The purpose of this book is to present several simple yet fundamental principles I have learned over the last fifty years of working to improve my own mental health and well-being. The book is divided into two parts: teaching and sources. The first partteachingwill be short, and its style lean, primarily to facilitate easy reading and absorption of the material. The second partsourceswill be more academic in style yet still relatively lean, intended for those interested in the source mater...

The idea of effort not only finds an essential place in all authentic spiritual traditions but also is most deeply implicated in our identity, our sense of self. For that reason, it is not only an indispensable way into a new, liberated feeling of self but also the chief obstacle to it. The Sickness of Effort will explore this difficult question by examining how the notion of effort changes in different traditions across diverse cultures. In so doing, it will reveal an altogether new notio...

Invicti Solis addresses the most important questions that perplex postmodern humanity and civilizationand in so doing points the way toward the authentic destiny of both.How can we discover the true hearts desire in the thicket of conflicting desires that bid forour attention?How can we discover absolute or objective truth in an age that offers only relative, subjective perspectives?How can we discover a faith that transcends all possibility of doubt in a cu...

The most profound thinkers, East and West, have concluded that thought or reason cannot know what is real, cannot discover truth. The universal insight that led to this conclusion is that thought itself is not free but enslaved by desire or passion. Modern and postmodern Western thought has resigned itself to this inability to discover truth, while Eastern thought offers varied remedies intended to liberate thought. The Liberation of Thought will show how ancient Western thought also offer...

In the struggle for human liberation, no question is more important than the question of identity. The conventional identity, so important in protecting our vulnerability during childhood, is the chief obstacle to our real Identity, much as the dragon of myth and legend guards a hoard of gold. The secret to undermining the hegemony of this false identity is to understand it as an activity, not an entity, an activity comprised of a collection of roles we play in life. And in the attempt to ...

The renowned psychoanalyst and New York Times –bestselling author of The Art of Loving unites philosophy from the East and West.In 1957, social philosopher and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm invited Daisetz T. Suzuki, the most famous Zen Buddhist master in the Western world, to a seminar at his new home in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Their discussion was one of the highlights of Fromm's lif...

A pioneering art therapist extolls the arts as a powerful tool in psychotherapy, describing how activating the imagination can heal the mind, heart, and soulThe medicine of the artist, like that of the shaman, arises from his or her relationship to “familiars”—the themes, methods, and materials that interact with the artist through the creative process.“Whenever illness is associated with loss of soul,” writes Shaun McNiff, “the arts emerge spontaneously as...

Beginning with a consideration of Nietzsches inflammatory and critical insight that the modern world is framed by the death of God, Michael Gruber confronts contemporary disenchantment and its necessary offspring, the universalization of terror. By making truth relative, negating the value of beauty, and rendering questions about the good dubious if not obsolete, terror permeates all aspects of our psychosocial existence with the threat of dehumanization. In response to this terror, which is ...

A guide to well-being from the renowned social psychologist and New York Times –bestselling author of The Art of Loving and Escape from Freedom .Though laptops, smartphones, and TVs have in many ways made life more convenient, they have also disconnected us from the real world. Days are spent going from screen to machine, machine to s...

Wilber's groundbreaking synthesis of religion, philosophy, physics, and psychology started a revolution in transpersonal psychology. He was the first to suggest in a systematic way that the great psychological systems of the West could be integrated with the noble contemplative traditions of the East. Spectrum of Consciousness, first released by Quest in 1977, has been the prominent reference point for all subsequent attempts at integrating psychology and spirituality.

This fascinating introduction to the intersection between religion, neuroscience, and moral philosophy asks: Can there be a Buddhism without karma, nirvana, and reincarnation that is compatible with the rest of knowledge?If we are material beings living in a material world—and all the scientific evidence suggests that we are—then we must find existential meaning, if there is such a thing, in this physical world. We must cast our lot with the natural rather than the...

How much practical time do we usually devote to the general art of being human? This practical guide to the self-healing of consciousnessit is both a spiritual psychology and a contemporary manual of the inner lifebegins by laying out very clearly the unhealthy, unfree nature of today's consciousness. Methodical self-observation leads to discovering the key to the liberating consciousness from its habitual blind spots and automatisms: the realization of the universal primacy of cognition and ...