How They See Us

How They See Us PDF Author: James Atlas
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Popular culture
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
In this collection of essays, novelists and other writers from around the world share their perceptions of the United States.

How They See Us

How They See Us PDF Author: James Atlas
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Popular culture
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
In this collection of essays, novelists and other writers from around the world share their perceptions of the United States.

Letters to Martin

Letters to Martin PDF Author: Randal Maurice Jelks
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 164160557X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
"You'll find hope in these pages. " —Jonathan Eig, author of Ali: A Life Letters to Martin contains twelve meditations on contemporary political struggles for our oxygen-deprived society. Evoking Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail," these meditations, written in the form of letters to King, speak specifically to the many public issues we presently confront in the United States—economic inequality, freedom of assembly, police brutality, ongoing social class conflicts, and geopolitics. Award-winning author Randal Maurice Jelks invites readers to reflect on US history by centering on questions of democracy that we must grapple with as a society. Hearkening to the era when James Baldwin, Dorothy Day, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Richard Wright used their writing to address the internal and external conflicts that the United States faced, this book is a contemporary revival of the literary tradition of meditative social analysis. These meditations on democracy provide spiritual oxygen to help readers endure the struggles of rebranding, rebuilding, and reforming our democratic institutions so that we can all breathe.

Transcendental Meditation in America

Transcendental Meditation in America PDF Author: Joseph Weber
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1609382358
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Stores selling exotic goods popped up, TM followers built odd-looking homes that modeled the guru's rules for peace-inspiring architecture, and the new university knocked down a historic chapel, even as it erected massive golden-domed buildings for meditators. Some newcomers got elected--and others were defeated--when they ran for local and statewide offices. At times, thousands from across the globe visited the small town. Yet Transcendental Meditation did not always achieve its aims of personal and social tranquility. Suicides and a murder unsettled the meditating community over the years, and some followers were fleeced by con men from their own ranks. Some battled a local farmer over land use and one another over doctrine. Notably, the world has not gotten more peaceful. Today the guru is dead. His followers are graying, and few of their children are moving into leadership roles.

Transcendent in America

Transcendent in America PDF Author: Lola Williamson
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 081479470X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Yoga, karma, meditation, guru—these terms, once obscure, are now a part of the American lexicon. Combining Hinduism with Western concepts and values, a new hybrid form of religion has developed in the United States over the past century. In Transcendent in America, Lola Williamson traces the history of various Hindu-inspired movements in America, and argues that together they constitute a discrete category of religious practice, a distinct and identifiable form of new religion. Williamson provides an overview of the emergence of these movements through examining exchanges between Indian Hindus and American intellectuals such as Thomas Jefferson and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and illuminates how Protestant traditions of inner experience paved the way for Hindu-style movements’ acceptance in the West. Williamson focuses on three movements—Self-Realization Fellowship, Transcendental Meditation, and Siddha Yoga—as representative of the larger of phenomenon of Hindu-inspired meditation movements. She provides a window into the beliefs and practices of followers of these movements by offering concrete examples from their words and experiences that shed light on their world view, lifestyle, and relationship with their gurus. Drawing on scholarly research, numerous interviews, and decades of personal experience with Hindu-style practices, Williamson makes a convincing case that Hindu-inspired meditation movements are distinct from both immigrant Hinduism and other forms of Asian-influenced or “New Age” groups.

Meditation from Angels in America

Meditation from Angels in America PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Ladder to the Light

Ladder to the Light PDF Author: Steven Charleston
Publisher: Broadleaf Books
ISBN: 1506465749
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
Darkness will not last forever. Together we can climb toward the light. They were as troubled as we, our ancestors, those who came before us, and all for the very same reasons: fear of illness, a broken heart, fights in the family, the threat of another war. Corrupt politicians walked their stage, and natural disasters appeared without warning. And yet they came through, carrying us within them, through the grief and struggle, through the personal pain and the public chaos, finding their way with love and faith, not giving in to despair but walking upright until their last step was taken. My culture does not honor the ancestors as a quaint spirituality of the past but as a living source of strength for the present. They did it and so will we. In the same voice that has comforted and challenged countless readers through his daily social media posts, Choctaw elder and Episcopal priest Steven Charleston offers words of hard-won hope, rooted in daily conversations with the Spirit and steeped in Indigenous wisdom. Every day Charleston spends time in prayer. Every day he writes down what he hears from the Spirit. In Ladder to the Light he shares what he has heard with the rest of us and adds thoughtful reflection to help guide us to the light. Native America knows something about cultivating resilience and resisting darkness. For all who yearn for hope, Ladder to the Light is a book of comfort, truth, and challenge in a time of anguish and fear.

