Mircea Eliade descibed shamanism as the primal religion of humanity, the 'archaic technique of ecstasy'. The books of best-selling author Carlos Castaneda made it part of popular culture. Since the 1960s shamanism has continued to attract the attention of scholars, artists, writers and the general public. The most intriguing aspect of this religion is the ability of shamans to enter into contact with spirits on behalf of their communities. The first eighteenth-century explorers of Siberia dubbed shamanism a blatant fraud. Later, academic observers stamped it as 'neurotic delusion'. In the 1960s shamans were recast as 'wounded healers', who sacrifice their lives for the spiritual well being of their communities. Many current writers and scholars treat shamanism as ancient wisdom that has much to teach us about true spirituality. This anthology tells the story of shamanism in Eurasia, North and South America, Africa and Australia. It brings together for the first time fifty-six articles and book excerpts by anthropologists, psychologists, religious scholars and historians, illustrating the variety of views on this subject.

Examine the questions of how, what, and why associated with religiousness and spirituality in the lives of older adults! New Directions in the Study of Late Life Religiousness and Spirituality explores new ways of thinking about a topic that was once taboo but that has now attracted considerable attention from the gerontological community. It examines various approaches to methodology and definition that are used in the study of religion, spirituality, and aging. In addition, it explores the ways that gerontological research can highlight the role of religion and spirituality in the lives of older adults. The first section will introduce you to new ways of thinking about research methodology and data analysis that can be applied to studying the complexity of older adults' religious/spiritual practice and beliefs. You'll learn several approaches to the study of phenomena that are both personal and also deeply embedded in community. The second section addresses issues of definition, exploring important questions that call for critical reflection, such as: What are we studying? What social and psychological influences shape our thinking about definition? and Do the definitions used by gerontologists match those held by older people? The final section moves the study of religion, spirituality, and aging beyond a focus on health and mortality to examine well-being more broadly in the context of the life experiences of older adults. Here is a small sample of what you'll learn about in New Directions in the Study of Late Life Religiousness and Spirituality: structural equation modelinga statistical method designed to capture the dynamics inherent in the passage of time feminist qualitative methods for studying spiritual resiliency in older women spirituality as a public health issue the differences between groups of older people in the way they define religion and spirituality the psychosocial implications of two types of religious orientationdwelling and seeking older women's responses to the experience of widowhood and to the question of whether their religious beliefs were affected by the experience how social context influences our decisions and our interpretations of people's religious beliefs, behaviors, and experiences the ways that people caring for a spouse with dementia rely on religious coping a model that delineates three different ways people relate to God in copingand a study that asks whether these types of coping produce different outcomes for caregivers how people adjust to bereavement as a function of their beliefs about an afterlife

Sundar Singh (1889-1929), an Indian holy man, was raised in a wealthy Sikh family. At sixteen he left his home to live as a sadhu, or wandering holy man. His beggar-like existence, his intense devotion, his mystical encounters with Jesus, and his simple parables became the stuff of legends. His parables and meditations probed the essence of the gospel, calling listeners to awareness and compassion. When he disappeared during a journey to Tibet, millions mourned his passing.

Based on lectures given in 1927, this book is a fine introduction to Dr. Thind's teachings. It is easily understood by and popular with young people, as well as more advanced students of Eastern Religions. A few of the chapter titles are: How to Find Out What You Are Best Suited For; Evolution - Passing From Lower to Higher Births; Consciousness - An Inward Knowledge; and Aum - The Sacred Hum of the Universe.

If the western world knows anything about Zen Buddhism, it is down to the efforts of one remarkable man, D.T. Suzuki. The twenty-seven-year-old Japanese scholar first visited the west in 1897, and over the course of the next seventy years became the world's leading authority on Zen. His radical and penetrating insights earned him many disciples, from Carl Jung to Allen Ginsberg, from Thomas Merton to John Cage. In Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist Suzuki compares the teachings of the great Christian mystic Meister Eckhart with the spiritual wisdom of Shin and Zen Buddhism. By juxtaposing cultures that seem to be radically opposed, Suzuki raises one of the fundamental questions of human experience: at the limits of our understanding is there an experience that is universal to all humanity? Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist is a book that challenges and inspires; it will benefit readers of all religions who seek to understand something of the nature of spiritual life.

