How sacred sites amplify the energies of consciousness, the earth, and the universe
- Examines the web of geometrical patterns linking sacred sites worldwide, with special focus on the sacred network of ley lines in Paris
- Unveils the coming state of shared consciousness for humanity fueled by the sacred network
- Reveals how consciousness is a tangible form of energy
First marked by the standing stones of our megalithic ancestors, the world's sacred sites are not only places of spiritual energy but also hubs of cosmic energy and earthly energy. Generation upon generation has recognized the power of these sites, with the result that each dominant culture builds their religious structures on the same spots--the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, for example, was constructed over a Temple to Diana that in turn had been built over a stone pillar worshipped by the Gauls.
In "The Sacred Network," Chris Hardy shows how the world's sacred sites coincide with the intersections of energetic waves from the earth's geomagnetic field and how--via their megaliths, temples, and steeples--these sites act as antennae for the energies of the cosmos. Delving deeply in to Paris's sacred network, she also explores the intricate geometrical patterns created by the alignments of churches and monuments, such as pentagrams and Stars of David. Revealing that consciousness is a tangible energy, she explains how the sacred network is fueling an 8,000-year evolutionary cycle initiated by our megalithic ancestors that will soon culminate in a new state of shared consciousness for humanity.

The Vaikhanasas are mentioned in many Vedic texts, and they maintain a close affiliation with the Taittiriya school of the Krsna Yajur Veda. Yet they are Vaisnavas, monotheistic worshipers of Visnu. Generally, Vaisnavism is held to be a post-Vedic development. Thus, the Vaikhanasas bridge two key ages in the history of South Asian religion. This text contains many quotations from ancient Vedic literature, and probably some other older original material, as well as architectural and iconographical data of the later first millennium CE. The Vaikhanasas remain relevant today. They are the chief priests (arcakas) in more than half of the Visnu temples in the South Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka-including the renowned Hindu pilgrimage center Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh.

There is great contemporary interest in the mystery centres of antiquity, such as prehistoric caves, the pyramids of Egypt, Newgrange in Ireland, and the Externsteine in Germany. The trials and rites that took place there were for the chosen few, and are vividly described in this book -- from the trials of fire and water to the three-day near-death sleep. The author goes on to argue that modern-day initiation, however, has a substantially different character. Whereas a 'hierophant' -- a guide -- was previously needed to navigate a trial, these days it is life itself which brings us trials, which can sometimes lead to deeper experiences of the spiritual.

This collection of ground-breaking essays considers the many dimensions of prayer: how prayer relates us to the divine; prayer's ability to reveal what is essential about our humanity; the power of prayer to transform human desire and action; and the relation of prayer to cognition. It takes up the meaning of prayer from within a uniquely phenomenological point of view, demonstrating that the phenomenology of prayer is as much about the character and boundaries of phenomenological analysis as it is about the heart of religious life.The contributors: Michael F. Andrews, Bruce Ellis Benson, Mark Cauchi, Benjamin Crowe, Mark Gedney, Philip Goodchild, Christina M. Gschwandtner, Lissa McCullough, Cleo McNelly Kearns, Edward F. Mooney, B. Keith Putt, Jill Robbins, Brian Treanor, Merold Westphal, Norman Wirzba, Terence Wright and Terence and James R. Mensch. Bruce Ellis Benson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College. He is the author of Graven Ideologies: Nietzsche, Derrida, and Marion on Modern Idolatry and The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue: A Phenomenology of Music. Norman Wirzba is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Georgetown College, Kentucky. He is the author of The Paradise of God and editor of The Essential Agrarian Reader.

