Download or read book Why Spirituality is Difficult for Westerners written by David Hay and published by Societas. This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his book, zoologist Dr. Hay documents the repudiation of religion in the West, describes the historical and economic context of European secularism, and considers recent developments in the neurophysiology of the brain as it relates to religious experience.

Download or read book Why Spirituality is Difficult for Westeners written by David Hay and published by Andrews UK Limited. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr Hay is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen. A zoologist by profession, his research has been guided by the hypothesis that religious or spiritual awareness is biologically natural to the human species and has been selected for in the process of organic evolution because it has survival value. Although naturalistic, this hypothesis is not intended to be reductionist with regard to religion. Nevertheless it does imply that all people, including those who have no religious belief, have a spiritual life. His research has included a number of national and in-depth surveys of reports of religious or spiritual experience in the United Kingdom.

Download or read book Why Spirituality is Difficult for Westeners written by David Hay and published by Andrews UK Limited. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr Hay is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen. A zoologist by profession, his research has been guided by the hypothesis that religious or spiritual awareness is biologically natural to the human species and has been selected for in the process of organic evolution because it has survival value. Although naturalistic, this hypothesis is not intended to be reductionist with regard to religion. Nevertheless it does imply that all people, including those who have no religious belief, have a spiritual life. His research has included a number of national and in-depth surveys of reports of religious or spiritual experience in the United Kingdom.

Download or read book An Introduction to Religious and Spiritual Experience written by Marianne Rankin and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spiritual experiences, mystical and near-death incidences are interpreted from scientific, philosophical and religious viewpoints.

Download or read book Engaging with Living Religion written by Stephen E. Gregg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-27 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding living religion requires students to experience everyday religious practice in diverse environments and communities. This guide provides the ideal introduction to fieldwork and the study of religion outside the lecture theatre. Covering theoretical and practical dimensions of research, the book helps students learn to ‘read’ religious sites and communities, and to develop their understanding of planning, interaction, observation, participation and interviews. Students are encouraged to explore their own expectations and sensitivities, and to develop a good understanding of ethical issues, group-learning and individual research. The chapters contain student testimonies, examples of student work and student-led questions.

Download or read book Why Religions Work written by Eleanor Stoneham and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2012-10-29 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: God and religion come in for bad press these days. Is religion worth keeping? Are militant atheists misguided? Do religion and spirituality need each other? Is it possible to build tolerance and respect in a divided world? And can science play a role? Eleanor Stoneham explains why the answer to all these questions is a resounding 'yes'. It is true that religions need to change and become more relevant for today's needs. But supposing science also changed, shed its shackles of conventional materialistic dogma based on some shaky assumptions and looked with new eyes at religious beliefs such as prayer, distance healing and life after death? Is it possible that the latest ideas on empathy and consciousness could be narrowing the gulf between science and religion? In our quest for a more just and peaceful society, could these same ideas help us find stronger inter-religious bonds of respect and understanding at the level of heart and soul? This book will help lay persons and clergy alike relate church tradition to the wider world of science, spirituality and interfaith issues. It will challenge the 'spiritual but not religious.' It will make the faithful think. And it will test those convinced that their religion or faith is the only way to enlightenment, the only path to Truth. ,

Download or read book The Word on the Wind written by Alison Morgan and published by Monarch Books. This book was released on 2013-03-07 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The average age of churchgoers in Britain is now 47. Almost every denomination is experiencing steady decline. How sure can we be that we are still offering something people want to hear? Alison Morgan identifies four clear reasons to be confident: 1. The gospel still speaks to confused teens and weary sceptics. By embracing doubts and welcoming questions it remains open to us to present something which answers people's real needs. 2. The word of truth and the Spirit of power still exercise authority and compel attention. Alison's own experience of ministry in the UK and abroad provides illustrations. 3. Spiritual gifts, given not to excite individuals but in order to renew the church for its core task of mission, are powerfully present and widely recognised and practised. 4. In a time of rapid cultural change, new expressions of church are constantly emerging: this is necessary to guard against vital spirituality sliding into drab religion.

Download or read book Reckoning with Spirit in the Paradigm of Performance written by Donnalee Dox and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2016-02-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Performance has become a paradigm for analyzing contemporary culture, a pattern that structures a particular view of human interaction and experience. Performance is also widely used to better understand how we express values and ideas, including religious beliefs. Reckoning with Spirit in the Paradigm of Performance asks how the sensibilities of religious experience, which many people call spirituality, shape people's performance. When we observe people performing words, dances, music, and rituals they consider sacred, what (if any) conclusions can we draw about their experiences from what we see, read, and hear? By analyzing performances of spirituality and what people experience as "spirit," this book adds a new dimension to the paradigm of performance. Rather than reducing the spiritual dimension to either biology or culture, the book asks what such experiences might have to offer a reasoned analysis of vernacular culture. The specific performances presented are meditative dance and shamanic drumming, including descriptions of these practices and exegesis of practitioners' writings on the nature of spiritual experience and performance.

