Download or read book The Power of Divine Eros written by A. H. Almaas and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two innovative spiritual teachers show how to use desire and passion—eros—as a gateway to realizing our fullest potential What do desire and passion have to do with our spiritual journey? According to A. H. Almaas and Karen Johnson, they are an essential part of it. Conventional wisdom cautions that desire and passion are opposed to the spiritual path—that engaging in desire will take you more into the world, into egoic life. And for most people, that is exactly what happens. We naturally tend to experience wanting in a self-centered way. The Power of Divine Eros challenges the view that the divine and the erotic are separate. When we open to the energy, aliveness, spontaneity, and zest of erotic love, we will find it inseparable from the realm of the holy and sacred. When this is understood, desire and passion become a gateway to wholeness and to realizing our full potential. Through guided exercises, the authors reveal how our relationships become opportunities on the spiritual journey to express ourselves authentically, to relate with openness, and to discover dynamic inner realms with another person. Through embodying the energy of eros, each of us can learn to be fully real and alive in all of our interactions.
Download or read book Divine Eros written by Saint Symeon (the New Theologian) and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Wounded by Love written by Porphyrios (Gerōn) and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Divine Eros written by Michael Stokes and published by . This book was released on 2019-08 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Love Unveiled written by A. H. Almaas and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A passionate and deep exploration of how love is essential to our spiritual growth and development, from beloved author and teacher A. H. Almaas. Love is a universal energy--and a primary force that powers our movement toward spiritual illumination. All the ways we need love are simply reflections of our need for spiritual growth. In Love Unveiled, A. H. Almaas explores three dimensions of love: appreciative love--the true liking of somebody or something; merging or connecting love--a force that melts away separateness; and passionate, ecstatic love--capable of consuming us from inside. In their own way, each reveals the beauty and exquisiteness of our spiritual heart, which is the heart of the divine. However, the path of spiritual love is not without challenges. Almaas explores the barriers that tend to block our experience of loving awakening and provides experiential exercises throughout the book to help readers along their path. The exercises focus on the obstacles or misunderstandings that commonly arise for each quality or dimension of love. Presented in the form of writing or monologuing prompts, readers can work independently or in small groups to confront the emotional obstacles on their spiritual path. Regardless of where you are on your path, Love Unveiled will help you explore love in three essential dimensions and gain a deeper connection to yourself.
Download or read book Eros Crucified written by Matthew Clemente and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-08 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing contemporary philosophers, theologians, and psychoanalysts into dialogue with works of art and literature, this work provides a fresh perspective on how humans can make sense of suffering and finitude and how our existence as sexual beings shapes our relations to one another and the divine. It attempts to establish a connection between carnal, bodily love and humanity’s relation to the divine. Relying on the works of philosophers such as Manoussakis, Kearney, and Marion and psychoanalysts such as Freud and Lacan, this book provides a possible answer to these fundamental questions and fosters further dialogue between thinkers and scholars of these different fields. The author analyzes why human sexuality implies both perversion and perfection and why it brings together humanity’s baseness and beatitude. Through it, the author taps once more into the dark mystery of Eros and Thanatos who, to paraphrase Dostoevsky, forever struggle with God on the battlefield of the human heart. This book is written primarily for scholars interested in the fields of philosophical psychology, existential philosophy, and philosophy of religion
Download or read book Toward a Theology of Eros written by Virginia Burrus and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2009-08-25 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does theology have to say about the place of eroticism in the salvific transformation of men and women, even of the cosmos itself? How, in turn, does eros infuse theological practice and transfigure doctrinal tropes? Avoiding the well-worn path of sexual moralizing while also departing decisively from Anders Nygren’s influential insistence that Christian agape must have nothing to do with worldly eros, this book explores what is still largely uncharted territory in the realm of theological erotics. The ascetic, the mystical, the seductive, the ecstatic—these are the places where the divine and the erotic may be seen to converge and love and desire to commingle. Inviting and performing a mutual seduction of disciplines, the volume brings philosophers, historians, biblical scholars, and theologians into a spirited conversation that traverses the limits of conventional orthodoxies, whether doctrinal or disciplinary. It seeks new openings for the emergence of desire, love, and pleasure, while challenging common understandings of these terms. It engages risk at the point where the hope for salvation paradoxically endangers the safety of subjects—in particular, of theological subjects—by opening them to those transgressions of eros in which boundaries, once exceeded, become places of emerging possibility. The eighteen chapters, arranged in thematic clusters, move fluidly among and between premodern and postmodern textual traditions—from Plato to Emerson, Augustine to Kristeva, Mechthild to Mattoso, the Shulammite to Molly Bloom, the Zohar to the Da Vinci Code. In so doing, they link the sublime reaches of theory with the gritty realities of politics, the boundless transcendence of God with the poignant transience of materiality.
