Religion Psychology

Free Play is directed toward people in any field who want to contact, honor, and strengthen their own creative powers. It integrates material from a wide variety of sources among the arts, sciences, and spiritual traditions of humanity. Filled with unusual quotes, amusing and illuminating anecdotes, and original metaphors, it reveals how inspiration arises within us; how that inspiration may be blocked, derailed, or obscured by certain unavoidable facts of life; and how it can finally be liberated - how we can be liberated - to speak or sing, write or paint, dance or play.

I constantly fought everything going on in my life with my mind. Day to day stressors like traffic, the mean lady at the gas station with the bad breath that I had to see every morning, and the long hours put in at work were enough to drain me. My boss, with his long nose hair, breathing down my neck about my productivity level was enough to deplete a person every day. I could not even enjoy a second of my day because I was lost in worry and stress over what was going to happen next and what I could do to control it.

Rhythms of Renewal is your guide to daily rescue and a way forward into the peace your soul longs for. As a society, we are in the throes of a collective panic attack. Anxiety and loneliness are on the rise, with 77% of our population experiencing physical symptoms of stress on a regular basis. We feel pressure chasing careers, security, and keeping up. We worry about health, politics, and many other complexities we can't control. Eventually, we find our minds spinning, trying to cope or manage a low hum of anxiety, unlike ever before.

On a clear spring day in 1995, five members of a religious cult unleashed poison gas on the Tokyo subway system. In attempt to discover why, Haruki Murakmi talks to the people who lived through the catastrophe, and in so doing lays bare the Japanese psyche. As he discerns the fundamental issues that led to the attack, Murakami paints a clear vision of an event that could occur anytime, anywhere.

Our thought lives have incredible power over our mental, emotional, and even physical well-being. In fact, our thoughts can either limit us to what we believe we can do or release us to experience abilities well beyond our expectations. When we choose a mindset that extends our abilities rather than placing limits on ourselves, we will experience greater intellectual satisfaction, emotional control, and physical health. The only question is... how?

When is the last time you thought about the state of your soul? Best-selling author John Ortberg guides you through several practices to restore your soul so you can experience a life of wholeness, balance, and hope. The health of your soul isn't just a matter of saved or unsaved. It's the hinge on which the rest of your life hangs. It's the difference between deep, satisfied spirituality and a restless, dispassionate faith.

In its Native American meaning, wetiko is an evil cannibalistic spirit that can take over people’s minds, leading to selfishness, insatiable greed, and consumption as an end in itself, destructively turning our intrinsic creative genius against our own humanity. Revealing the presence of wetiko in our modern world behind every form of destruction our species is carrying out, both individual and collective, Paul Levy shows how this mind-virus is so embedded in our psyches that it is almost undetectable - and it is our blindness to it that gives wetiko its power.

Forty, chronically single, and up an extra 20 pounds, TV news producer Stephanie Krikorian fell victim to the Great Recession, finding herself suddenly unemployed. One unwanted pregnancy away from being a Lifetime Original Movie, Stephanie had to reinvent herself...and fast. So, to keep her head above water, she started ghostwriting self-help and diet books for a variety of well-known experts. However, she didn't just write each book she took on, she lived it - chanting, journaling, reflecting, reframing - whatever it took to get deep into the heart of each project.

As a social worker, jail chaplain, and justice advocate, Bethany Dearborn Hiser pushed herself to the brink of burnout - and then kept going. Stress, despair, and compassion fatigue overwhelmed her ability to function. She was called to serve the abused, addicted, and homeless people in her community. Yet she was emotionally and spiritually exhausted. Something needed to change. Searching for answers, Hiser learned that trauma affects everyone who is exposed to it - not only those experiencing firsthand violence, homelessness, and addiction, but also those who are trying to help.

While many books have tried to integrate theology and psychology, this book takes another step and explores the importance of the spiritual disciplines in psychotherapy, helping counselors to integrate the biblical principles of forgiveness, redemption, restitution, prayer, and worship into their counseling techniques. Since its first publication in 1996, this book has quickly become a contemporary classic—a go-to handbook for integrating what we know is true from the disciplines of theology and psychology and how that impacts your daily walk with God.

Physician-researcher Dr. Lidia Zylowska has created an 8-step program for using mindfulness practice (attention and awareness training) to overcome the symptoms of ADHD. The program includes practices such as sitting meditation, body awareness, thoughtful speaking and listening, development of self-acceptance, mindful self-coaching, cultivation of a balanced view of thoughts and emotions, and more.

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.

Though many of us can point to patterns of brokenness in our lives, we don't know why they're there. No matter how hard we work, we can't seem to outrun the very things that break our hearts. That's because our everyday setbacks are rooted in our unaddressed wounds. Guided by seminary-trained licensed trauma therapist Kobe Campbell, Why Am I Like This? will help you develop courage as you dare to turn your heart toward your brokenness, uncover uncomfortable truths, and learn how to invite God into your past and present pain.

Divided into three parts like a traditional Buddhist text, Joyful Wisdom identifies the sources of our unease, describes methods of meditation that enable us to transform our experience into deeper insight, and applies these methods to common emotional, physical, and personal problems. The result is a work at once wise, anecdotal, funny, informed, and graced with the author's irresistible charm.

Mental Illness is real. Will the Church get real? This book is a collection of essays from various authors: men and women, pastors and congregants, counselors and nurses, parents and children. All have a unique view of how mental health conditions affect people, and how the church has responded to these circumstances. Whispers in the Pews tackles how the mentally ill have been, and still are, treated in the church at large by sharing stories. This is not fundamentally a teaching book, but a book of moments and lives, knitted together by the common theme of mental health.

Free yourself from the limitations of the earth plane and the laws of space and time. Astral Voyages presents more than 65 exercises that train you to safely leave your physical body and return unharmed from explorations of the upper astral plane and the causal, mental, or etheric realms. You might even venture to the soul plane and observe the process of selecting your next lifetime!

The great modern classic of a brilliant rebel's personal exploration into the nature of consciousness. Based on The Robert Anton Wilson Trust Authorized Hilaritas Press Edition.

In conversations with the Dalai Lama over the past several years, Howard Cutler has asked the questions we all want answered about how to find happiness in the place we spend most of our time - work. This guide is an invaluable source of strength and peace for anyone who earns a living.

For the modern world, it seems as if sexuality and spirituality have always been at odds. But what if the two are actually deeply connected? And what if science could prove this connection? From neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, Sex, God, and the Brain argues that our religious and spiritual experiences derive directly from our sexual being. While others have speculated on a connection between religion and sex, Newberg is the first to demonstrate that the underlying biological mechanism of religious, spiritual, and sexual experiences are identical.

Increasing numbers of people involved in personal transformation are experiencing spiritual emergencies - crises when the process of growth and change becomes chaotic and overwhelming. Unfortunately, much of modern psychiatry has failed to distinguish these episodes from mental illness. As a result, transformational crises are often suppressed by routine psychiatric care, medication, and even institutionalization. When understood and treated in a supportive manner, spiritual emergencies can become gateways to higher levels of functioning and new ways of being.