Join the author in her journey of discovery of the superior sensual goddess within; learning to love yourself; to love yourself while making love to your partner, and to love yourself with the crew of choice. It is time to recognize that women are superior in many aspects, especially in the sexual realm. When we remove the chauvinistic, religious, and cultural norms, you end up with the raw, uninhibited, sensual, sophisticated superior female. This is a voyage of enlightenment that each one of us can initiate and bring along our lover(s) to strengthen the experience and relationship(s).

What does it mean to be truly happy? In Philosophies of Happiness, Diana Lobel provides a rich spectrum of arguments for a theory of happiness as flourishing or well-being, offering a global, cross-cultural, and interdisciplinary perspective on how to create a vital, fulfilling, and significant life. Drawing upon perspectives from a broad range of philosophical traditions—Eastern and Western, ancient and contemporary—the book suggests that just as physical health is the well-being of the body, happiness is the healthy and flourishing condition of the whole human being, and we experience the most complete happiness when we realize our potential through creative engagement. Lobel shows that while thick descriptions of happiness differ widely in texture and detail, certain themes resonate across texts from different traditions and historical contexts, suggesting core features of a happy life: attentive awareness; effortless action; relationship and connection to a larger, interconnected community; love or devotion; and creative engagement. Each feature adds meaning, significance, and value, so that we can craft lives of worth and purpose. These themes emerge from careful study of philosophical and religious texts and traditions: the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Epicurus; the Chinese traditions of Confucius, Laozi, and Zhuangzi; the Hindu Bhagavad Gītā; the Japanese Buddhist tradition of Soto Zen master Dōgen and his modern expositor Shunryu Suzuki; the Western religious traditions of Augustine and Maimonides; the Persian Sufi tale Conference of the Birds; and contemporary research on mindfulness and creativity. Written in a clear, accessible style, Philosophies of Happiness invites readers of all backgrounds to explore and engage with religious and philosophical conceptions of what makes life meaningful. Visit https://cup.columbia.edu/extras/supplement/philosophies-of-happiness for additional appendixes and supplemental notes.

Now in paperback! The last book on love you'll ever need. Explore simple truths for going easier on yourself, embracing imperfections and loving your way to a better life through insightful stories and down-to-earth advice from artist and international best-selling author of Unlearn, Humble The Poet. We all want love. Everything we do is in pursuit of love, but that journey has gotten difficult and complicated. We're programmed to seek love outside of ourselves, and we're trained that love is something to earn, or a destination to reach; that programming blinds us to the simple truth that we are beautiful, eternal sources of love, and to BE LOVED is to BE LOVE. This book is a guide to self-love that helps to clear the blockages on your path inward toward love and throw away old ideas that prevent us from realizing the love we've always had. Clear away the misguided notion that you must be ENOUGH before you are worthy of love--you are worthy. Clear away the expectations for love you have learned from the media--love is messy and real, not "happily ever after." Clear away your lack of self-awareness--see yourself for who you truly are. Instead of earning more, achieving more, and gaining more attention, what we really need to do is clear pathways and make room for love to enter, be realized, and flourish. Whether we're talking about love for ourselves, or love for everyone and everything.

From the author of highly acclaimed Self Love Poetry: For Thinkers & Feelers comes an uplifting guide that teaches what self love actually is. In The ABCs of Self Love, Melody Godfred offers a unique blend of inspiration, education, and action to make self love an instinctual part of your daily life. Self Love Philosopher Melody Godfred wrote The ABCs of Self Love after supporting the personal journeys of thousands of people around the world. In The ABCs, she joyfully shares her discoveries with you. With a refreshing take on every letter of the alphabet, this illustrated self love workbook uses poetry, real-life examples, and journaling prompts to help you intuitively understand foundational concepts like authenticity, boundaries, forgiveness, and progress over perfection. Whether you read it by yourself or with a group of close friends, The ABCs of Self Love is designed for you to move at your own pace. You can read one chapter a week or the whole book in one sitting. What matters most is that you’re doing this for you. Let The ABCs of Self Love show you how to cast off shame, regret, self-doubt, and fear so you can love yourself, reclaim your worth, and change your life.

Are you trying to find love – and beginning to suspect you’re not looking in the right place? This wise, hip guide gives you a new map for the journey to happiness in relationships of all kinds, starting in your own heart. Told from the alternating vantage points of authors Meggan Watterson and Lodro Rinzler, How to Love Yourself (and Sometimes Other People) reminds us that love isn’t something we have to earn. All of us are deeply and intrinsically worthy of love – not only the love we hope to receive from others, but the love we give to ourselves – and this book offers the insight and practical tools we need to stay firmly grounded in self-love as we ride out the natural (and often stormy) cycles of relationships. Meggan and Lodro’s unique perspectives as teachers and scholars of Christian mysticism and Buddhism respectively make for a rich and lively dialogue that draws on wisdom sources like the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and the Four Noble Truths, along with funny, revealing stories from their own love lives and their deep friendship with each other. You’ll find guidance for embracing single life, dating with an open heart, and thriving in lasting love; meditations and practices for calm abiding, "disciplined hope," and connecting to the source of love within you; and tips on everything from sex, self-worth, and nourishing friendships to navigating breakups and learning to truly love yourself. Ultimately, you’ll be able to see your ideal partner in a new light – not as someone who "completes" you, but as someone who mirrors back to you your own wholeness.

A New York Times bestseller and enduring classic, All About Love is the acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks' "Love Song to the Nation" trilogy. All About Love reveals what causes a polarized society, and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring, compassion, and strength in our homes, schools, and workplaces. “The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb,” writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, renowned scholar, cultural critic and feminist bell hooks offers a proactive new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness--not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, and unity. People are divided, she declares, by society’s failure to provide a model for learning to love. As bell hooks uses her incisive mind to explore the question “What is love?” her answers strike at both the mind and heart. Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for individuals and for a nation. The Utne Reader declared bell hooks one of the “100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life.” All About Love is a powerful, timely affirmation of just how profoundly her revelations can change hearts and minds for the better.

How does one begin to understand the idea of a distinctive southern way of life—a concept as enduring as it is disputed? In this examination of the American South in national and global contexts, celebrated historian Charles Reagan Wilson assesses how diverse communities of southerners have sought to define the region's identity. Surveying three centuries of southern regional consciousness across many genres, disciplines, and cultural strains, Wilson considers and challenges prior presentations of the region, advancing a vision of southern culture that has always been plural, dynamic, and complicated by race and class. Structured in three parts, The Southern Way of Life takes readers on a journey from the colonial era to the present, from when complex ideas of "southern civilization" rooted in slaveholding and agrarianism dominated to the twenty-first-century rise of a modern, multicultural "southern living." As Wilson shows, there is no singular or essential South but rather a rich tapestry woven with contestations, contingencies, and change.

High on energy and imagination, this ode to self-esteem encourages kids to appreciate everything about themselves--inside and out. Messy hair? Beaver breath? So what Here's a little girl who knows what really matters. At once silly and serious, Karen Beaumont's joyous rhyming text and David Catrow's wild illustrations unite in a book that is sassy, soulful--and straight from the heart.