The Yuchis are one of the least known yet most distinctive of the Native groups in the American southeast. Located in late prehistoric times in eastern Tennessee, they played an important historical role at various times during the last five centuries and in many ways served as a bridge between their southeastern neighbors and Native communities in the northeast. First noted by the de Soto expedition in the sixteenth century, the Yuchis moved several times and made many alliances over the next few centuries. The famous naturalist William Bartram visited a Yuchi town in 1775, at a time when the Yuchis had moved near and become allied with Creek communities in Georgia. This alliance had long-lasting repercussions: when the United States government forced most southeastern groups to move to Oklahoma in the early nineteenth century, the Yuchis were classified as Creeks and placed under the jurisdiction of the Creek Nation. Today, despite the existence of a separate language and their distinct history, culture, and religious traditions, the Yuchis are not recognized as a sovereign people by the Creek Nation or the United States. Jason Baird Jackson examines the significance of community ceremonies for the Yuchis today. For many Yuchis, traditional rituals remain important to their identity, and they feel an obligation to perform and renew them each year at one of three ceremonial grounds, called "Big Houses." The Big House acts as a periodic gathering place for the Yuchis, their Creator, and their ancestors. Drawing on a decade of collaborative study with tribal elders and using insights gained from ethnopoetics, Jackson captures in vivid detail the performance, impact, and motivationsbehind such rituals as the Stomp Dance, the Green Corn Ceremony, and the Soup Dance and discusses their continuing importance to the community.

Experience the Transformational Power of Buddhism's Psychology of the Heart with Bestselling Author Jack Kornfield
You have within you unlimited capacities for extraordinary love, for joy, for communion with life, and for unshakable freedom--and here is how to awaken them. In The Wise Heart," " celebrated author and psychologist Jack Kornfield offers the most accessible, comprehensive, and illuminating guide to Buddhist psychology ever published in the West. For meditators and mental health professionals, Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, here is a vision of radiant human dignity, a journey to the highest expression of human possibility--and a practical path for realizing it in our own lives.

Over the centuries, Buddhist ideas have influenced medical thought and practice in complex and varied ways in diverse regions and cultures. A companion to Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources, this work presents a collection of modern and contemporary texts and conversations from across the Buddhist world dealing with the multifaceted relationship between Buddhism and medicine. Covering the early modern period to the present, this anthology focuses on the many ways Buddhism and medicine were shaped by the forces of colonialism, science, and globalization, as well as ruptures and reconciliations between tradition and modernity. Editor C. Pierce Salguero and an international collection of scholars highlight diversity and innovation in the encounters between Buddhist and medical thought. The chapters contain a wide range of sources presenting different perspectives rooted in distinct times and places, including translations of published and unpublished documents and transcripts of ethnographic interviews as well as accounts by missionaries and colonial authorities and materials from the contemporary United States and United Kingdom. Together, these varied sources illustrate the many intersections of Buddhism and medicine in the past and how this nexus continues to be crucial in today's global context.

A celebration of the voices of women of color in prayer Women of color pray and have prayed out of necessity for survival, out of love for the Divine and because we believe in the power of prayer. Prayer has been the prevailing force behind the education of our children, protection and courage for our men, hope for our daughters and the balm that heals sorrows. —from the Introduction Prayers by women around the world—from China and Japan, to Syria and Ghana—to African American, Asian American, Native American and Hispanic women in the United States including: Teresa Palomo Acosta Yolanda Adams Rabi’a Al-Adawiyya Paula Gunn Allen Savitri Bess Mary McLeod Bethune Irene I. Blea Sandra Cisneros Marian Wright Edelman Rachelle Ferrell Monique Greenwood Joy Harjo Linda Hogan Patricia Locke Janice Mirikitani Toni Morrison Naomi Quinonez Della Reese Cathy Song Susan L. Taylor Sojourner Truth Harriet Tubman Iyanla Vanzant Phillis Wheatley CeCe Winans Empress Yamatohime ... and many others This beautiful collection of prayers will take you on a journey into the spiritual walk of women of color around the world—including Asia, the Middle East and Africa—as well as Native American, African American, Asian American and Hispanic women in the United States. Through these prayers, poetry, lyrics, meditations and affirmations, you will share in the strong and undeniable connection that women of color share with God. As you delve into the words of unwavering faith, perseverance, resistance, celebration and communion with God and family that fill each page, you will find your ideas about prayer challenged and your own prayer life inspired and renewed.

