Download or read book A Plea for Embodied Spirituality written by Fraser Watts and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2022-07-07 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The body is crucial to religious life, but there has been little practical attention given to how to make a helpful reality of this fact. Strong forms of philosophical dualism have been widely abandoned by post-war theologians in favour of a more integrated view of human nature, but guidance on the role of the body in Christian spirituality remains fragmentary. Focusing particularly on drawing out practical implications for religious life and ministry, this book surveys the many ways in which the body plays an important role in religious and spiritual life, drawing on scientific research, theology and philosophy.

Download or read book Embodied Spirituality in a Sacred World written by Michael Washburn and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anyone seeking a deeper understanding of human spirituality will find something of value in Michael Washburn's new book. Drawing on a rich variety of psychoanalytic, Jungian, and existential-phenomenological sources and on both Western and Asian spiritual texts, Embodied Spirituality in a Sacred World provides a theoretical foundation for the idea that human development follows a spiral path. Washburn shows that ego development early in life requires us to turn our backs on original sources of our existence and, therefore, that spiritual development later in life requires us to spiral back to these sources on the way to whole-psyche integration. He elucidates the underlying causes and pivotal events that set development on its spiral course and traces six major dimensions of experience as they unfold along the spiral path: the unconscious, the energy system, the ego system, the perceived other, the experiential body, and the life-world. In providing a theoretical foundation for the idea of the spiral path, Washburn defends the idea against its critics and helps explain why the idea has been compelling to so many people in diverse traditions.

Download or read book Perspectives on Spiritual Intelligence written by Marius Dorobantu and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-29 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The topic of intelligence involves questions that cut deep into ultimate concerns and human identity, and the study of intelligence is an ideal ground for dialogue between science and religion. This volume investigates the notion of spiritual intelligence from a variety of perspectives, bringing together contributions from theology, computer science, linguistics, psychology, biology, and cognitive science. It defines spiritual intelligence as “processing things differently, not processing different things” and aims to describe it in naturalistic terms. Spiritual intelligence is not regarded as a separate mental module or a magical ability to interact with the supernatural but rather as a specific, more spiritual way of engagement with reality, which has observable cognitive, phenomenal, and linguistic characteristics. The book is valuable reading for those working at the interface between science and spirituality.

Download or read book Spiritual Intelligence in Seven Steps written by Mark Vernon and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2022-12-09 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in an age of emergency, exacerbated by a collapse of meaning. Writer and psychotherapist Mark Vernon examines the type of intelligence that, whilst often dismissed and overlooked, is crucial to understand and cultivate if we are to survive and thrive in our times. Spiritual intelligence is the foundation of who we are and our particular type of consciousness. It is the perception identified across wisdom and religious traditions, and known by many names, which can be summarised as the awareness of awareness, and so of being itself. It is the foundation of peace, even in the face of death, as well as purpose and solidarity. The challenge today is to recover and live according to that knowledge. Examining themes from the nature of consciousness to the experience of time, the emergence of our species and the teaching of spiritual adepts, the book is an antidote to rampant AI and a complement to emotional intelligence. It is written without presuming religious commitments in readers and draws on a mix of sources and experience gained from the author's own practices. It advocates pilgrimage and improvisation, virtues over morality, and big histories that do not turn the story of our species into a bleak struggle for survival. The seven steps will help readers identify spiritual intelligence within themselves, unpack why it matters, and suggest how a wider trust in it may be revived.

