Happiness Beyond Thought

Praise for Happiness Beyond Thought "Husband, father, scientist, military officer, and senior executive in industry and academia, Gary Weber has led a full and successful worldly life. Throughout all of this, Gary has relentlessly pursued a path of practice and inquiry in order to understand life and achieve enlightenment. It is rare to find one who has reached this goal, and rarer still to find such a one who has been so immersed in worldly life. With this book, Gary has successfully integrated his profound realization with traditional non-dualistic teachings, as well as insights from Zen Buddhism and modern brain research, into a practical path that uses Yoga's time-tested practices of asana, pranayama, chanting and meditation to illumine a path to enlightenment for the modern reader." -Gary Kraftsow, author of Yoga for Wellness and Yoga for Transformation "Gary Weber offers a treasure chest of practices for the serious practitioner seeking liberation. On your own journey towards awakening, savor these simple, easy to follow practices culled from Weber's study with his primary teacher Ramana Maharshi, his on-going exploration of Zen meditation practice, and the life-enhancing results of his experiments on the laboratory floor of his yoga mat." -Amy Weintraub, author of Yoga for Depression

The seemingly insoluble problems of our species at the current time is our inability to successfully cope with the complexities of our massively-complex, highly-integrated society using our outdated software programs created when we were hunter-gatherers. This book outlines the problem areas with our current software, how to address them, demonstrates tools to facilitate this change and then gives a demonstration of how the process unfolds in a dialogue with a successful practitioner of the process and its improved software.The first section of the book focuses on a systematic approach to working directly on the problems with the current operating system (OS) and its programs. The process begins by removing our current, outdated OS "I" (focused on the "I") and evaluating the success of the removal. An updated OS "mini-me" (less focused on the "I") is then installed from several trusted and reliable sources. Next, the most problematic programs are removed or significantly modified. The second section provides a powerful tool to support this process, seemingly exactly tailored to it, the Ribhu Gita. Sections devoted to "Am 'I' these thoughts?", "What is this mind?", "Am 'I' this body?", "What problems arise from this belief (that 'I' am this body)?", "What am 'I'?" and then "What are the benefits of this knowledge of the Self?". This text was a/the favorite of my main teacher, Ramana Maharshi, and aligns perfectly with his "direct path" of self-inquiry for nondual awakening. It is powerful to read and to chant.The third section demonstrates that this self-inquiry and letting-go-of-attachments process works in the "real" world with a "real" job. Through dialogue with someone going through the process over a significant length of time it shows how the process actually unfolds. The fourth section focuses on the most problematic, strongly-held, and tenacious of the programs in the current OS "I", the issues of "free will", control and predetermination. This is the stronghold of the egoic/I structure. Selected comments, questions and answers from blogposts on the issue address resistances, objections, and problems that arise.

The co-founder and CEO of Delivering Happiness updates the Delivering Happiness model for our new abnormal, showing organizations of every kind how to cultivate a culture that can adapt to change, be highly profitable, and support all its people...starting with yourself. *WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER* *Named a Top Business Book of 2021 by Forbes* Jenn Lim has dedicated her career to helping organizations from name-brand industry leaders to innovative governments build workplace cultures that benefit both their employees and their bottom line, with less employee turnover, greater engagement, and higher profits. Her culture consultancy, Delivering Happiness, demonstrates the profound impact happiness can have on businesses' ability to thrive in our ever-changing times. In this book, she clearly and concretely shows the way the model works in a hyper-connected fast-paced world, beginning with each individual defining their sense of values and purpose (the ME), and rippling through the organization ecosystem (the WE and the COMMUNITY) in waves of impact. Drawing on a deep understanding of the science of happiness, Jenn shows how bringing your whole self to work allows you to do your best work every day -- no matter what role you play at your company or what crisis might come at you next. She explains how true happiness comes from living your true purpose, and offers case studies to show how companies can help individuals align their purpose with the company mission. This innovation in organizational design and company culture is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s the future of work, and it’s here now. In this life-changing guide, you'll be empowered to find greater purpose in your own life and career, and to spread that power to others in your business and beyond.

