A Reader for Navigating the Depths of Our Lives The Universe holds us and tosses us about, only to hold us again. With Things That Join the Sea and the Sky, Mark Nepo brings us a compelling treasury of short prose reflections to turn to when struggling to keep our heads above water, and to breathe into all of our sorrows and joys. Inspired by his own journal writing across 15 years, this book shares with us some of Mark's most personal work. Many passages arise from accounts of his own life events-moments of "sinking and being lifted"-and the insights they yielded. Through these passages, we're encouraged to navigate our own currents of sea and sky, and to discover something fundamental yet elusive: How, simply, to be here. To be enjoyed in many ways-individually, by topic, or as an unfolding sequence-Things That Join the Sea and the Sky presents 145 contemplations gathered into 17 themes, each intended to illuminate specific situations. The themes include: Unraveling Our Fear, Beyond What Goes Wrong, The Gift of Deepening, The Practice of Relationship, What Holds Us Up, Right-Sizing Our Pain, The Reach of Kindness, Burning Off What's Unnecessary, How We Make Our Way and many more. For those interested in either beginning or expanding their own journaling explorations, this reader also provides a guide to the practice of daily writing, with 100 compelling questions to get us started. "Joy is the sea that holds all," writes Mark, "the Unity of Being where feelings don't separate, but surface like waves to remind us we are alive." Here, he helps us swim in those waters until we are held in the mystery of their buoyancy.

America's Civil War took a dreadful toll on human lives, and the emotional repercussions were exacerbated by tales of battlefield atrocities, improper burials and by the lack of news that many received about the fate of their loved ones. Amidst widespread religious doubt and social skepticism, spiritualism--the belief that the spirits of the dead existed and could communicate with the living--filled a psychological void by providing a pathway towards closure during a time of mourning, and by promising an eternal reunion in the afterlife regardless of earthly sins. Primary research, including 55 months of the weekly spiritual newspaper, The Banner of Light and records of hundreds of soldiers' and family members' spirit messages, reveals unique insights into battlefield deaths, the transition to spirit life, and the motivations prompting ethereal communications. This book focuses extensively on spiritualism's religious, political, and commercial activities during the war years, as well as the controversies surrounding the faith, strengthening the connection between ante- and postbellum studies of spiritualism.

Stories of witchcraft and demonic possession from early modern England through the last official trials in colonial New England Those possessed by the devil in early modern England usually exhibited a common set of symptoms: fits, vomiting, visions, contortions, speaking in tongues, and an antipathy to prayer. However, it was a matter of interpretation, and sometimes public opinion, if these symptoms were visited upon the victim, or if they came from within. Both early modern England and colonial New England had cases that blurred the line between witchcraft and demonic possession, most famously, the Salem witch trials. While historians acknowledge some similarities in witch trials between the two regions, such as the fact that an overwhelming majority of witches were women, the histories of these cases primarily focus on local contexts and specifics. In so doing, they overlook the ways in which manhood factored into possession and witchcraft cases. Vexed with Devils is a cultural history of witchcraft-possession phenomena that centers on the role of men and patriarchal power. Erika Gasser reveals that witchcraft trials had as much to do with who had power in the community, to impose judgement or to subvert order, as they did with religious belief. She argues that the gendered dynamics of possession and witchcraft demonstrated that contested meanings of manhood played a critical role in the struggle to maintain authority. While all men were not capable of accessing power in the same ways, many of the people involved-those who acted as if they were possessed, men accused of being witches, and men who wrote possession propaganda-invoked manhood as they struggled to advocate for themselves during these perilous times. Gasser ultimately concludes that the decline of possession and witchcraft cases was not merely a product of change over time, but rather an indication of the ways in which patriarchal power endured throughout and beyond the colonial period. Vexed with Devils reexamines an unnerving time and offers a surprising new perspective on our own, using stories and voices which emerge from the records in ways that continue to fascinate and unsettle us.

In the late 1980s, the New Age movement became the focus of both media attention and widespread ridicule as some of the more outlandish aspects of the movement, such as channeling and the use of crystals for healing, briefly piqued the public's curiosity. While the movement was at its height, scholars of religion generally sneered at what was perceived to be a daffy, shallow craze, and ignored it as a subject of serious study. Professor James R. Lewis was among the first to examine this growing religious phenomenon scientifically. In previous books, he has investigated the New Age as the most visible manifestation of a significant spiritual subculture, the roots of which reach back to Theosophy, Spiritualism, and New Thought. The present collection pursues this theme, bringing together some of the best recent scholarship on new religions.
Since the height of its popular influence the New Age has declined in strength but has given rise to a plethora of new denominations all shaped by New Age ideas and spirituality. Reflecting the emergence of this new denominational structure, the core chapters of this book focus on specific groups. Other chapters examine the movement's historical roots. A unique feature of Dr. Lewis's work is his inclusion of extensive selections from New Age literature, thus allowing readers to experience firsthand the unusual perspectives of the various groups.
This is a fascinating examination of a significant and persistent religious and social phenomenon.

Do you really know yourself?

With this self-processing book, one can. Applying a series of light, yet powerful processes, you embark on the great adventure of self-discovery. The barriers of life are really just shadows. Readers learn to know themselves, not just a shadow.

* Travel through one's past, potentials and life.

