Longing For Connection

Tao has been built into the foundation of East Asian culture for millennia, and many books have been written to explain it. But Tao cannot fully be explained in words; it can only felt and experienced. Tao is something you live, day by day, moment by moment. It's the omnipresent oneness beyond ephemeral phenomena that expresses itself in everything. New York Times bestselling author Ilchi Lee, an enlightened Tao master from South Korea, has laid out a path to living Tao every day. Along this path, he guides you to an understanding of the meaning of birth, death, and everything in between, building a foundation for living a complete and whole life. The universal principles contained in "Living Tao: Timeless Principles for Everyday Enlightenment" stem from the Korean practice of Sundo, an ancient tradition of mind-body training, as well as Lee's own life experience. With these tangible principles, Ilchi Lee makes this profound topic simple and accessible. "Living Tao" has an unparalleled depth in its simplicity that anyone can absorb and immediately apply. * 2015 INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award Winner, Bronze, Body, Mind & Spirit

Untangling the private feelings, ambitions, and fears of early Americans through their personal writings from the Revolution to the Civil War. Modern readers of history and biography unite around a seemingly straightforward question: What did it feel like to live in the past? In Longing for Connection, historian Andrew Burstein attempts to answer this question with a vigorous, nuanced emotional history of the United States from its founding to the Civil War. Through an examination of the letters, diaries, and other personal texts of the time, along with popular poetry and novels, Burstein shows us how early Americans expressed deep emotions through shared metaphors and borrowed verse in their longing for meaning and connection. He reveals how literate, educated Americans—both well-known and more obscure—expressed their feelings to each other and made attempts at humor, navigating an anxious world in which connection across spaces was difficult to capture. In studying the power of poetry and literature as expressions of inner life, Burstein conveys the tastes of early Americans and illustrates how emotions worked to fashion myths of epic heroes, such as the martyr Nathan Hale, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. He also studies the public's fears of ocean travel, their racial blind spots, and their remarkable facility for political satire. Burstein questions why we seek a connection to the past and its emotions in the first place. America, he argues, is shaped by a persistent belief that the past is reachable and that its lessons remain intact, which represents a major obstacle in any effort to understand our national history. Burstein shows, finally, that modern readers exhibit a similar capacity for rationalization and that dire longing for connection across time and space as the people he studies.

"Most of us will have many friends throughout our lifetimes—friends of all shapes, sizes, and callings. Many of these are wonderful, meaningful friendships. Some are difficult. But some magic few of these are connections that have gone right to our soul. These five or seven or ten friendships have been powerful keys to determining who we have become and who we will become. . . . These are the people I call Soul Friends." As the Senior Scholar-in-Residence for over 25 years at the renowned Kripalu Center, Stephen Cope has spent decades investigating—and writing about—the integration of body, mind, and spirit and the rich complexity of our relationships with others, and with ourselves. Perhaps the central truth that arises from his work is this: human beings are universally wired for one thing—vital connection with one another.Soul Friends invites us on a compelling journey into the connectivity of the human psyche, the study of which has fascinated scholars, philosophers, and thinkers for centuries. Cope seamlessly blends science, scholarship, and storytelling, drawing on his own life as well as the histories of famous figures—from Eleanor Roosevelt to Charles Darwin to Queen Victoria—whose formative relationships shed light on the nature of friendship itself. In his exploration, he distills human connection into six distinct yet interconnected mechanisms: containment, twinship, adversity, mirroring, identification, and conscious partnership. Then he invites us to reflect on how these forms of connection appear in our own lives, helping us work toward a fuller understanding of "who we have become and who we will become."Without a doubt, the journey to our most fulfilled selves requires us to look within. But in order to truly thrive, we must make the most of who we are in relation to one another as well. Unsparingly honest, deeply wise, and irresistibly readable, Soul Friends gives us a map to find our way.