Download or read book Handbook of Hyper real Religions written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-03-28 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today a new trend is clearly discernable, that of ‘hyper-real religions’. These are innovative religions and spiritualities that mix elements of religious traditions with popular culture. If we imagine a spectrum of intensity of the merging of popular culture with religion, we might find, at one end, groups practicing Jediism appropriated from the Star Wars movies, Matrixism from the Matrix trilogy, and neo-pagan rites based on stories from The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series. At the other end of the spectrum, members of mainstream religions, such as Christianity can be influenced or inspired by, for example, The Da Vinci Code. Through various case studies, this book studies the on- and off-line religious/spiritual consumption of these narratives through a social scientific approach.

Download or read book For God s Sake written by Antony Loewenstein and published by Macmillan Publishers Aus.. This book was released on 2013-07-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four Australian thinkers come together to ask and answer the big questions, such as: What is the nature of the universe? Doesn't religion cause most of the conflict in the world? and Where do we find hope? We are introduced to the detail of different belief systems - Judaism, Christianity, Islam - and to the argument that atheism, like organised religion, has its own compelling logic. And we gain insight into the life events that led each author to their current position. Jane Caro flirted briefly with spiritual belief, inspired by 19th century literary heroines such as Elizabeth Gaskell and the Brontë sisters. Antony Lowenstein is proudly culturally, yet unconventionally, Jewish. Simon Smart is firmly and resolutely a Christian, but one who has had some of his most profound spiritual moments while surfing. Rachel Woodlock grew up in the alternative embrace of Baha'i belief but became entranced by its older parent religion, Islam. Provocative, informative and passionately argued, For God's Sake encourages us to accept religious differences but to also challenge more vigorously the beliefs that create discord.

Download or read book The Bloomsbury Handbook of Solitude Silence and Loneliness written by Julian Stern and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-11-18 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bloomsbury Handbook of Solitude, Silence and Loneliness is the first major account integrating research on solitude, silence and loneliness from across academic disciplines and across the lifespan. The editors explore how being alone – in its different forms, positive and negative, as solitude, silence and loneliness – is learned and developed, and how it is experienced in childhood and youth, adulthood and old age. Philosophical, psychological, historical, cultural and religious issues are addressed by distinguished scholars from Europe, North and Latin America, and Asia.

Download or read book Gypsy Gossip and Other Advice written by Thinley Norbu and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thinley Norbu addresses questions of interest to Western and Eastern students of Tibetan Buddhism, ranging from matters of everyday practice to esoteric philosophy. Young practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism from Asian and Western cultures have similar questions and concerns, such as the conflicts between traditional values and the influence of modern materialism. In four thoughtful commentaries (described below), Thinley Norbu addresses contrasting cultural perspectives on topics ranging from everyday practice to esoteric Buddhist philosophy. Gypsy Gossip: How should Westerners understand the rituals of Tibetan Buddhism, the teachings of karma and rebirth, monastic discipline, devotion to the guru, and the importance of keeping vows? Do Vajrayana practitioners need a consort? What is the Buddhist stand on male supremacy? These are just a few of the wide-ranging questions of Western students that are answered here by Kyabje Thinley Norbu Rinpoche in an atmosphere of spiritual friendship. Buddhism in the West: In this never-before-published interview conducted by Melvin McLeod, editor of Shambhala Sun and Buddhadharma magazines, Rinpoche gives an extensive commentary on how cultural differences have affected the adoption of Tibetan Buddhism in the West. For example, Western children are raised to develop a strong sense of selfhood instead of humility, to be preoccupied with materialistic ideas about what is apparent to the five senses, and to embrace eternalist religion. Because of misapplied ideals of egalitarianism and individual freedom, many Western Buddhists are skeptical of traditional doctrines like karma and rebirth, devotion to the guru, and the importance of lineage. Rinpoche explains that Buddhism can flourish in the West through a greater development of faith and belief. A Message for Young Bhutanese: Rinpoche had a close personal connection with the kingdom of Bhutan. In this message he urges young Buddhists to preserve their spiritual heritage and carry its blessings onward amid the modern influences of materialism. He warns against introducing foreign nihilistic beliefs into Bhutan and creating sectarian conflicts between its indigenous lineages. These words of advice were written for an organization called the Young Bhutanese Buddhist Association. An Introduction to Dharma Dance Offerings: The Dharma dances of Tibet, which manifest the enlightened activities of peaceful and wrathful deities, are contrasted with ordinary dancing that expresses the passions of material reality and lacks the positive influence of wisdom. Thinley Norbu Rinpoche was himself an accomplished practitioner and teacher of sacred dance. This commentary was written in connection with several teaching films directed by Rinpoche, in which Dharma dances are performed by some of his young students.