Meditations from the Breakdown Lane

Meditations from the Breakdown Lane PDF Author: James Shapiro
Publisher: Echo Point Books & Media
ISBN: 9781635618525
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
This inspirational book is the captivating true chronicle of author Jim Shapiro's epic 80-day, 3,026-mile run across America in the summer of 1980. Balancing vivid descriptions of the ever-changing physical landscape and candid explorations of his own mental state, Shapiro offers an essential volume in the library of classic American travelogues.

Homage to Americans

Homage to Americans PDF Author: Eva Brann
Publisher: Paul Dry Books
ISBN: 1589882792
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
In her latest collection of essays and lectures, Homage to Americans, Eva Brann explores the roots and essence of our American ways. In “Mile-high Meditations,” her flight’s late departure from the Denver airport prompts a consideration of her manner of waiting (i.e.,“being”). As she looks around, she notes (and compares to her own) the ways her fellow travelers pass their time. These observations lead her to wonder how each of us lives with ourselves and how we live together—and put up with one another. With these questions in mind, the next two essays carefully examine two famous political documents that have shaped American self-understanding: James Madison’s “Memorial and Remonstrance,” which is the essential argument for separation of church and state; and Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which enlarged and refashioned our understanding of the American political character, first given formal expression in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. In “Paradox of Obedience,” a lecture delivered at the Air Force Academy, Brann considers the puzzling character of obedience in a country dedicated to liberty. The concluding piece, “The Empire of the Sun and the West,” takes us to Aztec Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest. What allowed Cortes and his handful of men to overcome a great empire? In pursuit of an answer, Brann describes a human type whose fulfillment she sees in the American character.

Meditation For Fidgety Skeptics

Meditation For Fidgety Skeptics PDF Author: Dan Harris
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1473691400
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
*As heard on the Tim Ferriss Show podcast* 'Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics is well researched, practical, and crammed with expert advice and it's also an irreverent, hilarious page-turner.' - Gretchen Rubin ABC News anchor Dan Harris used to think that meditation was for people who collect crystals, play the pan pipes, and use the word namaste without irony. After he had a panic attack on live television, he went on a strange journey that ultimately led him to become one of meditation's most vocal public proponents. Science suggests that meditation can lower blood pressure, mitigate depression and anxiety, and literally rewire key parts of the brain, among numerous other benefits. And yet there are millions of people who want to meditate but aren't actually practising. What's holding them back? In this guide to mindfulness and meditation for beginners and experienced meditators alike, Harris and his friend Jeff Warren, embark on a cross-country quest to tackle the myths, misconceptions, and self-deceptions that stop people from meditating. They rent a rock-star tour bus and travel across the US, talking to scores of would-be meditators, including parents, police officers, and even a few celebrities. They create a taxonomy of the most common issues ("I suck at this," "I don't have the time," etc.) and offer up science-based life hacks to help people overcome them. The book is filled with game-changing and deeply practical meditation instructions. Amid it all unspools the strange and hilarious story of what happens when a congenitally sarcastic, type-A journalist and a groovy Canadian mystic embark on an epic road trip into America's neurotic underbelly, as well as their own.

Hung

Hung PDF Author: Scott Poulson-Bryant
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307781410
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
A brilliant look at the pervasive belief that African American men are prodigiously endowed, from the author’s own experiences to sharp analysis of how black male sexuality is expressed in art, literature, media, sports, and pornography “Scott really goes there, talking honestly and telling secrets about the black phallus and its, uh, massive impact on America.” —Touré “Hung” is a double entendre, referring not only to penis size but to the fact that black men were once literally hung from trees, often for their perceived sexual prowess and the supposed risk it posed to white women. As a poignant reminder, Scott Poulson-Bryant begins his book with a letter to Emmett Till, the teenager who was lynched in Mississippi in the mid-1950s for whistling at a white woman. For Poulson-Bryant and other men of his generation, society’s deep-seated obsession with the sexual powers of black men has had an enormous, if often deceptive, influence on how they perceive themselves and on the assumptions made by others. His tales of his sexual encounters with both sexes, along with anecdotes about the lives of various friends and colleagues, are wryly and at times shockingly revealing. Enduring racial perceptions have shaped popular culture as well, and Poulson-Bryant offers a thorough, thought-provoking look at media-created images of the “Well-Hung Black Male.” He deftly deconstructs movies like Mandingo and Shaft, articles in the popular press, and edgy works like Robert Mapplethorpe’s Black Book, while also providing distinctive profiles of icons like porn star Lexington Steele and rapper L.L. Cool J. A mixture of memoir and cultural commentary, Hung is the first book to take on phallic fixation and uncover what lies below.