The solution to your problems starts with connecting to yourself. An inspirational guide to a powerful meditation method for greater clarity, consciousness, and spiritual growth by New York Times bestselling author and world-renowned meditation teacher Ilchi Lee. Are you feeling stuck in your current situation or your life in general? Are you having trouble managing stress? Have you sought answers at spiritual retreats without getting the clarity you need? Relief can be closer than you think if you reframe how you look at your problems. New York Times bestselling author Ilchi Lee proposes there is one root cause to all the troubles plaguing us—separation. We put up walls in every aspect of our lives, isolating ourselves. Those walls keep us from forming healthy relationships with others, with nature, and even with ourselves. But separation has a simple cure—finding a way to connect. In Connect: How to Find Clarity and Expand Your Consciousness with Pineal Gland Meditation, Lee shows how to connect to your authentic self through the pineal gland in your brain. Activate your pineal gland through the meditations rooted in an ancient Korean tradition that Ilchi Lee describes in this book. You’ll experience clarity instead of emotion, compassion rather than judgment, and wholeness in place of separation. This book will help you find the solutions you seek by opening the inner eye that leads to greater clarity regarding the health of your body, the dreams of your soul, and the wisdom of your spirit. WINNER OF A 2019 LIVING NOW BOOK AWARD

This volume provides an in-depth examination of the video game Death Stranding, focusing on the game’s exploration of ruin, nostalgia, and atonement as its primary symbolic, narrative, and mechanical language. Offering the first close examination of Death Stranding’s narrative, the book also incorporates a strong foundation in game studies, most especially related to the concepts of immersion and embodiment. The focus of the book lies in considering how Death Stranding expands on the themes of ruin, longing, and the need for connection, and whether a reconciliation—on a community level, national level, or even global level—might be possible. This book will appeal to scholars in a variety of disciplines in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, from video game studies and media studies to English, history, philosophy, and popular culture.

The authors of Do I Have to Give Up Me to Be Loved By You? now present "a brilliant, deeply honest, in-depth guide . . . (that) integrates the best of modern psychology with age-old wisdom" (Harold Bloomfield, author of Making Peace with Your Parents).

Loneliness has reached epidemic proportions. We have lost the art of connection and relationship, and it's killing us. Odds are good that you have a loved one or friend whose struggle with addiction, mental illness, suicidal thoughts, or self-injury stems from loneliness. Maybe it's you. Perhaps you're feeling depressed or anxious, struggling with compulsive behavior, or simply questioning whether you are truly seen, loved, and valued. The culprit could well be that you're lonely. Dr. Mark Mayfield understands the crisis well, as it led to him nearly taking his own life as a teen. As a board-certified counselor, he has built a reputable counseling practice on the forefront of brain science and attachment therapies, dedicating his life to helping adults and adolescents confront their feelings of isolation and alienation. He is relied upon by new and experienced counselors for training, and he has become an anchor and guide for community leaders, educators, and faith leaders. When you read and apply the practices in The Path out of Loneliness, you'll develop habits that move you from isolation to connection. You'll learn the importance of attachment, the art of connection, the power of relationships, the priority of personal responsibility, the gift of vulnerability, and the vision of God, who knew from the beginning that it's not good for us to be abandoned to ourselves. This book will guide you, the people you love, and the community you live in toward a richer, fuller, healthier life.

Chronic shame is painful, corrosive, and elusive. It resists self-help and undermines even intensive psychoanalysis. Patricia A. DeYoung’s cutting-edge book gives chronic shame the serious attention it deserves, integrating new brain science with an inclusive tradition of relational psychotherapy. She looks behind the myriad symptoms of shame to its relational essence. As DeYoung describes how chronic shame is wired into the brain and developed in personality, she clarifies complex concepts and makes them available for everyday therapy practice. Grounded in clinical experience and alive with case examples, Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame is highly readable and immediately helpful. Patricia A. DeYoung’s clear, engaging writing helps readers recognize the presence of shame in the therapy room, think through its origins and effects in their clients’ lives, and decide how best to work with those clients. Therapists will find that Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame enhances the scope of their practice and efficacy with this client group, which comprises a large part of most therapy practices. Challenging, enlightening, and nourishing, this book belongs in the library of every shame-aware therapist.