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Living Through the Meantime : Learning to Break the Patterns of the Past and Begin the Healing Process
Iyanla Vanzant Manufacturer: Fireside ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
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ASIN: 0743227107 Release Date: 2001-08-14 |
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The "meantime," according to best-selling author and inspirational speaker Iyanla Vanzant, is that in-between stage of life when you're gathering up strength, evaluating past mishaps, and preparing for the next chapter. Using the metaphor of psyche as house, Vanzant believes that the meantime offers a perfect opportunity for tackling a rigorous cleaning. "We are going to go through every inch of your emotional and spiritual house and clean up the mess, clear out the debris, fix the leaks, stop the squeaks, and reveal and repair any damage we can find," she promises in this workbook. Readers who felt soothed and inspired by Vanzant's In the Meantime will probably appreciate this floor-by-floor companion workbook. Every chapter of Living Through the Meantime contains an assortment of "Caring Exercises," ranging from affirmations, such as "I now place my faith in the power and presence of God's love" to quasi-therapeutic fill-in-the-blanks statements. (For example, "My earliest experience of feeling betrayed was ___.") Vanzant is not the most eloquent or sophisticated of writers, but she does seem to touch people's hearts and crack them open. Her main agendas are self-reflection and trust in God. Fans who are ready to tackle a hefty self-improvement project will not be disappointed with this workbook. Newcomers should check out her earlier book before committing to this one. -- Gail HudsonBook Description
Are you confused, angry, disappointed, frustrated, anxious, apprehensive, sorry for yourself, or generally wiped out? If so, my friend, you are in the meantime.
Are you ready to put the pieces of your life together? Are you ready to begin the process of healing? Are you ready to give and receive love in all of your experiences?
In Living Through the Meantime, bestselling author Iyanla Vanzant will lead you, step-by-step, to a greater understanding of your own past, your motivations, and your desires. Once you have completed this program of meditation, self-care, and self-examination, you will be able to move beyond your meantime experience and into the love that is your true essence.
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Are you confused, angry, disappointed, frustrated, anxious, apprehensive, sorry for yourself, or generally wiped out? If so, my friend, you are in the meantime. Are you ready to put the pieces of your life together? Are you ready to begin the process of healing? Are you ready to give and receive love in all of your experiences? In Living Through the Meantime, bestselling author Iyanla Vanzant will lead you, step-by-step, to a greater understanding of your own past, your motivations, and your desires. Once you have completed this program of meditation, self-care, and self-examination, you will be able to move beyond your meantime experience and into the love that is your true essence.Customer Reviews:
Living Through the Meantime .......2007-09-03
It's a real place.......2007-01-22
VanZant is a winner.......2007-01-11
The Mean time is still the present moment ... and should be made the most of.......2006-10-13
Iylanla Digs Deep.......2006-05-24
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Does the Soul Survive: A Jewish Journey to Belief in Afterlife, Past Lives & Living With a Purpose
Elie Kaplan Spitz Manufacturer: Jewish Lights Publishing ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 1580231659 |
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Does the Soul Survive?: A Jewish Journey to Belief in Afterlife, Past Lives & Living with Purpose by Rabbi Elie Kaplan Spitz combines journalistic reporting, scholarly biblical reading, and the probing self-examination of memoir in service of recounting his journey from skepticism to belief regarding life after death. Spitz, who teaches the philosophy of law at the University of Judaism, carefully describes traditional Jewish views of the afterlife and fearlessly explores the many challenges to those views arising in parapsychology--including near-death experiences, reincarnation, and spirit mediums. In the end, Spitz makes a cogent argument that belief in the afterlife is not, as has often been argued, incompatible with Jewish tradition. Wisely, he grounds his concluding arguments in the present-oriented ethic that guides Jewish devotion: "Our challenge is to use the time we have now to live gratefully and responsibly, knowing that how we choose to live shapes our soul," he argues. "The ability to accept death as part of life provides comfort and the awareness that each day is precious. Our challenge is to make the best of every day in this life." --Michael Joseph GrossBook Description
Near-death experiences? Past-life regression? Reincarnation? Are these sorts of things Jewish?With a blend of candor, personal questioning, and sharp-eyed scholarship, Rabbi Elie Kaplan Spitz relates his own observations and the firsthand accounts shared with him by others, experiences that helped propel his journey from skeptic to believer that there is life after life.
