2022 Foreword INDIES Award Winner | Silver: Body, Mind Spirit 2023 IPPY Award Winner | Bronze: New Age/Mind, Body, Spirit Hidden in the darkness is an ancient secret suppressed by every aspect of our light-drunk modern world—there is a Great Mother from the bottom of time who has always guided us through perils and calamities. Now is the hour of Her return. “An exigent, affecting summons to rediscover the night.”—Kirkus Reviews Is darkness synonymous with ignorance and evil? Or is it the original matrix from which all life emerges, and the Mother to whom it returns? Higher and higher levels of artificial illumination have suppressed our contact with the numinous since the Industrial Revolution, with dire consequences for society, our planetary ecology, and our souls. This mystical testament weaves together paleobiology, memoir, history, science, and spiritual archaeology to lead readers back into the lost mysteries of the dark. Not since The Teachings of Don Juan or Ishmael has a book diagnosed with such urgency and cultural coherence the problems at the heart of modern life. In Waking Up to the Dark, Clark Strand offers penetrating insight into the spiritual enrichment that can be found when we pull the plug on our billion-watt culture. He argues that the insomnia so many of us experience as “the Hour of the Wolf” is really “the Hour of God”—a wellspring of rest and renewal, and an ancient reservoir of ancestral wisdom and inspiration. And in a powerful yet surprising turn, he shares with us an urgent message for the world, received through a mysterious young woman he calls Our Lady of Climate Change (aka THE VIRGIN MARY), about the challenges we all know are coming.

Spirituality.The search for happiness --Religion, East and West --Mindfulness --The truth of suffering --Enlightenment --The mystery of consciousness.The mind divided --Structure and function --Are our minds already split? --Conscious and unconscious processing in the brain --Consciousness is what matters --The riddle of the self.What are we calling "I"? --Consciousness without self --Lost in thought --The challenge of studying the self --Penetrating the illusion --Meditation.Gradual versus sudden realization --Dzogchen: taking the goal as the path --Having no head --The paradox of acceptance --Gurus, death, drugs, and other puzzles.Mind on the brink of death --The spiritual uses of pharmacology.

This book is a lively exploration of the amazing revelation known to Mormons as the “Word of Wisdom.” It counsels us how and what we should eat to reach our highest potential, both physically and spiritually. New and surprising insights are presented through the perspective of what has been proven to be the healthiest human diet, a way of eating supported both by history and by science: a whole food, plant-based (WFPB) diet. WFPB vegetarian diets have been scientifically proven to both prevent and cure chronic disease, help you achieve your maximum physical potential, and make it easy to reach and maintain your ideal weight. In this book, you’ll find the stories of dozens of people who are enjoying the blessings of following a Word of Wisdom diet, and you’ll get concrete advice on how to get started! You will discover: What we should and should not eat to enjoy maximum physical health. How food is intimately connected to our spiritual well being. Why Latter-day Saints are succumbing to the same chronic diseases as the rest of the population, despite not smoking, drinking, or doing drugs. How the Word of Wisdom was designed specifically for our day. How you can receive the “hidden treasures” and other blessings promised in the Word of Wisdom. Why eating the foods God has ordained for our use is better not just for our bodies, but for the animals and for the earth. You may think you know what the Word of Wisdom says, but you’ll be amazed at what you have missed. Learn why Mormons all over the world are “waking up” to the Word of Wisdom!

This very special memoir is a feast of short reminiscences about the various non-ordinary events - synchronicities, encounters with human and animal spirits, precognitive dreams, shamanic engagements - experienced by the author in her life's journey.They are for perusal by those who refuse to be restricted to a life that is reduced to a reflection of the material world only. Woven throughout is an understanding of a loving bedrock of consciousness that is fundamental to all life. With over 60 years of a broad range of personal non-ordinary experiences and additionally much reading and research, the author is in an excellent position to present concepts of consciousness. The life accounts in What The Cat Saw serve to illustrate that there is a much broader and deeper range to reality than we generally accept. Furthermore, this added spectrum of perceptions gift a depth of spiritual cohesion and growth possibilities in our everyday experience of life. A pathway is opened here to the ongoing spiritual instruction that has been the outcome of all these wonderful experiences. Most importantly this first book supports the author's conviction that we need to discuss the non-ordinary. By choosing to scorn it and ridicule those that have strange experiences we confine our working knowledge of the nature of reality in ways that are detrimental to our advancement as a species. So much wisdom is available to be harvested in such events.This book is for hearts that thirst for the miraculous, for a spiritual life that isn't just dogma, for a science of being that incorporates rather than scorns the extraordinary.

What happens when a former Zen Buddhist monk and his feminist wife experience an apparition of the Virgin Mary? “This book could not have come at a more auspicious time, and the message is mystical perfection, not to mention a courageous one. I adore this book.”—Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit Before a vision of a mysterious “Lady” invited Clark Strand and Perdita Finn to pray the rosary, they were not only uninterested in becoming Catholic but finished with institutional religion altogether. Their main spiritual concerns were the fate of the planet and the future of their children and grandchildren in an age of ecological collapse. But this Lady barely even referred to the Church and its proscriptions. Instead, she spoke of the miraculous power of the rosary to transform lives and heal the planet, and revealed the secrets she had hidden within the rosary’s prayers and mysteries—secrets of a past age when forests were the only cathedrals and people wove rose garlands for a Mother whose loving presence was as close as the ground beneath their feet. She told Strand and Finn: The rosary is My body, and My body is the body of the world. Your body is one with that body. What cause could there be for fear? Weaving together their own remarkable story of how they came to the rosary, their discoveries about the eco-feminist wisdom at the heart of this ancient devotion, and the life-changing revelations of the Lady herself, the authors reveal an ancestral path—available to everyone, religious or not—that returns us to the powerful healing rhythms of the natural world.

