A Mind Awake

Fragments from all of the author's more than forty books as well as material from uncollected essays.

A repackaged edition of the revered author’s anthology featuring hundreds of selections from his writings, organized by the main themes of Christian faith. C. S. Lewis—the great British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and bestselling author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many other beloved classics—wrote widely on all the main themes of Christian faith: God, Jesus, the Trinity, Scripture, sin, evil, nature, sex, the Christian life, prayer, faith, compassion, guilt, and forgiveness. A Mind Awake includes hundreds of short excerpts, curated from the full range of his works and organized them by theme. Useful as both a reference work and as a devotional resource, A Mind Awake contains hidden gems of wisdom that are provocative, whimsical, and insightful, and is an ideal introduction to this towering figure who has profoundly influenced modern Christianity.

Harald Voetmann’s eye-opening English debut, Awake, is the first book of his erudite, grotesque, and absurdist trilogy about mankind’s inhuman will to conquer nature In a shuttered bedroom in ancient Italy, the sleepless Pliny the Elder lies in bed obsessively dictating new chapters of his Natural History to his slave Diocles. Fat, wheezing, imperious, and prone to nosebleeds, Pliny does not believe in spending his evenings in repose: No—to be awake is to be alive. There’s no time to waste if he is to classify every element of the natural world in a single work. By day Pliny the Elder carries out his many civic duties and gives the occasional disastrous public reading. But despite his astonishing ambition to catalog everything from precious metals to the moon, as well as a collection of exotic plants sourced from the farthest reaches of the world, Pliny the Elder still takes immense pleasure in the common rose. After he rushes to an erupting Mount Vesuvius and perishes in the ash, his nephew, Pliny the Younger, becomes custodian of his life’s work. But where Pliny the Elder saw starlight, Pliny the Younger only sees fireflies. In masterfully honed prose, Voetmann brings the formidable Pliny the Elder (and his pompous nephew) to life. Awake is a comic delight about one of history’s great minds and the not-so-great human body it was housed in.

How can we live a balanced life in unbalanced times? How can the practices of meditation and yoga support our relationships, our work lives, and the greater good? Author, teacher, and psychotherapist Michael Stone presents the essential insights of mindfulness and yoga, emphasizing the teachings of simplicity and the interdependence of all life. Stone explains that the practices of yoga and meditation are not about escaping reality but about living fully in the here and now, opening to our experience, and gaining access to stillness within the flow of life. The essence of yoga and Buddhist practice is opening the heart—our own and the heart of the world. With that awareness, Stone encourages us to get involved in our communities, to speak out when we see wrongdoing, and to find ways of helping others.

A life-altering experience prompts an eight-year-old boy to question the fundamentals of existence, leading him on a life-long quest to understand the mind and its mysteries. Explore the workings of the mind and thought, through the lens of the author's experience. Dr. Niranjan Seshadri writes about the mind-body relationship, and the power of awareness to harness the inner potential that lies within every human being. He has published numerous collections of poetry exploring the mystical and philosophical aspects of human existence. To learn more, visit www.mindandsoul.space.

A murder she doesn’t remember committing. A killer she doesn’t remember meeting. Megan Goldin’s Stay Awake is an electrifying novel that proves memory can be deadly. Liv Reese wakes up in the back of a taxi with no idea where she is or how she got there. When she’s dropped off at the door of her brownstone, a stranger answers—a stranger who claims to live in her apartment. She reaches for her phone to call for help, only to discover it’s missing. In its place is a bloodstained knife. Her hands are covered in scribbled messages, like graffiti on her skin: STAY AWAKE. Two years ago, Liv was thriving as a successful writer for a trendy magazine. Now, she’s lost and disoriented in a New York City that looks nothing like what she remembers. Catching a glimpse of the local news, she’s horrified to see reports of a crime scene where the victim’s blood has been used to scrawl a message across a window, similar to the message that’s inked on her hands. What did she do last night? And why does she remember nothing from the past two years? Liv finds herself on the run for a crime she doesn’t remember committing. But there’s someone who does know exactly what she did, and they’ll do anything to make her forget—permanently. A complex thriller that unfolds at a breakneck speed, Stay Awake will keep you up all night.

The body is of course integral to meditation, but there are only a few books that focus this specifically on the body and the meditative experience. Awake Where You Are addresses that need, and additionally integrates psychological concepts, which provides a more familiar entry point for people less familiar with Buddhism. “Embodied awareness is the way back home—intimacy with where and how we are right now, with what is happening and how we are meeting it. My intention is to lead you into the heart of your life. Inside your body, where everything happens—within a quality of listening rather than knowledge, of feeling rather than reaction. This meditative practice is radically transformative.” —Martin Aylward Pulled around by desires and distractions, we’re so easily disconnected from ourselves. Life is happening right in front of us, and within us—but still, we manage to miss so much of it. Awake Where You Are provides the antidote, inviting us to go deep into our own bodies, to inhabit our sensory experience carefully; to learn the art of living from the inside out, and in the process to find ease, clarity, and an authentic, unshakeable freedom. The practices in the book literally bring us back into our skin, where we can reconnect with a more rich, meaningful, and peaceful life. Aylward writes with sophisticated subtlety, as well as the heart-opening simplicity and clarity born of deep experience. And this book is more than a meditation guide—it’s a guide to living an embodied life. You’ll learn about the following areas and practices: - Understanding and liberating our primal human drives. Aylward explains how the three primary drives—survival, sexual, and social—function within us, and how we can engage their energy to explore, understand, and liberate them. - Integrating psychological understanding with meditative practice. Awake Where You Are goes beyond the broad brushstrokes of Buddhist psychology, inviting the reader into an exploration of their own particular psychological history and conditioning. - Investigating the nuances of love. Readers will learn to see the classical Buddhist heart qualities, or brahmaviharas (loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity) as distinct flavors of love, and as the natural resting places of a free heart. “Martin is a marvelous teacher and offers us the refreshing wisdom of an embodied life.” —Jack Kornfield, author of No Time Like the Present

Author Kneen, who has conducted Shambhala Training workshops for more than 20 years, shows how to develop personal power through direct, genuine experience and how to cultivate natural bravery, authenticity, and gentleness. Directed especially to readers new to Shambhala Buddhism, she also teaches how to develop genuine dignity by connecting to the strength and wisdom of the world as it is.