Download or read book The Love That Satisfies written by Christopher West and published by Ascension Press. This book was released on 2014-06-26 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The celebrated author of Theology of the Body Explained andTheology of the Body for Beginners offers compelling insights into Pope Benedict’s profound teaching on human and divine love. The Love That Satisfies is for all - whether married, single, or religious - who are seeking the face of true love in a wounded world. In The Love That Satisfies, Christopher West turns to the wisdom of both Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II in order to shed some light on sexual love (eros) and its relationship with divine love (agape). Why is the love between man and woman so attractive and elusive, demanding and rewarding, restrictive and liberating, painful and ecstatic, messy and beautiful, maddening and fulfilling? Our world is saturated with sex but remains starved for love. Why? Perhaps as Waylon Jennings put it, we’re “Lookin' for love in all the wrong places, lookin' for love in too many faces.” Where, then, is the right place and whose, then, is the right face in which to look for love? By reflecting on key passages from Pope Benedict’s grand encyclical Deus Caritas Est, this book explores these and many other questions with the goal of pointing all who read it towards the love that satisfies. Those who give Pope Benedict’s teaching the attention it deserves will discover that the Catholic Church has a vision of sexual love far more glorious than anything Sigmund Freud, Hugh Hefner, Britney Spears, or Howard Stern could dream of or imagine. You doubt? This book will make you a believer.
Download or read book Eros and the Mysteries of Love written by Julius Evola and published by Inner Traditions / Bear & Co. This book was released on 1991-04 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A controversial philosopher and critic of modern Western civilization, Julius Evola (1898-1974) writes about the mystical and spiritual expression of sexual love. This in-depth study explores the sexual rites of sacred traditions, and shows how religion, mysticism, folklore, and mythology all contain erotic forms in which the deep potentialities of human beings are recognized.
Download or read book Divine Sex written by Jonathan Grant and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The digital revolution has ushered in a series of sexual revolutions, all contributing to a perfect storm for modern relationships. Online dating, social media, internet pornography, and the phenomenon of the smartphone generation have created an avalanche of change with far-reaching consequences for sexuality today. The church has struggled to address this new moral ecology because it has focused on clarity of belief rather than quality of formation. The real challenge for spiritual formation lies in addressing the underlying moral intuitions we carry subconsciously, which are shaped by the convictions of our age. In this book, a fresh new voice offers a persuasive Christian vision of sex and relationships, calling young adults to faithful discipleship in a hypersexualized world. Drawing from his pastoral experience with young people and from cutting-edge research across multiple disciplines, Jonathan Grant helps Christian leaders understand the cultural forces that make the church's teaching on sex and relationships ineffective in the lives of today's young adults. He also sets forth pastoral strategies for addressing the underlying fault lines in modern sexuality.
Download or read book The Embrace of Eros written by Margaret D. Kamitsuka and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2010-01-19 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The topic of sexuality intersects directly with the most contested historical, theological, and ethical questions of our day. In this edgy yet profound volume, noted scholars and theologians assay the Christian tradition's classic and contemporary understandings of sex, sexuality, and sexual identity. The project unfolds in three phases: contemporary assessments of the Christian tradition, new thinking about eros and being human religiously, and new perspectives on classic mysteries in light of eros and embodiment.
Download or read book Socrates Daimonic Art written by Elizabeth S. Belfiore and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-08 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite increasing interest in the figure of Socrates and in love in ancient Greece, no recent monograph studies these topics in all four of Plato's dialogues on love and friendship. This book provides important new insights into these subjects by examining Plato's characterization of Socrates in Symposium, Phaedrus, Lysis and the often neglected Alcibiades I. It focuses on the specific ways in which the philosopher searches for wisdom together with his young interlocutors, using an art that is 'erotic', not in a narrowly sexual sense, but because it shares characteristics attributed to the daimon Eros in Symposium. In all four dialogues, Socrates' art enables him, like Eros, to search for the beauty and wisdom he recognizes that he lacks and to help others seek these same objects of erôs. Belfiore examines the dialogues as both philosophical and dramatic works, and considers many connections with Greek culture, including poetry and theater.
