Illuminating The Darkness

Illuminating the Darkness critically addresses the issue of racial discrimination and colour prejudice in religious history. Tackling common misconceptions, the author seeks to elevate the status of blacks and North Africans in Islam. The book is divided into two sections: Part l of the book explores the concept of race, 'blackness', slavery, interracial marriage and racism in Islam in the light of the Qur'an, Hadith and early historical sources. Part ll of the book consists of a compilation of short biographies of noble black and North African Muslim men and women in Islamic history including Prophets, Companions of the Prophet and more recent historical figures. Following in the tradition of revered scholars of Islam such as al-Jahiz, Ibn al-Jawzi and al-Suyuti who wrote about this topic, Illuminating the Darkness is structured according to a similar monographic arrangement.

When the path ahead is dark, how can we keep from stumbling? How do we make our way with courage and dignity? "Inside each of us is an eternal light that I call 'the One Who Knows,'" writes Jack Kornfield. "Awakening to this wisdom can help us find our way through pain and suffering with grace and tenderness." For anyone seeking answers during a time of trial, he offers A Lamp in the Darkness, a program filled with spiritual and psychological insights, hope-giving stories, and special guided meditations for skillfully navigating life's inevitable storms. The practices in this book are not positive thinking, quick fixes, or simplistic self-help strategies. They are powerful tools for doing "the work of the soul" to access our inner knowing and to embrace the fullness of our life experience. With regular practice, these teachings and meditations enable you to transform your difficulties into a guiding light for the journey ahead. Join Jack Kornfield as your trusted guide and friend as you explore: Shared Compassion—a guided practice for planting the seeds of compassion and opening the heart to all that life bringsThe Earth Is My Witness—a meditation to establish firm footing in the midst of darkness, centered by a steady witnessing presenceThe Practice of Forgiveness—what Kornfield calls "the only medicine that can release us from the past and allow us to truly begin anew"The Temple of Healing—a guided visualization to meet your own inner healerEquanimity and Peace—a meditation for maintaining balance and acceptance regardless of the situation Just as it is certain that each life will include suffering, explains Kornfield, it is also true that in every moment there is the possibility of transcending your difficulties to discover the heart's eternal freedom. With A Lamp in the Darkness, he offers you a beacon for yourself and others until joy returns again. Foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Includes digital access to audio tracks.

An extreme wildlife photographer explores the bizarre species that thrive in complete darkness with more than 200mesmerizing color photos. Deep inside caves, at the bottoms of oceans and lakes, beneath the ground: these concealed habitats are absent of sunlight, and yet full of life. This strange world of complete darkness is inhabited by millions of life forms that most humans have never seen. Now Danté Fenolio brings the denizens of these shadowy haunts into focus. Life in the Dark shows us the many ways in which life forms have adapted to lightless environments, including refinements of senses, evolution of unique body parts, and illumination using “biological flashlights.” Discover fascinating creatures like the firefly squid, the giant Amazonian catfish, the Chinese cavefish, and even the human bot fly, which lives in the darkness beneath its host’s skin. Fenolio’s rich and vibrant images shed new light on the world’s fascinating creatures of darkness.

A resonant call to explore the darkness in life, in nature, and in consciousness—including difficult emotions like uncertainty, grief, fear, and xenophobia—through teachings, embodied meditations, and mindful inquiry that provide us with a powerful path to healing. Darkness is deeply misunderstood in today’s world; yet it offers powerful medicine, serenity, strength, healing, and regeneration. All insight, vision, creativity, and revelation arise from darkness. It is through learning to stay present and meet the dark with curiosity rather than judgment that we connect to an unwavering light within. Welcoming darkness with curiosity, rather than fear or judgment, enables us to access our innate capacity for compassion and collective healing. Dharma teacher, shamanic practitioner, and deep ecologist Deborah Eden Tull addresses the spiritual, ecological, psychological, and interpersonal ramifications of our bias towards light. Tull explores the medicine of darkness for personal and collective healing, through topics such as: Befriending the Night: The Radiant Teachings of Darkness Honoring Our Pain for Our World Seeing in the Dark: The Quiet Power of Receptivity Dreams, Possibility, and Moral Imagination Releasing Fear—Embracing Emergence Tull shows us how the labeling of darkness as “negative” becomes a collective excuse to justify avoiding everything that makes us uncomfortable: racism, spiritual bypass, environmental destruction. We can only find the radical path to wholeness by learning to embrace the interplay of both darkness and light.

This innovative volume introduces Twinley’s concept of ‘The Dark Side of Occupation’. Focused on less explored and under-addressed occupations, it is an idea which challenges traditional assumptions around the positive, beneficial, health-promoting relationship between occupation and health. Emphasising that people’s individual experiences of occupations are not always addressed and may not always be legal, socially acceptable, or conducive to good health, the book investigates how these experiences can be explored theoretically, in practice and research, and in curriculum content for those learning about occupation. Beginning with a discussion of some assumptions and misunderstandings that have been made about the concept, the substantive chapters present and analyse tangible examples of the concept’s applicability. This ground-breaking and practice-changing text provides ideas for future research and highlights contemporary, internationally relevant issues and concerns, such as the coronavirus pandemic. This book is an essential purchase for students in occupational therapy and science, and valuable supplementary reading for practitioners. It is also relevant to a wide interdisciplinary audience with an interest in human occupation, encompassing anthropologists, councillors, criminologists, nurses, and human geographers.

Light pervades the world, and when it is not light, darkness emerges and is combated by electric illumination. Despite this globally shared human experience in which spaces appear radically different depending on time, season, and weather, social science investigation on the subject is meager. From Light to Dark fills this gap, focusing on our interaction with daylight, illumination, and darkness. Tim Edensor begins by examining the effects of daylight on our perception of landscape, drawing on artworks, particular landscapes, and architectural practice. He then considers the ways in which illumination is often contested and can be used to express power, looking at how capitalist, class, ethnic, military, and state power use lighting to reinforce their authority over space. Edensor also considers light artists such as Olafur Eliasson and festivals of illumination before turning a critical eye to the supposedly dangerous, sinister associations of darkness. In examining the modern city as a space of fantasy through electric illumination, he studies how we are seeking—and should seek—new forms of darkness in reaction to the perpetual glow of urban lighting. Highly original and absorbingly written, From Light to Dark analyzes a vast array of artistic interventions, diverse spaces, and lighting technologies to explore these most basic human experiences.

The idea that with the decline of the Roman Empire Europe entered into some immense ‘dark age’ has long been viewed as inadequate by many historians. How could a world still so profoundly shaped by Rome and which encompassed such remarkable societies as the Byzantine, Carolingian and Ottonian empires, be anything other than central to the development of European history? How could a world of so many peoples, whether expanding, moving or stable, of Goths, Franks, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, whose genetic and linguistic inheritors we all are, not lie at the heart of how we understand ourselves? The Inheritance of Rome is a work of remarkable scope and ambition. Drawing on a wealth of new material, it is a book which will transform its many readers’ ideas about the crucible in which Europe would in the end be created. From the collapse of the Roman imperial system to the establishment of the new European dynastic states, perhaps this book’s most striking achievement is to make sense of an immensely long period of time, experienced by many generations of Europeans, and which, while it certainly included catastrophic invasions and turbulence, also contained long periods of continuity and achievement. From Ireland to Constantinople, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, this is a genuinely Europe-wide history of a new kind, with something surprising or arresting on every page.