma to Sri Krsna, Srila Prabhupada is uniquely qualified to present the timeless Vedic teachings on yoga, meditation, reincarnation, and self-realization that have helped countless seekers in their search for ultimate peace and happiness




The Power of I Am


Book Description

Fear, anger, anxiety, negativity, rudeness, information overload — the stressors of modern life can make just getting through the day a daunting task. Since 1985, John Maxwell Taylor has been moving through the collective madness with joy, spirit, and strength. The Power of I Am invites the reader to join him on this journey. Combining principles from martial arts, mindfulness, body-centered awareness, and spiritual and scientific principles, this engaging mix of practical tools, stories, and life lessons teaches personal empowerment through gaining inner strength in social situations and dealing effectively with negative people. The author uses real-world experiences to show readers how to stop being drained by “energy vampires,” how to defuse conflict by boosting energy levels when trouble comes, how to eliminate stage fright and other social anxieties, how to increase personal magnetism and sense of self, and how to tap the existing, but often dormant, power of the mind for personal transformation.




The Enlightenment


Book Description

A magisterial history that recasts the Enlightenment as a period not solely consumed with rationale and reason, but rather as a pursuit of practical means to achieve greater human happiness. One of the formative periods of European and world history, the Enlightenment is the fountainhead of modern secular Western values: religious tolerance, freedom of thought, speech and the press, of rationality and evidence-based argument. Yet why, over three hundred years after it began, is the Enlightenment so profoundly misunderstood as controversial, the expression of soulless calculation? The answer may be that, to an extraordinary extent, we have accepted the account of the Enlightenment given by its conservative enemies: that enlightenment necessarily implied hostility to religion or support for an unfettered free market, or that this was “the best of all possible worlds”. Ritchie Robertson goes back into the “long eighteenth century,” from approximately 1680 to 1790, to reveal what this much-debated period was really about. Robertson returns to the era’s original texts to show that above all, the Enlightenment was really about increasing human happiness – in this world rather than the next – by promoting scientific inquiry and reasoned argument. In so doing Robertson chronicles the campaigns mounted by some Enlightened figures against evils like capital punishment, judicial torture, serfdom and witchcraft trials, featuring the experiences of major figures like Voltaire and Diderot alongside ordinary people who lived through this extraordinary moment. In answering the question 'What is Enlightenment?' in 1784, Kant famously urged men and women above all to “have the courage to use your own intellect”. Robertson shows how the thinkers of the Enlightenment did just that, seeking a well-rounded understanding of humanity in which reason was balanced with emotion and sensibility. Drawing on philosophy, theology, historiography and literature across the major western European languages, The Enlightenment is a master-class in big picture history about the foundational epoch of modern times.




Yogananda, Gurdjieff, Jung & I AM


Book Description

Yogananda, Gurdjieff, Jung & I AM: My Adventures in Life and Consciousness is John Maxwell Taylor’s wild romp through sixty years of consciousness-raising meditation to find bliss, joy, happiness, and our true nature as humans… Are you ready to join him on this journey? Inspired by yogi Paramahansa Yogananda, spiritual teacher G. I. Gurdjieff, and mystical psychologist Carl Jung, John Maxwell considers himself a rock ’n’ roll mystic, who came to spirituality when he was a singer/guitarist in the 1960s. As flashy as was his life then, so was his spiritual transformation: for a moment, the world literally disappeared in the light of God. In an engaging style, with thrills and humor sprinkled throughout, John Maxwell invites the reader to become emotionally connected not just with him through his autobiography but with themselves. He offers his own life lessons that can be applied immediately to readers’ own lives so that they too can fulfill their destiny. Unlike most Western self-help books that preach thinking about concepts, John Maxwell offers a more truthful path forward into enlightenment: feeling through direct experience.




Spiritual Enlightenment:: The Damnedest Thing


Book Description

A MASTERPIECE of illuminative writing, Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing is mandatory reading for anyone following a spiritual path. Part exposé and part how-to manual, this is the first book to explain why failure seems to be the rule in the search for enlightenment, and how the rule can be broken. :: Book One of Jed McKenna's Enlightenment Trilogy. Contains Bonus Material.




Eros Ascending


Book Description

***FINALIST, USA Best Books 2010 Awards – Spirituality & Self-Help: Relationships The quest for lasting love is one of life’s essential pursuits, in some ways the most essential. But it’s also a quest that’s impossible to separate from spiritual and sexual needs. In Eros Ascending, author John Maxwell Taylor offers a wide-ranging study of sexual dysfunction in society and explains how healthy sexuality can be an entryway to universal love and higher consciousness. Based on Taylor’s twenty-three-year experience with Taoist practices, the book presents an engaging analysis of love, relationships, and sexuality from spiritual, romantic, and sexual perspectives. Taylor melds essential ideas by Jung, Gurdjieff, and Taoist Master Mantak Chia with science, biology, spiritual tradition, and current popular culture to shed new light on this eternal yet misunderstood subject. Not just for couples, the book is equally useful for single people who want to understand the methods for “learning to love yourself ” in preparation for a fulfilling, long-term relationship. Taylor draws on his eclectic background as a successful playwright, composer, actor, and musician in this persuasive plan for converting ordinary sexual energy into food for the soul.