Download or read book Corporeal Theology written by Tobias Tanton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-01-05 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Appropriating insights from empirical findings and theoretical constructs of 'embodied cognition', this study explores how theological understanding is accommodated to the bodily nature of human cognition. The principle of divine accommodation provides a theological framework for considering the human cognitive capacities that are accommodated by theological concepts and ecclesial practices. A rich portrait of the nature of human cognitive capacities is drawn from an emerging paradigm in cognitive science, embodied cognition, which proposes that cognition depends upon bodily sensorimotor systems to ground concepts and to draw upon environmental resources. Embodied cognition's hypothesis that human concepts are grounded in sensorimotor states poses a theological quandary for God-concepts, since identifying God with sensorimotor content risks idolatry. The incarnation resolves this problem in theological epistemology by grounding God-concepts in bodily understanding, while avoiding idolatry. Thus, the incarnation represents an accommodation to human conceptual capacities. Embodied cognition further hypothesises that cognition relies on sensorimotor engagement with the world rather than internal mental representations. Subsequently, in addition to the brain, bodily states and environmental artefacts 'scaffold' cognitive processes. A scaffolded view of cognition highlights the cognitive import of embodied religious practices, which choregraph the body and curate material culture. Tobias Tanton applies dozens of studies identifying mechanisms by which bodily or environmental factors influence cognition to the embodied and material dimensions Christian practices. On account of their inherent cognitive effects, practices are theorised to have intrinsic 'embodied' meanings alongside 'symbolic' ones established by conventions. Consequently, liturgy is seen as a bearer of theological content rather than merely an expression of it; a locus of religious experience; and a crucial determinate of religious and ethical formation. Again, the embodied nature of Christian liturgy is understood in terms of accommodation. Embodied cognition research helpfully illuminates the details of human embodiment to which theological understanding must be accommodated.

Download or read book Embodied Enlightenment written by Amoda Maa Jeevan and published by New Harbinger Publications. This book was released on 2017-06-01 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Embodied Enlightenment, contemporary spiritual teacher Amoda Maa Jeevan dispels the outdated view of a transcendent enlightenment and instead presents a new, feminine expression of awakened consciousness for all—one that is felt and known through what our everyday lives are made of: our emotions, bodies, intimate relationships, work, and life’s purpose. This book is a direct invitation to awaken in a profound, embodied way, and to participate in a collective evolution that can create a new world. When many of us think of enlightenment, we may envision a life of seclusion and contemplation, transcending the body and worldly attachments, or the achievement of karmic perfection. But what if, rather than something reserved for the mountaintop meditator or sage, the call to awaken is meant for us all? And how can we consciously live that awakening in the midst of our complex, messy, modern lives? Speaking from her own awakened experience, Amoda Maa Jeevan offers a timeless wisdom, busting some of the common myths about enlightenment and addressing topics often excluded from more traditional spiritual conversations—from the connection between consciousness and the body to relationships to planetary health. In addition, she covers the unfamiliar territory of what happens after enlightenment, delving into awakened action, creative expression, and more. There’s an urgency today to evolve beyond humanity’s current ego-based paradigm, and along with it, a unique expression of enlightenment is emerging. With clarity, passion, and grace, Embodied Enlightenment invites you on an exploration of consciousness that embraces both the messiness of your earthly experience and the non-duality of pure awareness, offering guidance on how your daily life can bring you into alignment with a divine destiny of individual and collective awakening.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality written by Lisa J. Miller and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-06 with total page 849 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This updated edition of The Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality codifies the leading empirical evidence in the support and application of postmaterial psychological science. Lisa J. Miller has gathered together a group of ground-breaking scholars to showcase their work of many decades that has come further to fruition in the past ten years with the collective momentum of a Spiritual Renaissance in Psychological Science. With new and updated chapters from leading scholars in psychology, medicine, physics, and biology, the Handbook is an interdisciplinary reference for a rapidly emerging approach to contemporary science. Highlighting fresh ideas and supporting science, this overarching work provides both a foundation and a roadmap for what is truly a new ideological age.

Download or read book Embodied Awakeness written by Allegiance To Truth and published by . This book was released on 2020-08-19 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Embodied Awakeness is a concrete, experiential guide to spiritual awakening and embodiment. With a profound directness it presents the underlying mechanics, orienting descriptions, and core principles that are essential in the process of waking up to the truth of our being beyond familiar notions of self and bringing that into daily life as a lived experience. "This is not a book that lays out theories and speculations or goes into useless debates and irrelevant mind-based discussions, nor is it about heightened, mystical, trippy states of consciousness. In addition, the words written here are not meant to be taken as some absolute truth, rather, they serve as an invitation, as strategic pointers or sign posts towards 'taking spirituality all the way' into embodiment. All the way back to life's rightful custody, to the One river, to the One whole, where true peace and belongingness is found." May this book serve as an insightful companion on your journey to discovering another way of operating in this world, touching upon that pocket of divine unification, and engaging with life from a space of alignment and wholeness. "When the mind is done trying to ascend, trying to transcend, Spirit is then finally allowed to descend, for it desires to be embodied. The movement of spirit to be grounded in the world of form."

