A groundbreaking exploration of the neuroscience of spirituality and a bold new paradigm for health, healing, and resilience.

Whether it's meditation or a walk in nature, reading a sacred text or saying a prayer, there are many ways to tap into a heightened awareness of the world around us and our place in it. Lisa Miller draws on decades of clinical experience and award-winning research to show that humans are universally equipped with this capacity for spirituality, and that our brains become more resilient and robust as a result of it. Bringing scientific rigour to the most intangible aspect of our lives, Miller's counterintuitive findings reveal the measurable positive effects of spirituality: for better decision-making, a healthier brain and an inspired life.

Brimming with inspiration and compassion, this landmark book revolutionizes our understanding of spirituality, mental health and how to find meaning and purpose in life.

What keeps women from feeling and being their best? For years, Joyce has been helping women better identify emotional barriers and physical, mental, and spiritual obstacles in their lives. Now she provides another answer: Confidence.

Our society has an insecurity epidemic. Women in particular compensate by pretending to be secure--a common response--which only leads to feelings of shame. Lack of self-confidence causes great difficulty in relationships of all kinds, and can even lead to divorce.

In Confidently You, Joyce explores the characteristics of a woman with confidence, which include a woman who knows she is loved, who refuses to live in fear, and who does not live by comparisons. Joyce explains that confidence stems from being positive in your actions and living honestly, but most importantly from having faith in God and in ourselves.

Derived from material previously published in The Confident Woman.

The author of the international bestseller Shantaram takes us on a gripping personal journey of wonder and insight into science, belief, faith and devotion.

Drawing on sacred traditions, rigorous logic and the six-year instruction of his spiritual teacher, Roberts describes the step-by-step process he followed in search of spiritual connection - a process that anyone, of any belief or none, can benefit from in their own lives. This gripping personal account of the 'Leap Of Faith' is a compellingly fresh addition to such enduring, spiritually inspiring works as Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Road Less Travelled and The Celestine Prophecy.

As Roberts writes, 'The Spiritual Path is a book on spiritual matters that my younger self wanted desperately: one that offers more answers than questions, and helps to reset the spiritual compass.'

In this book, Yaroslav Komarovski argues that the Tibetan Buddhist interpretations of the realization of ultimate reality both contribute to and challenge contemporary interpretations of unmediated mystical experience. The model used by the majority of Tibetan Buddhist thinkers states that the realization of ultimate reality, while unmediated during its actual occurrence, is necessarily filtered and mediated by the conditioning contemplative processes leading to it, and Komarovski argues that therefore, in order to understand this mystical experience, one must focus on these processes, rather than on the experience itself. Komarovski also provides an in-depth comparison of seminal Tibetan Geluk thinker Tsongkhapa and his major Sakya critic Gorampa's accounts of the realization of ultimate reality, demonstrating that the differences between these two interpretations lie primarily in their conflicting descriptions of the compatible conditioning processes that lead to this realization. Komarovski maintains that Tsongkhapa and Gorampa's views are virtually irreconcilable, but demonstrates that the differing processes outlined by these two thinkers are equally effective in terms of actually attaining the realization of ultimate reality. Tibetan Buddhism and Mystical Experience speaks to the plurality of mystical experience, perhaps even suggesting that the diversity of mystical experience is one of its primary features.

Rituals combining healing with spirit possession and court-like proceedings are found around the world and throughout history. A person suffers from an illness that cannot be cured, for example, and in order to be healed performs a ritual involving a prosecution and a defense, a judge and witnesses. Divine beings then speak through oracles, spirits possess the victim and are exorcized, and local gods intervene to provide healing and justice. Such practices seem to be the very antithesis of modernity, and many modern, secular states have systematically attempted to eliminate them. What is the relationship between healing, spirit possession, and the law, and why are they so often combined? Why are such rituals largely absent from modern societies, and what happens to them when the state attempts to expunge them from their health and justice systems, or even to criminalize them? Despite the prevalence of rituals involving some or all of these elements, this volume represents the first attempt to compare and analyze them systematically. The Law of Possession brings together historical and contemporary case studies from East Asia, South Asia, and Africa, and argues that despite consistent attempts by modern, secular states to discourage, eliminate, and criminalize them, these types of rituals persist and even thrive because they meet widespread human needs.

This book is a thoughtful, informative, and practical guide for anyone involved in caring for the seriously and chronically ill or dying. The connection between spirituality and medicine has been receiving a lot of attention in both the scientific and lay presses recently, but research and
anecdotal evidence all indicate that spirituality is central to the care of the chronically ill and dying. It is therefore critical that healthcare providers who interact with seriously ill patients know how to address their spiritual needs.
This book presents current thinking on how spiritual care can be integrated into traditional caregiving. Part one discusses aspects of spirituality, such as presence, ethics, and relationships. Part two delves into a number of specific religious and theological traditions. Part three offers
practical applications and tools, including storytelling, psychotherapy, dance, music, and the arts. Part four focuses on patients' stories and reflections. The book concludes with appendices that have sample advance directives for Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim patients.
Volume editor Christina Puchalski is the director of the George Washington Institute of Spirituality and Health. She is also an associate professor of medicine at the George Washington University Medical Center and an active practicing physician and medical educator. Dr. Puchalski is nationally and
internationally recognized as a pioneer in the integration of spirituality and healthcare. Chapters are authored by an impressive group of medical and religious experts, and patients' stories also appear throughout, offering real-world examples. The book features a foreword by theDalai
Lama.

Good luck getting through an entire day without experiencing the impact of Catholicism. Woken up by an alarm or checked the time? The mechanical clock was invented in the tenth century by a monk who became pope. A bowl of cereal for breakfast? Your milk is safe thanks to Louis Pasteur, a devout Catholic whose research was driven by a love of God and humanity. Knock on wood? It's actually an ancient Catholic practice invoking the power of the Cross when facing trouble or danger.