Meditations On The Soul

The problems that taxed the minds of people during the Renaissance were much the same as those confronting us today. In their perplexity, many deep-thinking people sought the advice of Marsilio Ficino (1433-99), the leader of the Platonic Academy in Florence, a magnet for the most brilliant scholars of 15th-century Europe. In devoting his life to the study and translation of the great dialogues of Plato and the Neoplatonists, Ficino and his colleagues were midwives to the birth of the modern world. Ficino was fearless in expressing what he knew to be true. Covering the widest range of topics, his letters offer a profound glimpse into the soul of the Renaissance.

Pathways and Practices to Strengthen Your Soul for the Journey Ahead Everyone longs for a soulful purpose that sets the heart ablaze. This book guides you through accessible meditations designed to help you experience the deep joy and fulfillment that comes when we live in the immediate and irrefutable now. Join teacher and former monk Neale Lundgren as he shares dozens of awakening exercises designed to help you activate your soul's senses, become more present to your inner and outer worlds, and learn to bring soulfulness to your relationships with others. This book is all about helping you reconnect to your soul and strengthen your personal sense of purpose in life. The practices within can be used by anyone regardless of your spiritual or religious background. With breathing exercises, visualizations, affirmations, and more, you will learn to incorporate ancient spiritual technologies even in the midst of your busy 21st century life.

In Soul to Soul, Gary Zukav addressed some of the most fundamental questions about the human experience, with profound answers that are of truly universal value. Now with Soul to Soul Meditations, Zukav provides 365 inspirational excerpts, one for each day of the year, with each page opening up new insights for reflection. The perfect gift for somebody you love or for yourself, the book is small enough to fit into a handbag, and take with you wherever you go. Think of these meditations as doorways through which soul to soul communication can enter your life and transform it. This lovely collection of meditations can be read independently of Soul to Soulor used as a companion piece.

Soul-Centered: Transform Your Life in 8 Weeks with Meditation presents a secular, mainstream view of meditation and applies it practically as a tool for personal transformation. Each week’s lesson in the 8-week program contains a key for navigating the journey of self-awareness, and each week’s meditation practice builds on those of the previous weeks, making the process accessible and enjoyable for novices and experts alike. Inspiring stories from Sarah’s own experience and from the students she’s taught in her 20-year career as a meditation teacher further enrich the text. Her approach is grounded in leading-edge brain research that shows meditating for 27 minutes a day over 8 weeks can make a huge difference by altering the gray matter in areas of the brain that govern learning, memory, empathy, and stress. Each of the lessons in the 8-week program is designed to provide a structure for creating a successful and sustainable meditation practice. As the readers build their meditation practice, they learn to undo stressful habits that don’t serve them, cultivate compassion for themselves and others, and listen to and trust their inner wisdom. The Soul-Centered journey is one of finding out who you really are; navigating your life based on that peaceful, loving, wise part of yourself; then fully and fearlessly expressing yourself in the world.

Outlines a process for tapping the power of the soul for positive change, providing meditations and self-guided practices for exploring subjects ranging from fear and the ego to love and healing.

“For God alone my soul in silence waits....” In these reflections on Psalm 62 Margaret Guenther provides the foundation for a time of reflection and retreat without ever leaving home. The book’s first chapter introduces us to ways of making a retreat wherever we are, at a place apart or in the midst of our daily lives. Guenther then offers eight meditations on Psalm 62, with its themes of waiting on God’s presence with patience, trust, and expectation. She explores the images the psalm evokes of longing, silence, waiting, safety, enemies, and God as a rock and refuge. As in all her books, Guenther finds new ways to explore these ancient themes with the wit and practicality of an accomplished storyteller. These eight meditations can be read consecutively over the course of a single day or weekend, or spaced over time with periods of reflection in between. Each meditation ends with ideas for further prayer and pondering. My Soul in Silence Waits is one of our series of Cowley Cloister Books: smaller format, gift edition books designed for meditative and devotional reading.

Ordinarily we live under the tyranny of the past. All that we call thinking is the habitual association of finished, dead thoughts. But these thoughts were alive once and every new moment of understanding is a breath from the level of the living present. Stages of Consciousness proposes that we train ourselves in the stage of consciousness that we occasionally glimpse as intuition. Beginning with the intuition of the true self in the living thinking--"the fundamental experience of the spirit"--the author goes on to describe practical exercise in concentration and contemplation. Georg Kühlewind describes his purpose in his foreword: "Modern humanity's most difficult task is to become aware of, to see and to overcome the threshold of mirrored consciousness. The first essay attempts to show how Rudolf Steiner proposes reaching this goal in his Philosophy of Freedom. Consideration of the threshold lying between thinking and what has been thought leads the one making this experiment to 'the fundamental experience of the spirit.' The third essay attempts to develop a methodology for the first steps in the realm of concentration and contemplation. The last essays set forth the outcome: how, in the observation of the soul's boundaries, these boundaries become transparent and permeable. The form of the communication is such that the reader, tracing the lines of the movements of thinking, steps into its fabric." Contents: Introduction by Christopher Bamford Author's Foreword The Two Stages of Consciousness The Fundamental Experience of the Spirit Concentration and Contemplation The Boundaries of the Soul The Secret of Perceiving The Spiritual Communion of Modern Humanity The Sense of Being The Light of the Earth