Helps readers identify their personal vocation, or special way of being, so that they may reach out more effectively to others. Elaborates on the connection between personal vocation and the Spiritual Exercises.

Understand and make use of the connections between health and religion to improve your practice Research points to a clear link between people's religious beliefs and practices and their health. These developments have ushered in a new era in health care, in which meaning and purpose stand alongside biology as vital factors in health outcomes. Now the gap is closing between medicine and religion, as evidenced by the more than 60 US medical school courses now being given in spirituality, religion, and medicine, including courses at major teaching centers such as Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Brown, Case-Western, and others.Faith, Spirituality, and Medicine: Toward the Making of the Healing Practitioner promotes the integration of spirituality into medical care by exploring the connection between patient health and traditional religious beliefs and practices. This useful guide emphasizes basic, easily understood principles that will help health professionals apply current research findings linking religion, spirituality, and health. Faith, Spirituality, and Medicine does not advocate any particular set of beliefs or evangelize as it helps you integrate spiritual care into the care of patients by showing you how to: take a patient's spiritual history correlate religious beliefs with health beliefs address the individual spiritual needs of your patients choose a course of treatment that is in agreement with the religious belief of the patient incorporate appropriate clergy into treatment plansFaith, Spirituality, and Medicine describes a biopsychosocial-spiritual model that emphasizes the need to view patients not simply as biological creatures, but as physical, psychological, social, and spiritual beings if they are to be effectively treated and healed as whole persons.

Witty, yet wise with intimate insights, this is a unique journey of sensuous delights, a beautiful and compelling series of adventures that capture the insecurities, pain and ultimate joy of a middle-aged woman facing life and embracing life on her own. When Susan Bloch lost her partner John far too early, she faced her grief with courage - and what many would term a moment of madness. Giving up her successful career in the UK, she moved overnight to India, facing not just the uncertainties and worries of a new life in a strange land - and being one of the only white women in a high-powered corporate role - but coping with her own very real grief at the death of her husband. Susan's brave - and some might say unconventional - approach to tackling her grief provides a compelling and very human insight into loss of a loved one, and at the same time delivers a beautifully written love letter to India in all its vibrant, chaotic, life-affirming glory. Refreshingly honest and highly emotive, Travels with My Grief is as engaging as it is inspiring, and is more than a simple self-help manual or travelogue. This book is a genuinely life-changing read, and one that should be read by anyone who wants an insight into the joys, belief, spirituality and hope that living can bring us all.

THE CHALLENGE OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM is a serious examination of what we are as a species, how we have changed as a society during the 30 years past, and what might be done to make society and life more pleasant and worthwhile. It takes a hard look at some unpleasant realities, and some brutal truths about human nature.

Routledge is now re-issuing this prestigious series of 204 volumes originally published between 1910 and 1965. The titles include works by key figures such asC.G. Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Otto Rank, James Hillman, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Susan Isaacs. Each volume is available on its own, as part of a themed mini-set, or as part of a specially-priced 204-volume set. A brochure listing each title in the "International Library of Psychology" series is available upon request.

Routledge is now re-issuing this prestigious series of 204 volumes originally published between 1910 and 1965. The titles include works by key figures such asC.G. Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Otto Rank, James Hillman, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Susan Isaacs. Each volume is available on its own, as part of a themed mini-set, or as part of a specially-priced 204-volume set. A brochure listing each title in the "International Library of Psychology" series is available upon request.

This study of shamanistic practices in contemporary Japan examines the shamanic figures surviving in Japan today, their initiatory dreams, ascetic practices, the supernatural beings with whom they communicate, and the geography of the other world in myth and legend.

