A “profound and inspiring” collection of ancient indigenous wisdom for “anyone wanting the healing of self, society, and of our shared planet” (Peter Levine, author of Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma). A Penobscot Indian draws on the experiences and wisdom of the First Nations to address environmental justice, water protection, generational trauma, and more. Drawing from ancestral knowledge, as well as her experience as an attorney and activist, Sherri Mitchell addresses some of the most crucial issues of our day—including indigenous land rights, environmental justice, and our collective human survival. Sharing the gifts she has received from the elders of her tribe, the Penobscot Nation, she asks us to look deeply into the illusions we have labeled as truth and which separate us from our higher mind and from one another. Sacred Instructions explains how our traditional stories set the framework for our belief systems and urges us to decolonize our language and our stories. It reveals how the removal of women from our stories has impacted our thinking and disrupted the natural balance within our communities. For all those who seek to create change, this book lays out an ancient world view and set of cultural values that provide a way of life that is balanced and humane, that can heal Mother Earth, and that will preserve our communities for future generations.

Answers to the questions that arise on the spiritual path • Includes specially selected writings from the huge literary archive of Paul Brunton • Explains the different stages of meditation and the obstacles likely to arise for each, offering guidance for achieving advanced states of meditation to deepen one’s inner life • Challenges the need for spiritual dependency on any particular guru, teaching, or practice, showing that following your intuition can bring the best spiritual success • Explores the process of self-examination and emotional purification, revealing how to break free from the ego and tap into the inspiration flowing from within No matter where we are in our spiritual development, we all have questions about our practice and what we are experiencing--both the challenges and opportunities. How can I overcome my struggles to meditate more deeply? Is there a need for a guru or can I rely on myself? Can I trust my intuition? Is it possible to hear the “Inner Word,” the voice of the soul, and how can I be sure that’s what I’m hearing? Is the Higher Self in the heart? Offering trustworthy answers to these and many more questions, renowned spiritual teacher Paul Brunton provides instructions to guide one’s development in three fundamental areas of the spiritual path: meditation, self-examination, and the unfolding of awakening. Guiding you with insight and care through each stage of meditation, including advanced states that deepen one’s inner life, he explains how meditation is the art and practice of introverting attention, of freeing oneself for a period of time from thoughts, sensations, and feelings and allowing the soul to reveal itself out of the quiet that one has created. He explains the goal of each meditative stage and the obstacles you are likely to face and examines the need for spiritual dependency on any particular guru, teaching, or practice, showing that following your intuition can bring spiritual success. Exploring the process of self-examination and emotional purification, Brunton shows how life’s challenges are moments by which we can make real progress in our surrender to a higher life. He reveals how to break free from the ego, follow your intuition to align with your ideals, and tap into the inspiration flowing from within. He also examines the development of transcendental insight, the cornerstone of compassionate wisdom in action, which allows us to become a source of inspiration to all we encounter. Including writings received by the Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation after his death, this guide offers transformative wisdom to aid our understanding of what the spiritual journey entails, help point the way when the way is uncertain, and learn and grow from the challenges that arise as you develop spiritually.

How often do you find moments of deep peace and satisfaction in your day-to-day life? How often does connection with other people, the divine, or nature make you feel more alive? How often are you touched by a sense of awe-inspiring beauty, compassionate love, or pure joy? For many of us, these kinds of experiences tend to be fleeting and all too rare. Fortunately, new research is suggesting that a regular practice of paying attention to experiences like these can help any of us find them more often and cultivate richer, deeper, and more satisfying lives. In Spiritual Connection in Daily Life, Lynn Underwood introduces her Daily Spiritual Experience Scale (DSES), which is comprised of sixteen simple, multiple-choice questions that invite us to become more attuned tothese extraordinary experiences in ordinary life. The DSES is the definitive set of questions for measuring the experience of spiritual connection and has been used in hundreds of studies, translated into over twenty languages, and used around the world by counselors, therapists, nurses, social workers, clergy from multiple faiths, and business leaders. Spiritual Connection in Daily Life offers a step-by-step guide to using the DSES to improve our abilities to sense the “more than” in the midst of our days. Embraced by people from many different cultures, religious traditions, and professional backgrounds, the DSES doesn’t require any extraordinary experience like hearing divine voices or embarking upon a dramatic religious conversion. Nor does it belabor the exact definition of “spirituality.” Rather, it simply invites us to focus on aspects of our daily lives such as deep peace, sense of inner strength, longing, and compassionate love. The sixteen questions also provide a common, nonpolarizing language for communicating with others about the role of the “more than” in our lives. Adherents of all faith traditions, as well as people with no religious leanings whatsoever, have experienced profound and lasting benefits from having these experiences, including improved health behaviors, better relationships, decreased stress and burnout, and improvements in daily mood. Now all of us can reap these same long-term benefits with just a little bit of self-reflection and Dr. Underwood’s expert guidance.

