In the only modern book referred to in Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul, Sardello shows readers how to reimagine the world to find peace, strength, beauty, and depth, by employing the arts of concentration, meditation, and contemplation, rather than belonging to an individual consciousness.

All the organizing forms in modern life that ought to enrich life with beauty, purpose, and depth no longer do so. We live in a troubled world itself in need of care. To heal ourselves and the world, Sardello claims, we need to bring to birth a new imaginative consciousness that is fully awake and alive. Those aspects of life that challenge us -- money, health, education, environment, nutrition, spirit, the city, addictions, technology -- are here illuminated by the powerful images that Sardello unfolds before our eyes.

Fear comes at us from politics, war, work, relationships, strangers, movies, and television. It keeps us from behaving intelligently, since the mind's first reaction to fear is to ignore danger, hoping it will go away. When fear takes over, it drives us to extremes of manic happiness or fits of rage; it pushes us to destroy relationships instead of letting relationships help us defeat it. When fear wins the battle, viciousness sets in, and we have miserable lives in a miserable world. Most important, fear keeps us from the one thing that could stop its taking over: becoming present. Robert Sardello, an exceptionally powerful writer who Larry Dossey deems "one of the few modern thinkers who genuinely senses how to deal with the barrenness of modern life," argues that the soul's greatest enemy is fear. It is only when we can look honestly at every fear—from insecurity at work to existential angst—that we may fulfill its potential for kindness, love, and compassion. This book is at once an inspiring manual for dealing with fear and a call to arms to change our situation and thereby change the world. It is a rich combination of theory, anecdote, exercises for strengthening the soul, and the wisdom of a great student of the soul.

There is a lot of interest in today’s culture about the idea of Persona and the psychological mapping of one’s inner world. In fact, the interest is so strong that the superstar Korean Pop band, BTS, has taken Dr. Murray Stein’s concepts and woven them into the title and lyrics of their latest album, Map of the Soul:Persona. What is our persona and how does it affect our life’s journey? What masks do we wear as we engage those around us? Our persona is ultimately how we relate to the world. Combined with our ego, shadow, anima and other intra-psychic elements it creates an internal map of the soul. T.S. Eliot, one of the most famous English poets of the 20th Century, wrote that every cat has three names: the name that everybody knows, the name that only the cat’s intimate friends and family know, and the name that only the cat knows. As humans, we also have three names: the name that everybody knows, which is the public persona; the name of that only your close friends and family know, which is your private persona; and the name that only you know, which refers to your deepest self. Many people know the first name, and some people know the second. Do you know your secret name, your individual, singular, unique name? This is a name that was given to you before you were named by your family and by your society. This name is the one that you should never lose or forget. Do you know it?

"It's easy in these times to allow ourselves to slip into resignation, isolation, or despair. The Book of Soul is an antidote." —Arianna Huffington, Founder & CEO, Thrive Global and Founder, Huffington Post "I recommend The Book of Soul for all of us wanting to stay connected to a deeper purpose." —Melinda Gates, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Moment of Lift "There is much to explore and savor in this [new] book [by] this incredibly talented writer, storyteller, poet, and teacher. The spiritual practitioner will rejoice in Nepo’s uncanny ability to consistently stretch our minds and souls with fresh musings." —Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality & Practice "I love all Mark’s books because of his deep insights and his amazing way with words, but there’s something truly special about this one. It feels like a compilation of the best and most profound ideas from his work. I want to savor each and every chapter." —Katy Koontz, Editor, Unity Magazine A powerful new book of spiritual awakening from #1 New York Times bestselling author Mark Nepo In The Book of Soul, Mark Nepo, the bestselling author of The Book of Awakening, offers a powerful guide to inhabiting an authentic and wholehearted life. After we are physically born, we must be spiritually born a second time, a process that takes place through the labor of a lifetime as we develop into more fully realized beings. The Book of Soul delves into the spiritual alchemy of that transformation in all its mystery, difficulty, and inevitability. The book is divided into four sections that mark the passages we all face: enduring our Walk in the World, until we discover Our True Inheritance, which allows us to live in the open by Widening Our Circle, as we Help Each Other Stay Awake. The Book of Soul is a piercing guide, replete with beautiful truths and startling insight, that leads us deeply into the process of transformation.

In this guide to conscious soul practice, a psychotherapist reveals the importance of making one's life open and receptive to the spiritual realms.

A compelling defense of the sacred from acclaimed philosopher Roger Scruton In The Soul of the World, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton defends the experience of the sacred against today's fashionable forms of atheism. He argues that our personal relationships, moral intuitions, and aesthetic judgments hint at a transcendent dimension that cannot be understood through the lens of science alone. To be fully alive—and to understand what we are—is to acknowledge the reality of sacred things. Rather than an argument for the existence of God, or a defense of the truth of religion, the book is an extended reflection on why a sense of the sacred is essential to human life—and what the final loss of the sacred would mean. In short, the book addresses the most important question of modernity: what is left of our aspirations after science has delivered its verdict about what we are? Drawing on art, architecture, music, and literature, Scruton suggests that the highest forms of human experience and expression tell the story of our religious need, and of our quest for the being who might answer it, and that this search for the sacred endows the world with a soul. Evolution cannot explain our conception of the sacred; neuroscience is irrelevant to our interpersonal relationships, which provide a model for our posture toward God; and scientific understanding has nothing to say about the experience of beauty, which provides a God’s-eye perspective on reality. Ultimately, a world without the sacred would be a completely different world—one in which we humans are not truly at home. Yet despite the shrinking place for the sacred in today’s world, Scruton says, the paths to transcendence remain open.