A personal invitation to walk with God through one of the great classics of Christian spirituality. This book of daily devotions is based upon The Cloud of Unknowing. In this edition Robinson sought to remain as true as possible to the voice of this medieval classic. Cloud Devotion follows the original Middle English text sentence by sentence, with Robinson's own translation and paraphrase, divided work into 366 small portions, with a Scripture passage related to the theme from each daily reading. "My heart has yearned for this book. I wanted a guide to help me savor and reflect on the spiritual classic The Cloud of Unknowing. David has insightfully discerned how we might do this. The partnership of this unknown, ancient writer and this known, living pastor is masterful. I invite you into the clouds with the slow reading of this book." -Dr. MaryKate Morse, author and mentor-professor of formation and leadership

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"Al-Ghazali on Disciplining the Soul" is a translation of the twenty-third book of the "Revival of the Religious Sciences" (Ihya Ulum al-Din), which is widely regarded as the greatest work of Muslim spirituality. In "Al-Ghazali on Disciplining the Soul", Abu Hamid al-Ghazali illustrates how the spiritual life in Islam begins with `riyadat al-nafs', the inner warfare against the ego. The two chapters translated here detail the sophisticated spiritual techniques adopted by classical Islam in disciplining the soul. In Chapter One, "Disciplining the Soul", Ghazali focuses on how the sickness of the heart may be cured and how good character traits can be acquired. In Chapter Two, "Breaking the Two Desires", he discusses the question of gluttony and sexual desire-being the greatest of mortal vices-concluding, in the words of the Prophet, that "the best of all matters is the middle way". The translator, T. J. Winter, has added an introduction and notes which explore Ghazali's ability to make use of Greek as well as Islamic ethics.---In this new edition, the Islamic Texts Society has included the translation of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali's own Introduction to the "Revival of the Religious Sciences" which gives the reasons that caused him to write the work, the structure of the whole of the "Revival" and places each of the chapters in the context of the others.

A Fire to Light Our Tongues: Texas Writers on Spirituality brings together the works of writers in Texas. The title is taken, with permission, from Naomi Shihab Nye's introduction to Salting the Ocean: 100 Poems by Young Poets, where she states the role of poetry serves as "a fire to light our tongues." This view describes the role that creative writers, encountering the challenges of this past decade, face as they grapple with shifting views of spirituality. While the project started before COVID-19, given the current worldwide pandemic, a book of creative work responding to writers' spirituality could not be more timely. This anthology offers readers creative works by Texas writers as they wrestle with evolving systems of belief or nonbelief.

Fragments of ancient belief have been incorporated into folklore and Christian dogma with the result that its original tenets have merged with the myths and psychologies of the intervening years. Hilda Ellis Davidson sifts through centuries of cultural and religious influences to locate evidence of these "lost" pagan beliefs.
Davidson illustrates how northern pagan religions have been represented and misinterpreted by the Christian tradition and throws light on the nature of such beliefs and how they have been preserved. "The Lost Beliefs of" "Northern Europe" stresses both the possibilities and the difficulties of investigating pre-Christian faiths and emphasizes the need to separate speculation from scientific proof.
This book will be a useful tool for students with a serious interest in archaeology as it illustrates with examples how objectivity is not necessarily the driving force in forming our supposedly scientific view of the past. It will also appeal to the general reader who wants to understand the true nature of Northern European pagan belief as opposed to the oversimplified view popularized by the media.
"The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe" argues for intellectual rigorousness rather than romanticization of the past, and challenges the reader to rethink accepted interpretations.

Written by the Buddhist meditation master and popular international speaker Soygal Rinpoche, this highly acclaimed book clarifies the majestic vision of life and death that underlies the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. It includes not only a lucid, inspiring and complete introduction to the practice of meditation but also advice on how to care for the dying with love and compassion, and how to bring them help of a spiritual kind. But there is much more besides in this classic work, which was written to inspire all who read it to begin the journey to enlightenment and so become 'servants of peace.'

