How do we find hope in the world, when hatred, injustice, war, and climate change threaten our very survival? The author's journey as a social justice activist and spiritual seeker offers inspiration for readers to build their own practices of hope. The author challenges the spiritual poverty of materialist individualism, which threatens all life on the planet by the actions of its dominant species. A vision of transforming global culture emerges from the memoir's stories of love, loss, ye...

This inspiring volume presents a unique and ethical professional framework for engaging in spiritual discussion in the context of family therapy. Addressing existential contradictions of life that can disrupt family functioning as well as religious restrictions that can create relational barriers, it models an open frame of mind for sensitive and respectful metaphysical work with diverse families. Chapter authors build on their own narratives of spiritual journey as they inform conversatio...

The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Anxious Generation shows how a deeper understanding of the world's philosophical wisdom can enrich and transform our livesThe Happiness Hypothesis is a book about ten Great Ideas. Each chapter is an attempt to savor one idea that has been discovered by several of the world's civilizations—to question it in light of what we now know from scientific research, and to extract from it the less...

“One of the most important books of our modern era” –Amb. Jaime de BourbonFor anyone struggling with conflict, this book can transform you. Negotiating the Nonnegotiable takes you on a journey into the heart and soul of conflict, providing unique insight into the emotional undercurrents that too often sweep us out to sea. With vivid stories of his closed-door sessions with warring political groups, disputing businesspeople, and families in...

This is the seventh book in a progressive series based on the revelations of consciousness research. It describes in detail how to discern not only truth from falsehood but also the illusion of appearance from the actual core of reality.The text explains how to differentiate perception from essence, and thereby enables the reader to resolve the ambiguities and classical riddles that have challenged mankind for centuries and baffled the best minds in history.While modern tec...

How did human societies scale up from small, tight-knit groups of hunter-gatherers to the large, anonymous, cooperative societies of today--even though anonymity is the enemy of cooperation? How did organized religions with "Big Gods"--the great monotheistic and polytheistic faiths--spread to colonize most minds in the world? In Big Gods, Ara Norenzayan makes the surprising and provocative argument that these fundamental puzzles about the origins of civilization are one and the sa...

Living Deeply transcends any one approach by focusing on common elements of transformation across a variety of traditions, while affirming and supporting the diversity of approaches across religious, spiritual, scientific, academic, and cultural backgrounds. Each chapter in the book ends with Experiences of Transformation, exercises drawn from wisdom traditions or scientific investigations meant to enhance your direct experience of the material.Opportuniti...

From a leading researcher and practitioner, this volume provides an innovative framework for understanding the role of spirituality in people's lives and its relevance to the work done in psychotherapy. It offers fresh, practical ideas for creating a spiritual dialogue with clients, assessing spirituality as a part of their problems and solutions, and helping them draw on spiritual resources in times of stress. Written from a nonsectarian perspective, the book encompasses both traditional ...

Drawing on a wealth of new evidence, pioneering research psychologist David DeSteno shows why religious practices and rituals are so beneficial to those who follow them—and to anyone, regardless of their faith (or lack thereof).Scientists are beginning to discover what believers have known for a long time: the rewards that a religious life can provide. For millennia, people have turned to priests, rabbis, imams, shamans, and others to help them deal with issues of ...

**A new perspective.Defending religion as a cultural institution in the face of resurgent atheistic thought**For centuries, the theism-atheism debate has been dominated by two positions: stringent believers committed to the "yes, there is a God" argument, and atheists vehemently driven to repudiate not only God, but also religion as a cultural institution. To date, this is the first and only mainstream book in which a nonbeliever criticizes atheism and affirms religion....

"And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die." The biblical story of the flood crystalizes--in its terrifying, dramatic simplicity--the universally recognized concept of divine punishment. For millennia human civilizations have relied on such beliefs to create moral order. People who commit crimes or other bad deeds, we are told, will suffer retribut...

We think of cults as bizarre, inexplicable, or otherworldly places that only strange people inhabit, but cults and other abusive and high-demand groups (and relationships) are actually quite commonplace. In fact, the behaviors, social pressures, and authoritarian structures that create cults exist to a greater or lesser extent in every human relationship and every human group.In the first in-depth research of its kind, the author interviewed sixty-five people who were born in or gr...