Human beings the world over have always found the nighttime-and its attendant activities of sleeping, dreaming, and waking up-mysterious, mystical, and rich with meaning and metaphor. The name Buddha means the one who has awakened and enlightenment itself is often portrayed literarily as the luminous full moon, lighting our way through the blinding black of night. Nightly Wisdom goes deep into the wealth of Buddhist inspirations on these powerful topics: offering encouragement and clear teaching on lucid dreaming and Tibetan dream yoga, the art of extending one's meditation practice into the boundary-less world of dreamtime; gentle guidance on relaxing into restful sleep and awakening from the suffering dream of separateness; as well as poetry and prose whose sources span time and space from ancient Japan and the Buddha himself to some of the brightest lights of Buddhism today. A book unlike any other, Nightly Wisdom is designed to be placed on the bedside table and read last thing in the evening so that one's sleep may be infused with a virtue that can be renewed in the morning and carried on throughout the day. Nightly Wisdom represents perhaps the first effort to bring all of these Buddhist inspirations together in one welcoming volume and is an ideal guide for anyone who has ever dreamed of waking up to the entirety of life or wondered how best to suffuse this wisdom into that third of our lives we all spend in bed.

Waking Up Together is written for those who want to journey to new depths of intimacy, both spiritually and in their love relationship. The book shows how a committed, long-term relationship can enhance spiritual development and how relationships can be transformed by spiritual practice. Written by two Zen teachers married for thirty-seven years, it shows that relationships and all that arise from them can be a help--not a hindrance!--as we seek greater freedom and joy. It is possible to wake up together! Going far beyond merely recommending skills and strategies to improve relationships, Waking Up Together serves as a guide in our ongoing process of spiritual discovery and intimacy. Throughout the book the authors intermingle stories and poems along with anecdotes from their married life, empowering couples to awaken to an ever-expanding experience of relationship that is full of spontaneity, mystery, awe, love, and unlimited possibility. Waking Up Together will be useful for couples of all persuasions. It affirms and encourages couples to cultivate the richness of their own relationship, and open to the unbounded potential of love.

Many people say they never remember their dreams, while others don't pay much attention to them, feeling they're just nonsense because they don't understand their significance. Even if you do believe that dreams are important, they can seem like random situations with strange things happening and out-of-place objects you'd never see in the real world. It's hard to see how many of our dreams make sense and how they could ever be helpful in our waking lives. The reason it's so hard to understand our dreams is because so much of the dream world revolves around symbolism. If you look at dream symbols as metaphors to things in your waking life--things on your mind, in your past, problems, worries, goals, hopes, and fears—these symbols become much less confusing. In this book, we'll cover the types of dreams, how dreams can help you, and several dreamwork exercises. Through dreamwork, you'll find that your subconscious starts revealing more about your mind, body, and soul. This internal guidance system will let you know if you're moving in the right direction or need to make some changes. They can offer information and help on how to be successful and happy--physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

A renowned philosopher of the mind, also known for his groundbreaking work on Buddhism and cognitive science, Evan Thompson combines the latest neuroscience research on sleep, dreaming, and meditation with Indian and Western philosophy of mind, casting new light on the self and its relation to the brain. Thompson shows how the self is a changing process, not a static thing. When we are awake we identify with our body, but if we let our mind wander or daydream, we project a mentally imagined self into the remembered past or anticipated future. As we fall asleep, the impression of being a bounded self distinct from the world dissolves, but the self reappears in the dream state. If we have a lucid dream, we no longer identify only with the self within the dream. Our sense of self now includes our dreaming self, the "I" as dreamer. Finally, as we meditate—either in the waking state or in a lucid dream—we can observe whatever images or thoughts arise and how we tend to identify with them as "me." We can also experience sheer awareness itself, distinct from the changing contents that make up our image of the self. Contemplative traditions say that we can learn to let go of the self, so that when we die we can witness its dissolution with equanimity. Thompson weaves together neuroscience, philosophy, and personal narrative to depict these transformations, adding uncommon depth to life's profound questions. Contemplative experience comes to illuminate scientific findings, and scientific evidence enriches the vast knowledge acquired by contemplatives.

Is there more to Buddhism than sitting in silent meditation? Is modern Buddhism relevant to the problems of daily life? Does it empower individuals to transform their lives? Or has Buddhism become too detached, so still and quiet that the Buddha has fallen asleep? Waking the Buddha tells the story of the Soka Gakkai International, the largest, most dynamic Buddhist movement in the world today—and one that is waking up and shaking up Buddhism so it can truly work in ordinary people’s lives. Drawing on his long personal experience as a Buddhist teacher, journalist, and editor, Clark Strand offers broad insight into how and why the Soka Gakkai, with its commitment to social justice and its egalitarian approach, has become a role model, not only for other schools of Buddhism, but for other religions as well. Readers will be inspired by the struggles and triumphs of the Soka Gakkai’s three founding presidents—individuals who staked their lives on the teachings of the Lotus Sutra and the extraordinary power of those teachings to help people become happy.