This Extraordinary Moment


Book Description

"The realization that there is no explanation for existence or awareness of existence is ultimate liberation. John Astin's book offers an opportunity for this liberation, if you are ready." —Deepak Chopra “This book has the power to transform lives.” —Shauna Shapiro, author of The Art and Science of Mindfulness Anyone who attempts to describe what is ultimately indescribable faces the same challenge—how does one use words to explain something that transcends language? Many writers fall into the trap of using more words to do the job that most words aren’t even particularly suited for, the ideas growing ever more allusive and abstract as the verbiage piles up. But in trying to unmoor the essence of lived experience from the concepts and stories we use to construct it, author and spiritual teacher John Astin takes a different approach—using fewer words instead of more, and grounding them with exercises designed to evoke the actual experience of what he’s describing. Evoking the true nature of experience in words is a tricky proposition: perceptual reality has no beginning and no end, making it impossible to delineate, and what arises internally as thoughts and feelings are equally limitless, indeterminate, and unresolvable. While we have countless ways to categorize, conceptualize, and label things, the truth of whatever is being felt, seen, tasted, touched, or heard is infinitely more complex and multidimensional than our conceptual or linguistic structures would have us believe. By becoming more intimate with experience itself—rather than trying to narrate, avoid, or escape it—we can begin to discover that our experiences cannot possibly limit us in the ways we’ve imagined, owing to their radically open-ended and ultimately indefinable nature. This Extraordinary Moment​ invites you on a journey of boundless inquiry, which becomes a liberating free-fall into the mysteries that lie just beyond our understanding of lived reality—which words can never quite describe. Built entirely around personal experience and exploration, this book provides activities, dialogues, exercises, and meditations to help you unlearn the basic misapprehensions about the nature of moment-to-moment experience, and shows you how to gain distance from the stories you tell about what you’re experiencing, so as to better focus on what’s actually happening in the present moment. With ultrashort chapters grounded in experiential practices, and without the use of the usual spiritual jargon, this fast-moving, highly readable book makes the esoteric accessible to all—from anyone interested in stress management, well-being, or positive psychology to the devoted spiritual seeker.




Parker Looks Up


Book Description

A New York Times bestseller! A visit to Washington, DC’s National Portrait Gallery forever alters Parker Curry’s young life when she views First Lady Michelle Obama’s portrait. When Parker Curry came face-to-face with Amy Sherald’s transcendent portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama at the National Portrait Gallery, she didn’t just see the First Lady of the United States. She saw a queen—one with dynamic self-assurance, regality, beauty, and truth who captured this young girl’s imagination. When a nearby museum-goer snapped a photo of a mesmerized Parker, it became an internet sensation. Inspired by this visit, Parker, and her mother, Jessica Curry, tell the story of a young girl and her family, whose trip to a museum becomes an extraordinary moment, in a moving picture book. Parker Looks Up follows Parker, along with her baby sister and her mother, and her best friend Gia and Gia’s mother, as they walk the halls of a museum, seeing paintings of everyone and everything from George Washington Carver to Frida Kahlo, exotic flowers to graceful ballerinas. Then, Parker walks by Sherald’s portrait of Michelle Obama…and almost passes it. But she stops...and looks up! Parker saw the possibility and promise, the hopes and dreams of herself in this powerful painting of Michelle Obama. An everyday moment became an extraordinary one…that continues to resonate its power, inspiration, and indelible impact. Because, as Jessica Curry said, “anything is possible regardless of race, class, or gender.” **FOREWORD BY ARTIST AMY SHERALD**




The Power of Moments


Book Description

The New York Times bestselling authors of Switch and Made to Stick explore why certain brief experiences can jolt us and elevate us and change us—and how we can learn to create such extraordinary moments in our life and work. While human lives are endlessly variable, our most memorable positive moments are dominated by four elements: elevation, insight, pride, and connection. If we embrace these elements, we can conjure more moments that matter. What if a teacher could design a lesson that he knew his students would remember twenty years later? What if a manager knew how to create an experience that would delight customers? What if you had a better sense of how to create memories that matter for your children? This book delves into some fascinating mysteries of experience: Why we tend to remember the best or worst moment of an experience, as well as the last moment, and forget the rest. Why “we feel most comfortable when things are certain, but we feel most alive when they’re not.” And why our most cherished memories are clustered into a brief period during our youth. Readers discover how brief experiences can change lives, such as the experiment in which two strangers meet in a room, and forty-five minutes later, they leave as best friends. (What happens in that time?) Or the tale of the world’s youngest female billionaire, who credits her resilience to something her father asked the family at the dinner table. (What was that simple question?) Many of the defining moments in our lives are the result of accident or luck—but why would we leave our most meaningful, memorable moments to chance when we can create them? The Power of Moments shows us how to be the author of richer experiences.