From near-death experiences to reincarnation, past-life memory to the work of mediums, Rabbi Spitz explores what we are really able to know about the afterlife, and draws on Jewish texts to share that belief in these concepts--so often approached with reluctance--is in fact true to Jewish tradition.
Customer Reviews:
Meaningful Book on the Subject of the Afterlife.......2004-03-10
As I opened the sanctuary doors, anger flowed through my veins when I saw that the room was not set up the way it needed to be. Did I forget to give the custodian directions on how the room needed to be set up? Or, did the custodian just mess up? I took off my jacket, loosened my tie, and began moving chairs and tables.
Sweat started dripping on my forehead. In the corner of the room, I saw my father sitting in a chair dressed in his pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers. I immediately walked over to him and engaged him in a conversation, which was really an argument. For some unknown reason, I did not inquire about his health but felt the need to talk with him at that particular moment about a painful childhood memory, a memory that I was surprised to remember.
A few hours later that same morning, as I walked into my office, the phone rang. It was the baby sitter who was with our children. She said she had an emergency message, that I needed to call my brother immediately. My brother was not home. His wife answered the phone. She gave me the message. My father died that morning.
When I tell people about the conversation I had with my father that morning, they respond in one of two ways. They think I was either hallucinating or that I actually encountered my father's soul. That week, my thoughts centered on my father's condition. The combination of mental exhaustion (from worrying about him,) physical tiredness (from being up early in the morning,) and anger (at the room not being set up correctly,) led my mind to imagine a mystical encounter.
On the other hand, there is an idea of Gehenna (Hebrew for "hell") in Jewish tradition. Unlike the Christian notion of eternal damnation, Gehenna is only a temporary state. At death, the soul departs from the body and goes to Gehenna, a process of purification where the individual confronts his or her sins and atones for them. After this real Yom Kippur, the soul then either returns from Gehenna to the world in another life (reincarnation) or goes to heaven to be with the Divine. Perhaps our encounter that morning had something to do with this mystery.
Since this experience, I have engaged in many conversations about the afterlife. I have become open, in these discussions, to the possible belief that our souls are eternal, that our souls existed in a previous life, and that our souls will be transferred into another life after we die.
Elie Spitz, the spiritual leader at Congregation B'nai Israel in Tustin, California in his new book Does the Soul Survivie? A Jewish Journey to Belief in Afterlife, Past Lives, and Living with Purpose agrees with this possibility. He recognizes, as a practicing pulpit rabbi, the potential comfort that belief in the afterlife and past lives can provide. He feels, in his heart and mind, that this belief is true.
Throughout the book, Spits searches Jewish tradition for evidence about the eternity of the soul. He interprets the possible existence of the soul's eternity in various Biblical texts and analyzes the type of afterlife and previous life existence of the soul that is presented in various rabbinic and other post-biblical literary sources. He also shares personal experiences that validate to him this existence.
To find evidence that a soul could have a previous life, Spitz meets with Dr. Brian Weiss, a Columbia University and Yale Medical School graduate who is chairman of the Psychiatry Department at Mount Sinai Hospital in Miami and author of the book, Many Lives, Many Masters. Weiss has become famous using therapeutic techniques of hypnosis to get individuals to speak foreign languages that they have never learned, to describe areas of the world that they have never visited, and to share personal accounts of previous time periods that historians later believe are authentic.
Weiss's evidence is not only documented in his research, but observed and experienced first hand by Spitz. Spitz, in recollecting about various life experiences and through hypnosis conducted on himself, comes to the belief that his own soul occupied a previous life. The detail in which he can describe that previous life, and how that previous life influences his existence today, is persuasive.
The evidence that Spitz shares about the afterlife is equally persuasive. In gathering this evidence, the author and his wife encounter James Van Praagh, a psychic and best selling author who's works as a medium communicating with the souls of the departed goes well beyond the realm of mere coincidence.
In the ending of the book, Spitz shares how his belief in the afterlife has benefited him as a pulpit rabbi. He shares a first hand account of how he was able to comfort, in a hospice situation, both a congregational member before she breathed her last breath and her loved ones who observed that last breath. Without a belief in life beyond this world, he would never have possessed the resources at that moment to console.