At once extraordinarily wide-ranging and sharply focused, Into the Stillness offers several deceptively simple and informal conversations about life, existence, and identity in one book. This is an important book. Don’t be misled by the casually graceful repartee and lightness of touch. Without dogma, without heavy shoulds and should nots, authors Gary Weber and Richard Doyle point toward something eternal, framed in our twenty-first-century understanding of neuroscience, spirituality, and something that arises from, and returns to, the Stillness and the Silence. In Into the Stillness, Weber and Doyle offer a practical investigation and guidance toward “the sweetest, fullest, most loving, caring, and manifesting experience that anyone could ever wish for.” Chapter headings include “Using dialogue for awakening,” “Can you ‘do nothing’ and awaken?”, “Why do we fear emptiness, silence, and stillness?”, and “Functioning without thoughts: sex, psychedelics, and non-duality.” As a journey, this collection of dialogues is inspiring, shifting, and full of little moments of insight that will linger for a long time afterward.

A smart and funny book by a prominent Harvard psychologist, which uses groundbreaking research and (often hilarious) anecdotes to show us why we’re so lousy at predicting what will make us happy – and what we can do about it. Most of us spend our lives steering ourselves toward the best of all possible futures, only to find that tomorrow rarely turns out as we had expected. Why? As Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert explains, when people try to imagine what the future will hold, they make some basic and consistent mistakes. Just as memory plays tricks on us when we try to look backward in time, so does imagination play tricks when we try to look forward. Using cutting-edge research, much of it original, Gilbert shakes, cajoles, persuades, tricks and jokes us into accepting the fact that happiness is not really what or where we thought it was. Among the unexpected questions he poses: Why are conjoined twins no less happy than the general population? When you go out to eat, is it better to order your favourite dish every time, or to try something new? If Ingrid Bergman hadn’t gotten on the plane at the end of Casablanca, would she and Bogey have been better off? Smart, witty, accessible and laugh-out-loud funny, Stumbling on Happiness brilliantly describes all that science has to tell us about the uniquely human ability to envision the future, and how likely we are to enjoy it when we get there.

Sue Stone's life hit rock bottom in the late 1990s, both emotionally and financially. She was desperately unhappy and on the verge of losing everything. Not accepting that this was going to be 'it', she set about researching ways to improve her life. She learnt about the incredible power of our thoughts, our subconscious mind and the astonishing power of our feelings. This power is within every single one of us but so few have any real understanding of it. Sue has transformed her life to one of complete happiness, inner peace and financial abundance, a far cry from her state of depression. In this inspiring, easy to read and practical book, Sue educates, empowers and motivates the reader by sharing all that she has learnt. She includes solid content and practical life transforming techniques that can be put to use immediately at home and at work.

The Antidote is a wry, witty travelogue that turns decades of self-help advice on its head. In it, Guardian journalist Oliver Burkeman chronicles a series of journeys by people who share a single, surprising way of thinking about life. Whether philosophers, experimental psychologists, New Age dreamers or hard-headed business consultants, they have in common a hunch about human psychology. They believe that in our personal lives and in the world at large, our constant fixation on eliminating or avoiding the negative-uncertainty, unhappiness, failure-is what causes us to feel so anxious, insecure, and unhappy. He argues there is an alternative "negative path" to happiness and success that involves coming face to face with the things we spend our lives trying to avoid, to even embrace them. This is the "backwards law": The more we're willing to embrace what we think of as negative, the happier and more successful we'll become. We may need to completely rethink our attitudes toward such things as failure, uncertainty, disorder, insecurity, and death.

We live in a marketplace filled with valuable ideas for how to be happy, yet people continue to suffer. We are just now awakening to the principal source of our unhappiness and suffering, which is ego. Ego wreaks havoc in our daily lives, from the pain that individuals, couples, and families experience all the way up to global tensions and international conflict. Most people think of ego as an inflated sense of self-importance, but this is only a fraction of what it really is. Ego is the misidentification of who we are as beings. It drives us to think and behave in ways that are inconsistent and incongruent with whom we really are, leading always to dissatisfaction and suffering. The secret to finding happiness is to loosen ourselves from egos painful grip by going beyond ego and entering the world of Spiritthe source of true joy and peace. To do so, we must first travel through the ego. Without proper guidance, this trip can be perilous, because ego, to ensure its own survival, makes every attempt to derail us along the way. Beyond the Ego is an easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide to help you make this journey safely. The seeds of happiness, joy, and peace of mind will take root at the outset of your journey and continue to grow every step of your way.