This Extraordinary Moment


Book Description

Anyone attempting to describe the indescribable nature of reality faces the same challenge-how does one use words to explain something that transcends language? Many writers fall into the trap of using more words, but author, spiritual teacher, and health psychologist John Astin takes a different approach: using fewer words instead of more, and grounding them with practical exercises designed to help readers focus on the content of their immediate experiences, rather than their linguistic or conceptual descriptions of them.




Parker Shines On


Book Description

Parker Curry wonders about what it takes to be a real ballet dancer. The first step may be opening her heart.




Unscripted


Book Description

Ernie Johnson Jr. has been in the game a long time. With one of the most recognized voices in sports broadcasting, he is a tireless perfectionist when it comes to preparing and delivering his commentary. Yet he knows that some of sports' greatest triumphs--and life's greatest rewards--come from those unscripted moments you never anticipated. In this heartfelt, gripping autobiography, the three-time Sports Emmy Award-winner and popular host of TNT's Inside the NBA provides a remarkably candid look at his life both on and off the screen. From his relationship with his sportscaster father to his own rise to the top of sports broadcasting, from battling cancer to raising six children with his wife, Cheryl, including a special needs child adopted from Romania, Ernie has taken the important lessons he learned from his father and passed them on to his own children. This is the untold story, the one Ernie has lived after the lights are turned off and the cameras stop rolling. Sports fans, cancer survivors, fathers and sons, adoptive parents, those whose lives have been touched by a person with special needs, anyone who loves stories about handling life's surprises with grace--Unscripted is for all of these.




This Is Always Enough


Book Description




Don't Miss the Moment


Book Description

Pastor and popular Bible teacher Sheryl Brady helps Christians prepare for, recognize, and cultivate the powerful yet easily overlooked moments when God shows up in their lives. Everyone experiences God moments, times when God pulls back the curtain and gives a glimpse of his active presence in their lives. Most of us operate under the misapprehension that these moments are rare occurrences that reveal themselves in grand fashion. We expect bells ringing, lights flashing, and neon signs that point to earthshaking revelations. But God often speaks in whispers, strategically and incrementally unveiling his plans, preparations, and purposes through the most unassuming circumstances. The key is to learn how to prepare for, recognize, and be faithful in these moments. In Don’t Miss the Moment, Pastor Sheryl Brady reminds Christians that God is real and unwaveringly present in our daily lives. Through biblical teaching and personal stories of God showing up in times of need, she shows how to pursue deeper relationship with the Faithful One so that we can learn to hear his voice and feel his leading, discern when we are in a defining moment, and redirect our hearts and lives toward his plans and purposes.




In Every Moment We Are Still Alive


Book Description

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK of 2018 * Amazon Book of the Month ✳︎ Indies Introduce 2018 ✳︎ INDIES NEXT 2018 Selection "In Every Moment We Are Still Alive is a tremendous feat of emotional and artistic discipline. ... a triumph."— New York Times Book Review Acclaimed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review, a stunning tour de force telling a powerful tale of love, loss, and redemption In Every Moment We Are Still Alive tells the story of a man whose world has come crashing down overnight: His long-time partner has developed a fatal illness, just as she is about to give birth to their first child ... even as his father is diagnosed with cancer. Reeling in grief, Tom finds himself wrestling with endless paperwork and indecipherable diagnoses, familial misunderstandings and utter exhaustion while trying simply to comfort his loved ones as they begin to recede from him. But slowly, amidst the pain and fury, arises a story of resilience and hope, particularly when Tom finds himself having to take responsibility for the greatest gift of them all, his newborn daughter. Written in an unforgettable style that dives deep into the chaos of grief and pain, yet also achieves a poetry that is inspiring, In Every Moment We Are Still Alive is slated to become one of the most stirring novels of the year.




Sixty Seconds


Book Description

Spiritual awakenings, whether quiet and subtle or dramatic and breathtaking, are deeply personal events. More than half of us have undergone a spiritual transformation, each unique and life-changing. We may only have a moment or two to act or we may have a few months to sort things out. We may curse the gods or sink to our knees in gratitude. Th e circumstances vary but two things are certain. One, our life is about to change. And two, it's a day we will not soon forget. Sixty Seconds is an uplifting collection of intimate, heartfelt stories from prominent people who graciously share their personal experiences with the profound. Their moving, life-altering interviews powerfully illustrate that sacred moments of illumination and insight are available to us all.