Author Kristen Johnson Ingram was photographing Native American dancers at an Oregon pow-wow when an official tapped her on the shoulder and asked her to stop taking pictures. "This is the prayer the dancer is doing," he explained. For people of faith, Ingram realized, there are many forms of prayer besides the ones we speak with our lips: Devout Jews bow while reading Torah; Episcopalians stand, sit, or kneel in church; exuberant Christians raise their arms; and mystics of all denominations walk while murmuring the Jesus Prayer. As Christians, we can use our entire bodies to praise God, transforming simple acts like hearing music, looking at shafts of sunlight, or walking in the woods into acts of prayer that celebrate God's presence in everyday life. Beyond Words is a book for spiritual adventurers who seek new ways to pray. Readers can put into practice the concepts they find here, making the book not just a source of inspiration but a springboard to action that deepens their prayer lives and draws them closer to God. Kristen Johnson Ingram is the author of more than twenty books, including Wine at the End of the Feast: Embracing Spiritual Change as We Age. She is also a writing instructor and a licensed preacher in the Episcopal Church.

This volume offers new insights into the radical shift in attitudes towards death and the dead body that occurred in temperate Bronze Age Europe. Exploring the introduction and eventual dominance of cremation, Marie-Louise Stig Sorenson and Katharina Rebay-Salisbury apply a case-study approach to investigate how this transformation unfolded within local communities located throughout central to northern Europe. They demonstrate the deep link between the living and the dead body, and propose that the introduction of cremation was a significant ontological challenge to traditional ideas about death. In tracing the responses to this challenge, the authors focus on three fields of action: the treatment of the dead body, the construction of a burial place, and ongoing relationships with the dead body after burial. Interrogating cultural change at its most fundamental level, the authors elucidate the fundamental tension between openness towards the 'new' and the conservative pull of the familiar and traditional.

Are you looking to strengthen your relationship with God? Do you find yourself untangling the threads of what it is you really believe? Are you longing for a deeper connection to your spiritual side? Bunmi Laditan has been in your shoes. In the midst of her darkest days, Bunmi began writing down her deepest fears, hopes, dreams, and frustrations with God in the form of letters. The result of Bunmi's soul-searching journey is Dear God, a collection of funny, heartbreaking, and deeply insightful prayers that put words to the emotions we all feel as we grapple with this broken world and search for divine love. With the same gutsy and poetic honesty that has already charmed readers around the world, Bunmi now shares these moving, intimate conversations with God--prayers and poems that chart her story of reconnecting with the God she loved, lost, and found once again. Dear God catalogs what we're all thinking as we work out our personal relationships with God. These candid field notes will stir your heart and make you laugh out loud with Bunmi's self-awareness and profound insight into the spiritual journeys we're all doing our best to navigate. Join Bunmi as she travels through those all-too-familiar emotions--doubt, anger, joy, desperation, love, loneliness, and gratefulness--that humanity has always wrestled with. Wittily fresh and stunningly relatable, she exquisitely shares the painfully honest questions she's asked along the way, including: God, what is holiness? God, how can it be worth it to love life when it could slip away at any moment? God, what do I do when forgiveness feels impossible? God, I know you love me, but do you like me? This poignant collection of prayers is a timely reminder that even when we wander, God never leaves our side.

The Benefits of Bismillah 'ir-Rahman 'ir-Raheem & Surat al-Fatihah is based on advanced teachings of eminent Islamic scholars and Sufi masters. It details ancient wisdom of God's preference to be known and called upon by His Holy Names Ar-Rahman, The Most Beneficent, and Ar-Raheem, The Most Merciful, and their immense spiritual blessing. In addition, powerful benefits of Surat al-Fatihah, the most read chapter of Holy Quran that is recited in every Muslim prayer, are examined. This book will enhance studies of Islam, Prophet Muhammad, Holy Quran and Islamic mysticism (Sufism).