Mystic, teacher, and therapist Dr Joseph Randolph Bowers reveals the secrets of solitary life, contemplation, and enlightenment. Like a master weaver and guru Dr Bowers teaches the reader how to experience relief from suffering and how to attain awakening in freedom, mindfulness, and true joy. Seekers on the way will want to learn how to create your own 'rule of life' and how to nurture life-long vow practices that grow with you and that match your values and aspirations. Be forewarned, this knowledge of the ages can change you forever. Made for the western mind this is a modern secular synergy of Christian, Franciscan, Buddhist, Hindu, Mi'kmaq First Nation, Science, and Zen traditions. 'Solitude Awakens: The Heart Forest Mountain Way' is like a modern Lotus Flower Sutra of the Bodhisattva of Compassion in a clear and practical wisdom.

A guidebook for the soul. Learn to develop your spiritual strengths. Activate your experiential learning. Integrate your knowledge into practice. An experiential eightfold path follows the sacred wisdom of native and western mysticism. Learn hidden secrets of personal potential and spiritual power. Actively become conscious. Make decisions about growth and life. Regain the spirit of youth. Enkindle the Elder. Acknowledge personal strength. Attend to weakness with compassion. Come to terms with identity and place. Exercise pathwork to discover inner purpose. Define transformation. Come to terms with destiny. With over thirty-five years of intensive searching, the author shares many ancient secrets of the mystical life woven into a modern and balanced psychology. Now in second edition. Completely accessible. Profoundly life changing for people new to personal growth. Inspiring. A touchstone for those further along the path of enlightenment.

A fresh translation of the classical Buddhist poetry of Saigyō, whose aesthetics of nature, love, and sorrow came to epitomize the Japanese poetic tradition. Saigyō, the Buddhist name of Fujiwara no Norikiyo (1118–1190), is one of Japan’s most famous and beloved poets. He was a recluse monk who spent much of his life wandering and seeking after the Buddhist way. Combining his love of poetry with his spiritual evolution, he produced beautiful, lyrical lines infused with a Buddhist perception of the world. Gazing at the Moon presents over one hundred of Saigyō’s tanka—traditional 31-syllable poems—newly rendered into English by renowned translator Meredith McKinney. This selection of poems conveys Saigyō’s story of Buddhist awakening, reclusion, seeking, enlightenment, and death, embodying the Japanese aesthetic ideal of mono no aware—to be moved by sorrow in witnessing the ephemeral world.