"Faith," Spitz writes, "in the survival of the soul might lead to magical thinking, the belief in an ability to defy reality and an unrealistic holding on to departed loved ones. But when responsibly approached, faith in the survival of the soul can also be an important source of affirmation and comfort. Like love, such faith is dangerous but no less real."
In Does the Soul Survive, Spitz does a masterful job demonstrating how this subject can be approached in a responsible manner and how affirmation and comfort can be extracted from that approach.
Elliot Fein teaches Jewish Religious Studies at the Tarbut V'Torah School in Irvine, California.
Excellent Introduction to Jewish Views of the Afterlife.......2003-03-23
Rabbi Spitz's book is meaningful for many, precisely BECAUSE Rabbi Spitz comes from a rationalist background that is highly skeptical of the notion of life after death. Like many contemporary readers, Rabbi Spitz has begun to question a worldview that embraces the purely empirical at the expense of the metaphysical. Rabbi Spitz's questioning has led him to explore the teachings of traditional Judaism on life after death, and he finds much to embrace and admire therein.
Rabbi Spitz's journey mirrors a journey that many Jews and non-Jews are undertaking, and his candor and scholarship deserve plaudits. People of all faiths will find this book provocative, and the book is particularly useful for Jews who were brought up in a secular tradition, but who wonder if the soul survives death. If you are building a library about spiritual beliefs on the concept of life after death, or a library on the diversity of Jewish beliefs on this subject, buy this book.
Authenticity and integrity.......2001-05-10
The blind leading the visually impaired.......2001-03-14
And if that Jew is a rabbi?
From the book's opening chapter, in which Elie Spitz describes his fear of being called gullible and foolish for telling colleagues at a 1996 "Sermon Seminar for Rabbis" in Los Angeles that he now believes in the survival of the soul, the reader doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.
The extended account of how he came to such a "radical" view begins with a journey through California's "New Age" religions, complete with its mediums, get-in-touch-with-your-inner-wholeness retreats, mind readers and channellers. During this time, the author gets kindergarten-level exposure to truths that Judaism has recognized and explored in depth for millennia. He receives "bona fide" messages from dead grandparents, hears weird and amazing tales of near-death experiences and wittnesses proof of telepathy.
In all this, Spitz, notwithstanding his professions of scepticism, reveals himself as an "easy mark" -- and why? Because these "revelations" are coming from the very citadel of secular humanist culture!
It is only when he decides to look into the "traditional" Jewish sources -- as if the wisdom of countless sages accumulated over dozens of centuries could be assimilated and judged in a matter of weeks or months -- that Rabbi Spitz displays anything resembling scholarly reticence.
But even when the overwhelming evidence he encounters in his superficial overview convinces him that immortality of the soul and reincarnation are indeed traditional concepts in Judaism (so "open minded" is he that he even considers (gasp!) hassidic sources) he concludes that, yes, the age-old tenets of Judaism are confirmed and validated by the flavor of the week in the "golly gee whiz" cultural marketplace where he lives.
His discussion of biblical and Talmudic references reflects a not-surprising Conservative confusion as to whether God made man or man makes God, and a typical arrogance in placing his own group's 300-year-old "modern and post-modern scholarship" on the same level as the "pre-modern" teachings that are rooted in the Revelation at Sinai.
A typical passage:
"A faith in survival of the soul adds greater urgency to living our days meaningfully, which is aided by like-mided friends. Just as our soul needs a body as a vessel of expression, so our body and soul gain from the grounding and reinforcement of a religious community and the tools of a particular, coherent tradition. Adherence to a specific religion is not the end of the religious journey, but a home from which to interact in the larger world. .... As inheritors of an ancient heritage, Jews are members of an extended family in pursuit of holy living. When we live with a faith in our people's covenant, we gain purpose. When we respond to God's call we serve as God's partner in completing creation.... As soul work gains importance, Jews will look to find tools and community that are offered by Jewish involvement."
Considering the spiritual emptiness of his environment, the naivity of his questions and the superficial nature of his "proofs" one cannot be surprised at the decidedly obvious nature of his conclusion: "Live now, gratefully and responsibly."