Download or read book Dante Eros and Kabbalah written by Mark Jay Mirsky and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2003-10-01 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did Dante Alighieri, author of The Divine Comedy as a young man in Florence sleep with Beatrice Portinari before and after her marriage? Did the poet travel after her death through Hell to find her again? The clues to this academic detective story, writes Mark Jay Mirsky, lie not only in Dante's earlier poetry, The New Life, or in The Divine Comedy, but in the Zohar of Moses de Leon, a Jewish text written some years before and based on Neoplatonic ideas similar to those that inspired Dante. Purgatorio and Paradiso, the second and third volumes of the Commedia, are inaccessible to most readers unfamiliar with the boldness of Dante's use of the philosophical debate in the Middle Ages. Does Dante's Commedia hint at his hope of intimacy with Beatrice in the Highest Heaven? In this book Mirsky distinctively traces the influence on Dante of Provencal poets, medieval theologians, Dante's personal life, and the sources of his classical education to propose a radical reading of Dante. The text compounds the riddles of dream, poetry, philosophy, and Dante's concealed autobiography in his work. It treats the Commedia in the spirit of its title, as a hopeful and comic vision of the other world.
Download or read book The Four Loves written by Clive Staples Lewis and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1991 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes the feelings and problems involved in different types of human love, including familial affection, friendship, passion, and charity.
Download or read book Eros Ascending written by John Maxwell Taylor and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2011-07-05 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ***FINALIST, USA Best Books 2010 Awards – Spirituality & Self-Help: Relationships The quest for lasting love is one of life’s essential pursuits, in some ways the most essential. But it’s also a quest that’s impossible to separate from spiritual and sexual needs. In Eros Ascending, author John Maxwell Taylor offers a wide-ranging study of sexual dysfunction in society and explains how healthy sexuality can be an entryway to universal love and higher consciousness. Based on Taylor’s twenty-three-year experience with Taoist practices, the book presents an engaging analysis of love, relationships, and sexuality from spiritual, romantic, and sexual perspectives. Taylor melds essential ideas by Jung, Gurdjieff, and Taoist Master Mantak Chia with science, biology, spiritual tradition, and current popular culture to shed new light on this eternal yet misunderstood subject. Not just for couples, the book is equally useful for single people who want to understand the methods for “learning to love yourself ” in preparation for a fulfilling, long-term relationship. Taylor draws on his eclectic background as a successful playwright, composer, actor, and musician in this persuasive plan for converting ordinary sexual energy into food for the soul.
Download or read book The Poetics of Eros in Ancient Greece written by Claude Calame and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-18 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Poetics of Eros in Ancient Greece offers the first comprehensive inquiry into the deity of sexual love, a power that permeated daily Greek life. Avoiding Foucault's philosophical paradigm of dominance/submission, Claude Calame uses an anthropological and linguistic approach to re-create indigenous categories of erotic love. He maintains that Eros, the joyful companion of Aphrodite, was a divine figure around which poets constructed a physiology of desire that functioned in specific ways within a network of social relations. Calame begins by showing how poetry and iconography gave a rich variety of expression to the concept of Eros, then delivers a history of the deity's roles within social and political institutions, and concludes with a discussion of an Eros-centered metaphysics. Calame's treatment of archaic and classical Greek institutions reveals Eros at work in initiation rites and celebrations, educational practices, the Dionysiac theater of tragedy and comedy, and in real and imagined spatial settings. For men, Eros functioned particularly in the symposium and the gymnasium, places where men and boys interacted and where future citizens were educated. The household was the setting where girls, brides, and adult wives learned their erotic roles--as such it provides the context for understanding female rites of passage and the problematics of sexuality in conjugal relations. Through analyses of both Greek language and practices, Calame offers a fresh, subtle reading of relations between individuals as well as a quick-paced and fascinating overview of Eros in Greek society at large.
Download or read book Love Human and Divine written by Edward Collins Vacek, SJ and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 1994-04-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the two great commandments to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves are central to Christianity, few theologians or spiritual writers have undertaken an extensive account of the meaning and forms of these loves. Most accounts, in fact, make love of God and love of self either impossible or immoral. Integrating these two commandments, Edward Vacek, SJ, develops an original account of love as the theological foundation for Christian ethics. Vacek criticizes common understandings of agape, eros, and philia, examining the arguments of Aquinas, Nygren, Outka, Rahner, Scheler, and other theologians and philosophers. He defines love as an emotional, affirmative participation in the beloved's real and ideal goodness, and he extends this definition to the love between God and self. Vacek proposes that the heart of Christian moral life is loving cooperation with God in a mutually perfecting friendship.