Tips and Tricks to Help You Live Out Your Faith Life hacks—ingenious solutions to everyday problems—are everywhere on the internet. If you want to stop your cat from unrolling the toilet paper or learn how to cut a cake with dental floss, you can find a site that will show you how. Such clever strategies might save you a few seconds and give you a good story to tell your friends, but they can’t help you with the stuff in life that truly matters, like trying to live as God intended. That is…until now. Discover life hacks for your spiritual life, field-tested fixes for chronic problems that plague many Christians. What do you do when you are… …headed out into a problem-filled world? …disillusioned by your lack of spiritual growth? …forced to be around somebody really annoying? …disgusted with yourself because of all the things you “should” be doing but aren’t? …tired of all the pretending? Join award-winning author Len Woods as he shares some sound biblical strategies for overcoming these common challenges—and learn to give yourself grace along the way.

The Christian life is built on three seemingly unremarkable practices: reading the Bible, prayer, and fellowship with other believers. However, according to David Mathis, such “habits of grace” are the God-designed channels through which his glorious grace flows—making them life-giving practices for all Christians. Whether it’s hearing God’s voice (the Word), having his ear (prayer), or participating in his body (fellowship), such spiritual rhythms of the Christian life have the power to awaken our souls to God’s glory and stir our hearts for lifelong service in his name. What’s more, these seemingly simple practices grant us access to a host of spiritual blessings that we can only begin to imagine this side of eternity—and the incredible joy that such blessings bring to God’s children today.

"May our love for the Sun, the will of God, be as strong as the sunflower's, so that even in days of hardship and sorrow we will continue to sail unerringly along the sea of life, following the directions of the barometer and compass of God's will that leads us to the safe haven of eternity." This is a thoroughly practical manual of the spiritual life focusing on the central goal of every Christian: learning the will of God and struggling to mold our life to it, just as Christ "humbled Himself and became obedient." (Phil. 2:8) Even more fundamentally, St John addresses the question of why we should care about God's will. Finally, the reader will find eternal wisdom running through these writings on questions of theodicy, free will, and Divine Providence. This work is reminiscent of the classic text Unseen Warfare in its historical genesis as an Orthodox redaction of an originally Roman Catholic text. First published in 1627 as The Heliotropium it was the work of a German Jesuit writer Jeremias Drexelius. The future St John adapted this text for an Orthodox audience as a student and then teacher at the Kiev Academy in the 1670's but it was not published until 1714, just a year before the author's death. This is the first English edition of St John's text, further edited and abbreviated for the contemporary reader.

This is the 20th anniversary edition of Continuum's best-selling spiritual classic, which has sold over half a million in the English language and has appeared in 10 foreign-language editions (Croatian, French, German, Hungarian, Indonesia, Italian, Korean, Polish, and Portuguese). The new edition consists of a substantial new preface, an expanded glossary, some changes in terminology, and a reordering of several chapters.

This massive compilation of 140 Christian questions and answers go from the interesting (How can you believe a dead man came back to life?) to the incendiary (Why does God hate homosexuals?), to the irritating (How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?). These age-old difficulties have caused many people to question the Christian faith. They are tough questions, but they have solid, satisfying answers that can banish your doubts. This handy volume covers the material with a friendly, readable style using personal anecdotes, real-life stories, and analogies from nature. The author drew from his years of teaching God's Word and writing devotionals to write plainly and root his answers in the Word of God. This book will help you . . . - Confront hidden biases and see how our culture warps God's message. - Gain more confidence about the reasonableness of the Christian faith. - Remove crippling doubts about the trustworthiness of the Scriptures. - Share your faith and take a stand.