Yes indeedy, all you brothers, sisters and highly evolved beings! Judaism's kewl! Judaism's hip! Judaism's, like, WOW! Here's the proof!
Written with complete candor and impressive scholarship.......2001-01-11
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Living with the Past (50th Anniversary Series)
Manufacturer: Great Books Foundation ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 188032377X |
Book Description
A Great Books Foundation anthology for book discussion groups, including questions for discussion. Since 1947, the publications and shared inquiry method of the Great Books Foundation have helped people around the world organize and maintain thriving book discussion groups. Over the years, countless people have attested that the intellectual exchange fostered by their Great Books groups has been one of the most meaningful experiences of their lives. This is one of nine volumes in the Great Books Foundation's 50th Anniversary Series, inaugurating the next half-century of thoughtful discussion about outstanding works for literature. Each volume consists of short works by classic and modern authors from around the world, and includes prose, poetry, and discussion questions for each selection as well as questions for two novels recommended for book discussion groups.Customer Reviews:
Living with the Past.......2000-08-02
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Metropolitan Philadelphia: Living With the Presence of the Past (Metropolitan Portraits)
Steven Conn Manufacturer: University of Pennsylvania Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 0812219430 |
Book Description
As America's fifth largest city and fourth largest metropolitan region, Philadelphia is tied to its surrounding counties and suburban neighborhoods. It is this vital relationship, suggests Steven Conn, that will make or break greater Philadelphia.The Philadelphia region has witnessed virtually every major political, economic, and social transformation of American life. Having once been an industrial giant, the region is now struggling to fashion a new identity in a postindustrial world. On the one hand, Center City has been transformed into a vibrant hub with its array of restaurants, shops, cultural venues, and restored public spaces. On the other, unchecked suburban sprawl has generated concerns over rising energy costs and loss of agriculture and open spaces. In the final analysis, the region will need a dynamic central city for its future, while the city will also need a healthy sustainable region for its long-term viability.
Central to the identity of a twenty-first century Metropolitan Philadelphia, Conn argues, is the deep and complicated interplay of past and present. Looking at the region through the wide lens of its culture and history, Metropolitan Philadelphia moves seamlessly between past and present. Displaying a specialist's knowledge of the area as well as a deep personal connection to his subject, Conn examines the shifting meaning of the region's history, the utopian impulse behind its founding, the role of the region in creating the American middle class, the regional watershed, and the way art and cultural institutions have given shape to a resident identity.
Impressionistic and beautifully written, Metropolitan Philadelphia will be of great interest to urbanists and at the same time accessible to the wider public intrigued in the rich history and cultural dynamics of this fascinating region. What emerges from the book is a wide-ranging understanding of what it means to say, "I'm from Philadelphia."
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Good short history of Philadelphia.......2007-05-08
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A Woman With a Past, a God With a Future: Embracing God's Transforming Love
Elsa Kok Manufacturer: New Hope ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 1596690011 |
Book Description
For women with troubled pasts, part of becoming a Christian is letting go of poor choices and damaging relationshipssetting a boundary line between their old lives and their new lives. But often the past invades the present, leaving women wounded, full of blame and despair. Elsa Kok, no stranger to a painful past, shows us that God can incorporate the past into a future that exceeds all our expectations.
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The geographical distribution of animals. With a study of the relations of living and extinct faunas as elucidating the past changes of the earth's surface.: Vol. 2
Michigan Historical Reprint Series Manufacturer: Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan Library ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback ASIN: 1425562035 Release Date: 2005-12-21 |
Book Description
This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program.
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The Weight of the Past: Living with History in Mahajanga, Madagascar
Michael Lambek Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback ASIN: 1403960682 |
Book Description
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English 18th century brewing & wine-making: (with some notions from the 1800s) (The Living past)
Manufacturer: Tyndall ProductGroup: Book Binding: Unknown Binding ASIN: 0859490718 |
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Fredericksburg, Texas: Living With the Past
Don Watt , and Lynn Watt Manufacturer: Shearer Publishing ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover ASIN: 0940672421 |
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THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. With a Study of the Relations of Living and Extinct Faunas as Elucidating the Past Changes of the Earth's Surface. Two volume set.
Alfred Russel Wallace Manufacturer: Harper & Brothers ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover ASIN: B000SMZN84 |
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