Mental Health Spirituality

Nirvana has become an idealized word associated with the juxtaposition of a cult rock celebrity who died before his time and a vague new age version of Eastern religion. An altered state to be hoped for but likely unattainable, reinforcing that all too familiar uneasiness associated with never being able to have what we truly desire in life.

Jung's primary concern in Flying Saucers is not with the reality or unreality of UFOs but with their psychic aspect. Rather than speculate about their possible nature and extraterrestrial origin as alleged spacecraft, he asks what it may signify that these phenomena, whether real or imagined, are seen in such numbers just at a time when humankind is menaced as never before in history. The UFOs represent, in Jung's phrase, "a modern myth."

Women are like spaghetti, because their thought process runs on and on in an interconnecting web, and men are like waffles because they compartmentalize and "sit" in sometimes blank boxes, just to relax.

UFOs are a myth, says David J. Halperin, but myths are real. The power and fascination of the UFO has nothing to do with space travel or life on other planets. It’s about us, our longings and terrors, especially the greatest terror of all: the end of our existence. This is a book about UFOs that goes beyond believing in them or debunking them, to a fresh understanding of what they tell us about ourselves as individuals, as a culture, as a species.

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 same, and answer each other.

As an analyst working with the dying, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés has developed seminal methods to help ease the fear that can accompany the dying process. In The Radiant Coat, this bestselling author shares myths and stories first told at the bedsides of the dying to comfort them and their loved ones. For other cultures, Dr. Estés teaches, death holds no terror. It is in fact characterized as an ally, a wise and caring figure, leading departed souls through the starry night into the next day.

Discover the original, instinctive, nonreligious form of meditation that has been lost to the world. Richard L. Haight, award-winning author of The Unbound Soul and master of four samurai arts, shares the best-kept secret in self-improvement, cognitive development, and stress relief, which he calls the "warrior's meditation".

Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D., a 20-year researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health and the celebrated psychiatrist who pioneered the study and treatment of Season Affective Disorder (SAD), brings us the most important work on Transcendental Meditation since the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Science of Being and Art of Living - and one of our generation's most significant books on achieving greater physical and mental health and wellness.

Imagine you're sitting on a cushion with your legs crossed, ready to tap into unlimited joy. There's just one problem: You can't get comfortable (let alone still), and your head is full of way too many thoughts. The problem is not with meditation, or you, though - the issue may be with your approach. When properly understood and practiced, meditation should feel easy, calming, and comfortable. In Bliss More, maverick instructor Light Watkins provides the tools for making it E.A.S.Y. (Embrace, Accept, Surrender, Yield).

Christians who struggle with a conflict between their sexual and religious identities have few therapeutic options available to them. An alternative to these methods is Sexual Identity Therapy (SIT) -an approach that aims to provide individuals with a safe therapeutic space to explore the tension between their sexuality and their faith. Working within the SIT framework, clients are able to resolve their inner conflict to their personal satisfaction and to freely choose a coherent identity that enables them to move forward in life.

Ritual is one of the oldest, and certainly most enigmatic, threads in the history of human culture. It presents a profound paradox: people ascribe the utmost importance to their rituals, but few can explain why they are so important. Apparently pointless ceremonies pervade every documented society, from handshakes to hexes, hazings to parades. Before we ever learned to farm, we were gathering in giant stone temples to perform elaborate rites and ceremonies. Dimitris Xygalatas leads us on an enlightening tour through this shadowy realm of human behavior.

Eldest daughters are responsible, dutiful, thoughtful, expeditious, and caring. Parents may worry about their "difficult" eldest girl who wants to be perfect in everything she does whilst her siblings may not always understand her. The Eldest Daughter Effect shows how firstborn girls become who they are and offers insights that can give them more freedom to move. And parents will gain a better understanding of their firstborn children and can support them more fully on their way.

Filled with simple, everyday actions we can take to avoid disease, promote vitality, and prevent dementia and late onset Alzheimer's, The Aging Brain is an easy-to-use guide to maintaining brain and body health throughout our lives. Based on solid, up-to-date scientific research, the interventions explained in this book not only prevent progression toward dementia even in those who have already shown mild cognitive impairment, they also reduce disability and depression and keep people living independently longer than those who do not practice these methods.

Walking through Psalm 23 phrase by phrase, therapist and author K.J. Ramsey explores the landscape of our fear, trauma, and faith. When she stepped through her own wilderness of spiritual abuse and religious trauma, K.J. discovered that courage is not the absence of anxiety but the practice of trusting we will be held and loved no matter what. The Lord is My Courage is for the deconstructing and the dreamers, the afraid and the amazed, for those whose fear has not been fully shepherded but who can't seem to stop listening for their Good Shepherd's Voice.

“Like being deemed a witch hundreds of years ago, being presumed a slut today is cause for ostracism, abuse, and death”.... Archetypes of “witch” and “slut” have been used to police female sexuality and punish women; now, feminists are reclaiming them as positive affirmations. This book unearths the sex positive feminist legacy of the witch in art, music, politics, and popular culture, connecting the fictional witch we love to emulate and fear with real women, past and present.

Psychedelics, Dreams, and Rituals: A Guidebook for Explorers, Therapists, and Facilitators, is a practical, step-by-step book on using psychedelics, dreams, and rituals to help you heal the root cause of trauma. This book will show you how to take the inner healing journey.

In both sports and war, athletes and soldiers must work to have a mental edge to successfully deal with all that they encounter. While success for both is typically defined as overcoming their respective opponents, the reality is that their victories can never happen unless they’ve first won their internal battles. I Declare War is a practical guide for fighting our inner war, the struggle against sin that breaks us down and fills our lives with pain and suffering, in turn making us feel weak and inadequate.

Tune into your senses, develop your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual awareness, and open yourself up to the power of intuition. Discover the life-changing potential of intuition and use a broad range of practices and techniques designed to reveal your path to innate wisdom. Connect with your subconscious mind through journaling, meditation, adventure, mindful movement, energy healing, moon rituals - explore what works for you.

Here is a guide to understanding the profound connection in animal/human relationships and its potential for mutual healing. Providing tools to identify our animals’ messages more quickly, the author shows how our pets’ higher purpose is to help people understand themselves.

For thousands of years, religion has woven its way through societies and people as if it were part and parcel to that society or person. In large measure it was left unexplained and unchallenged, it simply existed. Those who attempted to challenge and expose religion were often persecuted, excommunicated, shunned, or even executed. It could be fatal to explain that which the church, priest, or imam said was unexplainable. Before the germ, viral, and parasite theory of disease, physicians had no tools to understand disease and its propagation.