Download or read book All Christians Are Monks written by George Guiver and published by Sacristy Press. This book was released on 2024-05-01 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively and challenging exploration of things the contemporary Church needs to learn from monastic communities, things it has lost and needs to rediscover.

Download or read book The Art of Practical Spirituality written by Elizabeth Clare Prophet and published by Summit University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Create an intimate relationship with Spirit... This common-sense guide offers practical steps for staying in tune with Spirit midst the hustle and bustle of everyday life. For listening to the still small voice within. For living in the here and now. These keys, gleaned from the ancient wisdom of the world's spiritual traditions, also show how to discover your soul's core passion, create a sacred space, and use every encounter and circumstance as an opportunity to grow.

Download or read book HOW TO LIVE A SPIRITUAL LIFE IN A MATERIAL WORLD written by AiR and published by AiR Institute of Realization. This book was released on 2021-11-01 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of us are lost in the material world and only turn to Spirituality when suffering comes our way. We don't realize that a Spiritual life can liberate us from all misery and suffering. Some people do take the road less traveled, the Spiritual path, and go on a quest to Realize the Truth. But is it even possible to live a Spiritual life in this material world, surrounded by worldly pleasures? Of course, it is! Spirituality is not really about renunciation, but Realization. This book shows the way to that inner voyage of eternal happiness.

Download or read book Sufi Women Embodiment and the Self written by Jamila Rodrigues and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-30 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an ethnographic case study of Sufi ritual practice and embodied experience amongst female members of the Naqshbandi community. Drawing on fieldwork in Cape Town, South Africa, and Lefke, Cyprus (2013/2014), the author examines women’s experiences within a particular performance of Sufi tradition. The focus is on the ritual named hadra, involving the recital of sacred texts, music, and body movement, where the goal is for the individual to reach a state of intimacy with God. The volume considers Sufi practice as a form of embodied cultural behavior, religious identity, and selfhood construction. It explains how Muslim women’s participation in hadra ritual life reflects religious and cultural ideas about the body, the body’s movement, and embodied selfhood expression within the ritual experience. Sufi Women, Ritual Embodiment and the ‘Self’ engages with studies in Sufism, symbolic anthropology, ethnography, dance, and somatic studies. Contributing to discussions of religion, gender, and the body, the book will be of interest to scholars from anthropology, sociology, religious ritual studies, Sufism and gender studies, and performance studies.

Download or read book The Darkening Spirit written by David Tacey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-26 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twenty-first century could well be Jung's century, just as the twentieth century was Freud's. Jung predicted the demise of secular humanism and claimed we would search for alternatives to science, atheism and reason. We would experience a new and even unfashionable appetite for the sacred. Educated people, however, would not return to unreconstructed religions, because these do not express the life of the spirit as discerned by modern consciousness. The sacred has developed a darker hue, and worshipping symbols of light and goodness no longer satisfies the longings of the soul. The new sacred cannot be contained by the formulas of the past, but nor can we live without a sense of the sacred. We stand in a difficult place: between traditional religions we have outgrown and a pervasive materialism we can no longer embrace. These changes in our culture have come sooner than Jung might have imagined. In his time Jung struck many as eccentric or unscientific. But his works speak to our time since we have experienced the full gamut of Jungian transformations: the unsettlement of Judeo-Christian culture, the rise of the feminine, the onslaught of the dark side, the critique of modernism and positivism, and the recognition that the Western ego is neither the pinnacle of evolution nor the lord of creation. A new life is needed beyond the ego, but we do not yet know what it will look like. The outbreak of strong religion and terrorism are signs of the times, but these are expressions of a distorted and repressed spirit, and not, one hopes, genuine pointers to the future. What the future holds is uncertain, but Jung's prophetic vision helps to prepare us for what is to come, and this will be of great interest to analytical psychologists and psychoanalysts, as well as to theologians, futurists, sociologists, and the general reader.

