Standing on a high wilderness ridge in northern New Mexico, Blaine Wells, a self-imposed hermit after the horrifying murders of his wife and daughter, is torn from an almost hypnotic absorption with the natural beauty around him by the sputtering engines of a small plane. The helpless aircraft, a fragment of society hurtling into his private paradise, both startles and angers him.With conflicting feelings, he seeks the crash site where he nurtures the survivors and fights those who would serve their selfish desires at the expense of those less capable. Blaine soon devises a means for their rescue and when a helicopter disappears into the distance with the survivors, he finds himself alone once again. During the trek back to his cabin and throughout the long harsh winter, he often thinks of the young girl who lost her father and the elderly woman whose husband was killed.Later, responding to the girl's need for help, he leaves the wilderness. While helping her, he contacts his sister-in-law and her husband whom he has not seen since his family's funeral. To his astonishment, he learns that he has inherited 700 acres of ranch land from his late wife. Meanwhile, the eventual healing of the young girl triggers feelings and emotions that challenge those stirred by the beauty and contentment of his mountain retreat. Will he reenter society or return to his beloved wilderness?

A Zen teacher explains that true happiness can only be found by dropping our ideas about happiness—and learning to live fully and fearlessly in the moment Many books have been published in recent years on happiness. Ezra Bayda, a remarkably down-to-earth Zen teacher, believes that the happiness “boom” has been largely a bust for readers. Why? Because it's precisely the pursuit of happiness that keeps us trapped in cycles of dissatisfaction and suffering. In Beyond Happiness, Bayda draws on Zen teachings to question our conventional notions about what happiness is and where we can find it. Most of us seek happiness in things that are external to us. We imagine that getting more money, a better relationship, or going on a nice vacation will finally make us happy. But Bayda shows us that the deepest and most lasting form of happiness does not rely on external circumstance at all. Bayda offers Zen insights and practices that point readers toward the true sources of lasting happiness: mindfulness, compassion, gratitude, and generosity.

As Britain's best-known headmaster, Sir Anthony famously introduced happiness, or well-being, lessons at his school, Wellington College. In 2011, he co-founded Action for Happiness, a body to raise awareness of the discovery of happiness and reduction of depression, whose influence is growing rapidly in Britain and across the world. In this book Anthony Seldon distinguishes between pleasure, happiness and joy, and offers an original 8-step approach on how to make our lives far more meaningful and rewarding. The pursuit of happiness can all too easily become a trap which seduces us into thinking there is no more to life than being happy. In fact, the author is highly critical of 'positive psychology' and other dominant schools of thought. In fact, we need to reach beyond this if we are to access the deepest levels of human experience open to us, and find our own unique path in life. The author offers a further 5 steps, which point the way to accessing these deeper levels of experience, which alone result in the joyful life which is our birthright. Paradoxically, as this book demonstrates, stepping off the happiness treadmill will ultimately make for a happier and more fulfilled life. It is time to go beyond happiness.

The world has become increasingly separated into the haves and have-nots. In The Culture of Contentment, renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith shows how a contented class—not the privileged few but the socially and economically advantaged majority—defend their comfortable status at a cost. Middle-class voting against regulation and increased taxation that would remedy pressing social ills has created a culture of immediate gratification, leading to complacency and hampering long-term progress. Only economic disaster, military action, or the eruption of an angry underclass seem capable of changing the status quo. A groundbreaking critique, The Culture of Contentment shows how the complacent majority captures the political process and determines economic policy.

Do you find happiness eluding you, despite your successes? Is contentment missing in your life? Only the ancient, time-tested Spiritual Science of India has answers to why we find our lives meaningless and how to discover meaning in life. It is relevant any day including the current time because it clearly articulates the unflinching higher goal that we all hope to achieve but don’t know what it is. When we connect with the higher goal, everything else we do has a purpose and meaning. Yet, the wisdom of the Gita and Upanishads is either confusing or difficult to apply in our personal circumstances. Partly because we have lost the ability to understand the subtle aspect of the deep knowledge and because we also misconstrue the scriptures as ‘religious’ and ‘not scientific’. To be truly scientific is to test out the hypothesis before discarding it as irrelevant. The book is easy to read based on the author's personal transformation journey while he tested out the hypothesis with scientific rigor. The genesis of the book was to create a ready reckoner of a happiness framework that could be applied to modern life, based on the time-tested principles from Spiritual Science. The book also shares how one can apply irrefutable spiritual concepts in the form of practical daily exercises – sadhana, that not only improve one’s physical and mental health but also helps to lead a harmonious, happy and contented life.

Many individuals have had their dreams and hopes in life shattered by physical or emotional trauma. While healing is critically important (and Dr. Ziegler has explored this process in his previous books), this work explores ways of moving beyond healing in order to experience a truly fulfilling life. It takes a close, critical look at many of our beliefs about human limitations and offers an undeniable message of hope--hope for those individuals who have paid such a high price for past abuse and trauma, and hope for our future and the possibility of reaching both our individual and collective human potential.--From publisher description.

What do you do when you realise that, even though you have everything youve always wanted, youre still unhappy? How do you stop your eternal search for happiness? How do you find lifelong bliss, love, and joy, and move your life beyond happiness too? In Beyond Happiness, author and master healer Marnie McDermott reveals the answers to these questions and more. In this deeply personal account, she shares lessons, wisdom, and insight that touches the heart and inspires the spirit with the twelve principles of enduring bliss. For ten years, she searched in vain for happiness, only to find that the more successful she was, the more money she earned, the more things she had (and the more she strived to have), the more miserable she grew. She was a successful corporate communication specialist who had the world at her feet. But when she lost everythingexcept her lifein a devastating house fire, her priorities shifted. Now, in Beyond Happiness, she demonstrates that what we all really crave is lasting happiness of the soul. Driven to rediscover happiness and find enduring bliss, she studied alternative health and mind-body principles, immersing herself in esoteric wisdom. By following what she calls the gentle knowing in her heart, she left the corporate world behind for the mysterious world of healers, mystics, and angels. Within Beyond Happiness, the keys to lifelong bliss, love, happiness, and joy for all who wish to move their lives beyond happiness await.