The Stages in Our Life Journey

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Year:
Pages:268
ISBN:1-4955-1267-3
978-1-4955-1267-4
Price:$49.95 + shipping
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This is a softcover book.

"On days of uncertainty about life and death, existential insecurity, and the essential void within, I would read a few pages from Chodron and go on my walking meditation in nature. The good nun was a wonderful guide on my journey, but the old Catholic, Jansenistic roots ran deep in the soil. My religious neurosis. My default position. Simply my old habits. ...My Jansenistic curse, I surmised, could be a gem with an outer hard shell. I looked for a guide who could crack it open. ...Doing what I have to do. Waiting, walking, and breathing. Just being aware that I am, not what I am." -Aloysius Michael

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Stages of Life
Abominations or Blessings
Slaying the Ego
Know Thy Self
Life and Death
Poets, Mystics, and Death
Chapter Two: The First Half of Life
Garden of Eden
Paradise Lost
Growing up with the Container
Academic Pursuits
From the Ethical to the Eternal
Chapter Three: The Second Half of Life
Seeing the First through the Second Half of Life
Chapter Four: Intrusions of the Second in the First Half
Experience of Death and Predestination
Experience of Silence
The First Real Tragedy
The Hindu and Christian Saints
Buddhist Retreat
Accidental Meditation Guide
All Action, No Contemplation
Something Unusual and Strange
Chapter Five: The Second Journey in the Second Half of Life
Giving up Identities
Fork in the Road: The Second Half of Life
Saints, Sages, and Mystics
Mother Teresa
Mahatma Gandhi
Back to the Lives of Saints
Caste, Color, and Spirituality
Ramana Maharshi
Seekers Flocking to the Sage
Teaching Indians and Foreigners
Animals, his Fellow Pilgrims
Rishi Ramana and the Saint from Assisi
Ramana Maharshi, a Real Guru
Abishiktananda, Ramana's Disciple
Hindu Noviciate
From Duality to Non-duality
An Adviatic Brahmin from Punjab
Affirmation and Negation
Chapter Six: The Second Half of Life
Rules for the Second Half
Austerity and Penance (Tapas)
Reaching an Impasse
A Guru Appears
The Naked Now
Present Moment and Consciousness
a=/=x
Consciousness and Quantum Theory
Quantum Theory and Goswami
Consciousness and The Cloud of Unknowing
Important Points from The Cloud of Unknowing
Secular Spirituality
Chapter Seven: What About Ordinary People?
Life Lived, not Analysed
Sense of Community
Acts of Kindness
Giving and Forgiving
Nameless Aunt
Working in Silence and Wonder
Memories of Her Wisdom

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