In the pre-reserve era, Aboriginal bands in the northern plains were relatively small multicultural communities that actively maintained fluid and inclusive membership through traditional kinship practices. These practices were governed by the Law of the People as described in the traditional stories of Wisashkecahk, or Elder Brother, that outlined social interaction, marriage, adoption, and kinship roles and responsibilities. In Elder Brother and the Law of the People, Robert Innes offers a detailed analysis of the role of Elder Brother stories in historical and contemporary kinship practices in Cowessess First Nation, located in southeastern Saskatchewan. He reveals how these tradition-inspired practices act to undermine legal and scholarly definitions of "Indian" and counter the perception that First Nations people have internalized such classifications. He presents Cowessess's successful negotiation of the 1996 Treaty Land Agreement and their high inclusion rate of new "Bill-C31s" as evidence of the persistence of historical kinship values and their continuing role as the central unifying factor for band membership. Elder Brother and the Law of the People presents an entirely new way of viewing Aboriginal cultural identity on the northern plains.

Focusing on Rumi, the best-selling Persian mystical poet of the 13th century, this book investigates the reception of his work and thought in North America and Europe - and the phenomenon of 'Rumimania' - to elucidate the complexities of intercultural communication between the West and the Iranian and Islamic worlds. Presenting tens of examples from the original and translated texts, the book is a critical analysis of various dimensions of this reception, outlining the difficulties of translating the text but also exploring how translators of various times and languages have performed, and explaining why the quality of reception varies. Topics analysed include the linguistic and pragmatic issues of translation, comparative stylistics and poetics, and non-textual factors like the translator's beliefs and the political and ideological aspects of translation. Using a broad theoretical framework, the author highlights the difficulties of intercultural communication from linguistic, semiotic, stylistic, poetic, ethical, and sociocultural perspectives. Ultimately, the author shares his reflections on the semiotic specificities of Rumi's mystical discourse and the ethics of translation generally. The book will be valuable to scholars and students of Islamic philosophy, Iranian studies, and translation studies, but will appeal to anyone interested in the cultural dichotomies of the West and Islam.

From the man who has inspired millions of people to transform their lives and create their heart's desire comes his latest book on seeking and embracing the power source within. Deepak Chopra has made clear his conviction that it is within the potential of every human being to live an enriching, self-aware, magnificent life. But to reach that state of empowerment is a difficult task, calling for courage, will power and - often - guidance.

In Self-Power, Chopra offers that guidance and encouragement, while inspiring his readers to take their lives into their own capable hands no matter what challenges they may confront, be they job loss, financial difficulties, relationship issues, health problems or spiritual questions.

“I want to believe, I want to have hope, but…” Pastor and bestselling author Craig Groeschel hears these words often and has asked them himself. We want to know God, feel his presence, and trust that he hears our prayers, but in the midst of great pain, we may wonder if he really cares about us. Even when we have both hope and hurt, sometimes it's the hurt that shouts the loudest. Can God be good when life is not

In Hope in the Dark, Groeschel explores the story of the father who brought his demon-possessed son to Jesus, saying, “I believe! Help my unbelief!” In the man's sincere plea, Jesus heard the tension in the man's battle-scarred heart. He healed not only the boy but the father too, driving out the hopelessness that had overtaken him. He can do the same for us today.

As Groeschel shares his pain surrounding the current health challenges of his daughter, he acknowledges the questions we may ask in our own deepest pain: “Where was God when I was being abused” “Why was my child born with a disability” “Why did the cancer come back” “Why are all my friends married and I'm alone” He invites us to wrestle with such questions as we ask God to honor our faith and heal our unbelief.

In the middle of your profound pain, you long for authentic words of understanding and hope. You long to know that even in overwhelming reality, you can still believe that God is good. Rediscover a faith in the character, power, and presence of God. Even in the questions. Even now.