Download or read book Origins of Altruism and Cooperation written by Robert W. Sussman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-08-02 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the evolution and nature of cooperation and altruism in social-living animals, focusing especially on non-human primates and on humans. Although cooperation and altruism are often thought of as ways to attenuate competition and aggression within groups, or are related to the action of “selfish genes”, there is increasing evidence that these behaviors are the result of biological mechanisms that have developed through natural selection in group-living species. This evidence leads to the conclusion that cooperative and altruistic behavior are not just by-products of competition but are rather the glue that underlies the ability for primates and humans to live in groups. The anthropological, primatological, paleontological, behavioral, neurobiological, and psychological evidence provided in this book gives a more optimistic view of human nature than the more popular, conventional view of humans being naturally and basically aggressive and warlike. Although competition and aggression are recognized as an important part of the non-human primate and human behavioral repertoire, the evidence from these fields indicates that cooperation and altruism may represent the more typical, “normal”, and healthy behavioral pattern. The book is intended both for the general reader and also for students at a variety of levels (graduate and undergraduate): it aims to provide a compact, accessible, and up-to-date account of the current scholarly advances and debates in this field of study, and it is designed to be used in teaching and in discussion groups. The book derived from a conference sponsored by N.S.F., the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Washington University Committee for Ethics and Human Values, and the Anthropedia Foundation for the study of well-being.

Download or read book Psycho spiritual Care in Health Care Practice written by Guy Harrison and published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. This book was released on 2017-05-18 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meeting the psychological and spiritual needs of patients is vital to supporting their wellbeing in health care settings. To develop an effective, holistic and inclusive approach to care within predominantly medical health care models, practitioners across health care disciplines must work collaboratively to understand the complex, significant relationships between their patients' medical, therapeutic and spiritual requirements. Bridging the gap between care disciplines, the book presents an innovative vision of patient wellbeing enriched by a synthesis of psychological, spiritual and medical approaches. Prominent practitioners from a range of disciplines including nursing and psychiatry demonstrate how their psycho-spiritual approaches meet the individual needs of patients, adapting to their emotional, spiritual and religious requirements. Accessible and enlightening, this book offers significant practical insight into the role of psychologically informed spiritual care.

Download or read book Religion Theatre and Performance written by Lance Gharavi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-12-21 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intersections of religion, politics, and performance form the loci of many of the most serious issues facing the world today, sites where some of the world’s most pressing and momentous events are contested and played out. That this circumstance warrants continued, thoughtful, and imaginative engagement from those within the fields of theatre and performance is one of the guiding principles of this volume. This collection features a diverse set of perspectives, written by some of the top scholars in the relevant fields, on the many modern intersections of religion with theatre and performance. Contributors argue that religion can no longer be conceived of as a cultural phenomenon that is safely sequestered in the "private sphere." It is instead an explicitly public force that stimulates and complicates public actions, and thus a crucial component of much performance. From mystic theologies of acting to the neuroscience of spirituality in rituals to the performance of secularism, these essays address a broad variety of religious traditions, sharing a common conception of religion as a crucial object of discourse—one that is formed by, and significantly formative of, performance.

Download or read book Doorways to the Sacred written by Ian Mobsby and published by Canterbury Press. This book was released on 2017-05-31 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fresh Expressions of Church are key aspect of mission strategy for many denominations in the UK and beyond. Here, a stellar line-up of writers explores the central question of how Fresh Expressions turn from mission projects into authentic forms of church, developing a sacramental life of their own. Chapters include: • Lucy Moore on Messy Church and Holy Communion • Graham Cray on the sacraments for the unchurched • Jonathan Clark on baptism and mission • John Drane on seeing the world as sacramental • Sue Wallace on the sacramentality of sacred space • Reagan Humber (pastor at Nadia-Bolz Weber’s church) on liturgy and evangelism • Adrian Chatfield on healing

Download or read book The Enemies of Progress written by Austin Williams and published by Societas. This book was released on 2008 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the concept of sustainability and presents a critical exploration of its influence on society. Williams argues for an end to the mantra of sustainability, removing its status as orthodoxy, and for the reinstatement of the notions of development, progress, and ambition in its place.