The Seeker's Guide Making Your Life a Spiritual Adventure

by LESSER, ELIZABETH

• ISBN13: 9780679783596
• ISBN10: 0679783598
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-10-03
• Publisher: Villard

Summary

In 1977, Elizabeth Lesser cofounded the Omega Institute, now America's largest adult-education center focusing on wellness and spirituality. Working with many of the eminent thinkers of our times, including Zen masters, rabbis, Christian monks, psychologists, scientists, and an array of noted American figures--from L.A. Lakers coach Phil Jackson to author Maya Angelou--Lesser found that by combining a variety of religious, psychological, and healing traditions, each of us has the unique ability to satisfy our spiritual hunger. InThe Seeker's Guid, she synthesizes the lessons learned from an immersion into the world's wisdom traditions and intertwines them with illuminating stories from her daily life. Recounting her own trials and errors and offering meditative exercises, she shows the reader how to create a personal practice, gauge one's progress, and choose effective spiritual teachers and habits. Warm, accessible, and wise, this book provides directions through the four landscapes of the spiritual journey: THE MIND: learning meditation to ease stress and anxiety THE HEART: dealing with grief, loss, and pain; opening the heart and becoming fully alive THE BODY: returning the body to the spiritual fold to heal and overcome the fear of aging and death THE SOUL: experiencing daily life as an adventure of meaning and mystery From the Trade Paperback edition.

Author Biography

Elizabeth Lesser is the cofounder and senior adviser of the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. Prior to her work at Omega, she was a midwife and childbirth educator. She attended Barnard College and San Francisco State University. She can be reached at [e-mail].

Table of Contents

Introduction	xi
BOOK I/THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE
My Search	3	(24)
What Is Spirituality?	27	(17)
Making Your Life a Spiritual Adventure	30	(2)
Beginner's Mind	32	(3)
Spiritual Longing: The Open Secret	35	(4)
Relaxing into the Mystery	39	(1)
The Biggies and the Dailies	40	(4)
Hiding Somewhere Near Us	44	(19)
Transcend and Include	47	(1)
The Promise: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness	48	(3)
The New American Spirituality	51	(2)
Spiritual Materialism: American Style	53	(5)
Wisdom and Folly: Warning Signs Along the Path	58	(5)
Humanizing Spirituality	63	(24)
Psyche and Spirit: An Unnatural Separation	64	(3)
The Sacred Self: Integrating Psychology and Spirituality	67	(3)
Gender and Self: Gods and Goddesses Within	70	(3)
Motherhood, Midwifery, and My Own Awakening	73	(2)
Feminine Spirituality in a Masculine World	75	(6)
Toward a Spirituality of Wholeness	81	(6)
BOOK II/THE LANDSCAPE OF THE MIND
Mindfulness	87	(10)
Why Meditate?	88	(4)
Mindfulness Meditation	92	(1)
To Be Here Now, or Not to Be Here Now	93	(4)
Daily Practice	97	(19)
Breath	99	(2)
Posture	101	(5)
Thoughts	106	(1)
Time	107	(1)
Place	108	(1)
Creating Your Own Practice	109	(2)
Goals	111	(5)
Stress	116	(14)
Four Kinds of Stress	118	(1)
Choice-Based Stress	119	(3)
Unavoidable Stress	122	(2)
Reactive Stress	124	(3)
Time Stress	127	(3)
A Mindfulness Toolbox	130	(27)
The False Ego	132	(5)
Reality Is Not What You Think It Is	137	(2)
Working with the Foes: Pain, Restlessness, Sleepiness, and Judgment	139	(8)
Three Mindfulness Meditations	147	(2)
Is It Working? Two Mindfulness Scenarios	149	(3)
Return Again: A Mindfulness Review	152	(5)
BOOK III/THE LANDSCAPE OF THE HEART
Heartfulness	157	(37)
Ellen's Story	164	(9)
What Do I Really Love?	173	(3)
Hunger	176	(3)
The Genuine Heart of Sadness	179	(2)
Creating Boundaries	181	(4)
Shadow-Work	185	(4)
Self-Responsibility	189	(5)
A Heartfulness Toolbox	194	(47)
Three Heartfulness Meditations	196	(4)
The Hero's Journey	200	(7)
Using Art, Music, and Poetry to Shake You Up	207	(6)
Creative Visualization	213	(4)
A Necklace of Qualities	217	(2)
The World Bank	219	(4)
Making Decisions	223	(5)
Autobiographies of Joy and Grief	228	(7)
Love Is the Only Rational Act of a Lifetime	235	(6)
BOOK IV/THE LANDSCAPE OF THE BODY
The Missing Body	241	(4)
Ten Laws of Healing	245	(39)
We Want to Care for the Things We Love	247	(3)
The Body Remembers	250	(6)
Separate Body Image from Body Reality	256	(6)
Come into Animal Presence	262	(7)
Developing ``Animal Presence'' Rituals	269	(3)
Listen to the Body	272	(2)
Understand the Mind/Body Connection	274	(3)
Let Energy Flow	277	(1)
Be a Skeptical Explorer	278	(1)
Get Support	279	(2)
Take Responsibility but Give Up Control	281	(3)
The Landscape of Death	284	(37)
Death: Let Us Wait for It Everywhere	289	(6)
Learning to Grieve: It's Not All as Evil as You Think	295	(3)
Three Grief Stories: Keeping the Gap Empty	298	(18)
After Death: I Want to Know God's Thoughts	316	(5)
BOOK V/THE LANDSCAPE OF THE SOUL
Soulfulness	321	(17)
Asking Questions in an Echo Chamber	323	(3)
Who Is God?	326	(4)
Do Not Seek the Answers: Live the Questions	330	(4)
The Soul's Story	334	(4)
Inter-Being	338	(21)
Duality and Unity	340	(5)
Karma and Faith	345	(5)
Beautiful Problems	350	(9)
A Soulfulness Toolbox	359	(38)
Forgiveness	361	(5)
Working with Teachers and Therapists	366	(17)
Prayer	383	(5)
Community	388	(9)
Epilogue: The Spiritual Adventure	397	(6)
Suggested Books, Audiotapes, and Music	403	(10)
Acknowledgments	413	(2)
Index	415