* Improve memory and reaction time.

* Learn the laws of survival and abundance.

As L. Ron Hubbard said:

""Self Analysis" will conduct you on the most interesting adventure in your life. The adventure of "you."

"How efficient are you? What are your potentials? How much can you improve? Well, basically your intentions toward yourself and your fellow man are "good." Basically, if sometimes clouded over with the not-so-pale cast of bad experience, your potentialities are a great deal better than anyone ever permitted you to believe."

We're all spiritual beings with a spiritual support system on the Other Side that oversees and helps guide our lives from the moment we're born to the moment we leave our physical bodies and return to Spirit. Not knowing this fact is a severe handicap, as the Universe is designed to care for and nurture all its creatures and help make our life's journey easier and more successful. When we learn how to connect with our angelic guides, our lives naturally fall into a pattern of ease and flow during which we grow our souls, fulfill our life's purpose, and make our time on Earth endlessly entertaining. This fascinating and inspirational book by Sonia Choquette provides all the information you need to help you connect with your spirit guides so that you can enjoy all the love, abundance, and joy you're entitled to.

Labyrinths of Love is an interdisciplinary examination of the self, psyche, and soul, providing a comparative analysis from religious, paranormal research and transpersonal theory perspectives. The book addresses ontological questions regarding the nature of the self in relationship to both psyche and soul, each differentiated to reveal attributes that are transphysical and commonly recognized in most religious traditions. The role of dreams, imagination, and paranormal perceptions, as well, contribute to a more fully realized sense of identity. A constructive use of pansentient ontology illuminates how human identity can incorporate transphysical aspects of self into a meaningful theory of self-development and evolutionary becoming.The work creates a unique synthesis that unfolds what it means to be human and demonstrates a visionary epistemology of the self.

This book is the first ethnographic account of the global spiritual movement headed by John of God, a Brazilian faith healer. Renowned for performing surgeries using rudimentary tools such as kitchen knives and scissors, without anesthetics or asepsis, John of God is allegedly inhabited by "entities," or spirits, and goes into a trance-like state in order to heal his visitors and afterwards, when he regains consciousness, does not remember the operations. Visited by thousands of the desperately ill; the wealthy; celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Ram Daas, Wayne Dyer, and Shirley MacLaine; and an increasing array of media, John of God has become an international faith healing superstar in just over a decade. Books about him have been translated into several languages, from Russian to Ukrainian to Japanese; ABC, the Discovery Channel, and the BBC have made documentaries on his healing center; tour guides advertise package trips; and John of God himself travels to conduct healing events in the US, New Zealand, Germany, Greece, Switzerland, Austria, and many other countries. More recently, a transnational spiritual community has developed around John of God, comprised of the ill, those who seek spiritual growth, healers, and tour guides, and according to followers, even spirits whose powers transcend national boundaries. Drawing on a decade of fieldwork in Brazil, the US, the UK, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand, Cristina Rocha examines the social and cultural forces that have made it possible for a healer from Brazil to become a global "guru" in the 21st century. Rocha explores what attracts foreigners to John of God's cosmology and healing practices, how they understand their own experiences, and how these radical experiences have transformed their lives.

In the mid-1930s Herbert W. Armstrong, an unsuccessful American advertising executive, founded a millennialist Sabbatarian Christian sect with a heterodox theology. Over the next half century, despite a number of setbacks, scandals, criticisms, and attacks from former members and anti-cultists, Armstrong's organization, the Worldwide Church of God, grew to around 100,000 baptized members with a world circulation of over six million for its flagship monthly magazine Plain Truth. In January 1986, Armstrong died. His successor changed most of the church's distinctive doctrines, leading it towards an increasing convergence with mainstream Evangelical Christianity. This created a massive cognitive dissonance in ministers and members: should they accept or reject the authority of the church leadership which had abandoned the authority of the founder's teachings? Groups of ministers left the religion to form new churches, taking tens of thousands of members with them. These schismatic churches in turn faced continuing schism, resulting in over 400 offshoot churches within little more than a decade. In this major study David V. Barrett tells the story of the Worldwide Church of God. He examines the processes involved in schism and the varying forms of legitimation of authority within both the original church and its range of offshoots, from hardline to comparatively liberal. His book extends the concepts of rational choice theory when applied to complex religious choices. He also offers a new typological model for categorizing how movements can change after their founder's death, and explores the usefulness of this model by applying it not only to the Worldwide Church of God but also to a wide variety of other religions.

This unparalleled introduction to cults and new religious movements has been completely up-dated and expanded to reflect the latest developments; each chapter reviews the origins, leaders, beliefs, rituals and practices of a NRM, highlighting the specific controversies surrounding each group. * A fully updated, revised and expanded edition of an unparalleled introduction to cults and new religious movements * Profiles a number of the most visible, significant, and controversial new religious movements, presenting each group s history, doctrines, rituals, leadership, and organization * Offers a discussion of the major controversies in which new religious movements have been involved, using each profiled group to illustrate the nature of one of those controversies * Covers debates including what constitutes an authentic religion, the validity of claims of brainwashing techniques, the implications of experimentation with unconventional sexual practices, and the deeply rooted cultural fears that cults engender * New sections include methods of studying new religions in each chapter as well as presentations on groups to watch