Download or read book Doctrine and Experience written by Christopher Charles Zito and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2016-06-30 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Should evangelical spirituality be grounded in doctrine, experience, neither, or both? If in one, which, and why not the other? If in both, how might the two co-exist without cancelling out each other's distinctives? If in neither, then what practical value does either have for the Christian life? In this book, the author has combined critical research, pastoral awareness, and thoughtful reflection to show how the radicalizations of doctrine and experience have not only polarized contemporary evangelicalism into two nearly irreconcilable camps, but also has opened the door for a subtle but potent form of idolatry to creep into our midst. In an attempt to purge these idols and bridge the gap, this book contextualizes the biblical teachings and practices of our original spiritual instructors, asking the double-edged question of what it means for us today that the Word of God is normative and that the Spirit is Lord. The author concludes that evangelicals should seek an incarnate, cross-centered spirituality that is informed by meticulous attention and obedience to sound doctrine, but only as it is lived out in a deeply felt faith that is made perfect as we experience God daily in any number of ways.

Download or read book Key Words in Religion Media and Culture written by David Morgan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-06-30 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'From The Passion of the Christ to the presumed 'clash of civilizations', religion's role in culture is increasingly contested and mediated. Key Words in Religion, Media, and Culture is a welcome and interdisciplinary contribution that maps the territory for those who aim to make sense of it all. Highlighting the important concepts guiding state-of-the-art research into religion, media, and culture, this book is bound to become an important and frequently consulted resource among scholars both seasoned and new to the field.' –Lynn Schofield Clark 'David Morgan has assembled here a fine team of scholars to prove beyond a doubt that the intersections of religion, media, and culture constitute one of the most stimulating fields of inquiry around today...This highly useful and theoretically sophisticated text will likely assume 'ritual' status in this emergent field.' – Rosalind I. J. Hackett, University of Tennessee, US 'This volume is a major intervention in the literature on religion, media and culture. Drawing together leading international scholars, it offers a conceptual map of the field to which students, teachers and researchers will refer for many years to come. The publication of Key Words in Religion, Media and Culture is a significant moment in the formation of this area of study, and sets a standard for cross-disciplinary collaboration and theoretical and methodological sophistication for future work in this area to follow.' – Gordon Lynch, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK 'This book offers a range of refreshing essays on the relationships between media and religion. Its selected keywords open doors to understanding contemporary society. The cultural perspectives on mediation and religious practices give some illuminating and surprising analyses.' – Knut Lundby, University of Oslo, Norway

Download or read book Becoming Divinely Human written by C. C. Leigh and published by Wolfsong Press. This book was released on 2011-09-13 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have you run out of steam for any more self-improvement? Do you sometimes despair of ever attaining spiritual enlightenment? Many seekers flounder at some point, and feel thwarted from fully living the illuminated life. Author and Senior Teacher of Waking Down in Mutuality CC Leigh tells the truth about the challenges you will likely undergo during the heroic journey of awakening, and offers a proven, step-by-step process to guide you to a confident, stable, whole-being transformation. You will discover: - How to tell if embodied awakening is right for you-the melding of your infinite conscious nature with your unique human individuality - Why the darkest times often precede radical transformation - The mystery of transmission and its powerful role in awakening - The Inseeing Process(TM) for healing broken parts of yourself with spacious, compassionate Presence - How to get beyond fleeting illumination and achieve permanent, stable awakening - How the company of like-minded others can nourish you and accelerate your awakening process This inspired book shines light upon the often-bewildering journey from the dark night of spiritual disillusionment into the light of embodied awakening-so you, too, can become divinely human.

Download or read book More Than Bollywood written by Gregory D. Booth and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to tackle the diverse styles and multiple histories of popular musics in India. It brings together fourteen of the world's leading scholars on Indian popular music to contribute chapters on a range of topics from the classic songs of Bollywood to contemporary remixes, summarized by a reflective afterword by popular music scholar Timothy Taylor. The chapters in this volume address the impact of media and technology on contemporary music, the variety of industrial developments and contexts for Indian popular music, and historical trends in popular music development both before and after the Indian Independence in 1947. The book identifies new ways of engaging popular music in India beyond the Bollywood musical canon, and offers several case studies of local and regional styles of music. The contributors address the subcontinent's historical relationships with colonialism, the transnational market economies, local governmental factors, international conventions, and a host of other circumstances to shed light on the development of popular music throughout India. To illustrate each chapter author's points, and to make available music not easily accessible in North America, the book features an Oxford web music companion website of audio and video tracks.