Excerpts

Although a book is born of many impulses, and influenced by diverse experiences, authors often speak of a symbolic moment of conception--an "aha" moment when you say to yourself, "I have to tell this story." That moment came for me several summers ago, in the faculty dining room at Omega Institute, the education and retreat center I cofounded in 1977. Over the years I have shared countless meals with conference and workshop leaders in that room, moderating discussions between medical doctors and shamanic healers, Christian monks and Jewish rabbis, Zen teachers and business executives.

On this particular day I was eating lunch with Babatunde Olatunji, the West African drum master and world-music innovator. Seated next to Baba was the American poet Allen Ginsberg, engaged in conversation with Gelek Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist lama, and Joseph Shabalala, a South African musician and freedom fighter. They were talking about their twin passions--politics and spirituality--and how challenging it was to combine the two. At the other end of the table was the onetime heavyweight champion of the world Floyd Patterson picking over his plate of tofu salad and discussing his workshop, "The Tao of Boxing," with a Chinese tai chi master, a tiny woman dressed in black pajamas. Next to them sat Huston Smith, the renowned authority on the history of religions, chatting with Ysaye Barnwell of the gospel group Sweet Honey in the Rock, and John Mohawk, a Seneca author and spiritual leader.

Catching bits and pieces of conversations, I turned to Baba Olatunji and asked, "So, what do you make of this--all these traditions meeting and merging?" Baba leaned back in his chair and surveyed the scene. Then, waving his fork at the extraordinary cast of characters seated around us, he announced, "This is a new kind of spirituality. It's American, and one day it will be the world."
An American spirituality--I liked that concept. It described my own spiritual life, something I had never been able to label. I had been actively searching for God since childhood. My path wove through the peaks and valleys of many different traditions: organized religion, disorganized mysticism, psychotherapy, philosophy, mythology, science. My search had all the signs of being an American one: it was open-minded, individualistic, and adventurous. It celebrated diversity: ten years of discipleship with an Eastern meditation master; a deep immersion into Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mysticism; extended work with a psychotherapist; study of Jungian psychology and Western schools of philosophy; and exposure, from my work at Omega Institute, to a range of healing systems, from ancient Chinese medicine to modern consciousness research.

For more than twenty-five years I had been on an adventure, searching for a genuine and fearless kind of spirituality. My goal had not been to become a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim; a Buddhist or a Sikh or a Hindu. I didn't want to become anything other than my most vibrant, peaceful, and grateful self. I wanted to find a sacred path through the fullness of life in the real world--a daily discipline that reached into the heavens even as it dug deeply into my psyche, helping me overcome resistance, falseness, and mistrust. On such an adventure I would need to seek guidance freely, from the rich repository of the world's wisdom traditions. Baba Ola-tunji's words about an "American spirituality" rang true: what I was seeking was a spirituality as diverse, democratic, and individualistic as America itself.

After my "aha" moment in the lunchroom with Baba Olatunji, I set out to research and write about the emerging American spiritual tradition. I had three distinct yet related stories to tell: America's story, my story, and yours--the reader's story. America's story, because each American's spiritual quest is fundamentally marked--for better and worse--by American values. My story, because a book about the spiritual journey is about an individual's most basic questions: Who am I? How should I live? What happens when I die? Without honest, real-life examples to accompany theories and practices, spiritual literature lacks veracity. Since the real-life examples I am most familiar with are my own, I have structured this book around my spiritual adventures--my blunders and my accomplishments, my dark nights and my luminous awakenings. But in writing about my path, I did not want to betray the most important message of the book, which is that each person's spiritual journey is different, worthy, and unique. Therefore, the third story in the book belongs to the reader. Directions on the spiritual path are offered here; it is my hope that you will use them to chart a course all your own.

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Excerpted from The Seeker's Guide: Making Your Life a Spiritual Adventure by Elizabeth Lesser
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.