Have you ever heard the expression “Let your conscience be your guide”? Donnell White is a man determined to ease the guilt of his conscience by volunteering as a mentor at a detention center full of high-risk teens. The message he conveys to them is that the stumbling blocks in their lives can be used as stepping stones to turn things around. Donnell thought he’d seen and heard it all, but one teen named Brandon Bright showed him otherwise. Turns out, Brandon is a roller-coaster ride that Donnell forgot to fasten his seat belt on. In the process of trying to help Brandon turn his life around, Donnell’s life is changed in ways he couldn’t have imagined. In a classic case of the teacher becoming the student, this book brings to life the age-old saying “You’re never too old to learn.”

A novel contribution to the age-old debate about free will versus determinism. Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will—those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.

Do you think you might have ESP? Perhaps you simply wonder about the unexplainable "knowing" we all experience at times. The Conscience Compass reveals much that may surprise you about such "phenomena." Would you attempt to make a voyage across a vast ocean without the help of a directional device? Probably not, but countless numbers of us do just that when we begin life's journey. In the undertaking of such a journey the wise would learn to use a compass and trust in its direction. Encouraged from early life to chase after our dreams and pursue lofty goals we eagerly raise our sails and set out on our voyage. It is not long before we find ourselves adrift, buffeted by waves of disillusionment, disappointment and confusion. Without a good compass we lose our way. Few understand that we are equipped with such a tool from the very start of our journey To operate without the guidance of the conscience is like walking in the darkest night while claiming to see The Conscience Compass was written to help the reader become conscious of the supernatural compass we all possess and its life changing purpose. This book is packed with much to think about and consider, and yet it is written in an easy to read and understand format.

Winner of the 2015 Prix Goncourt, an astounding novel that bridges Europe and the Islamic world Winner of the Prix Goncourt (France), the Leipzig Prize (Germany), Premio Von Rezzori (Italy), shortlisted for the 2017 International Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award As night falls over Vienna, Franz Ritter, an insomniac musicologist, takes to his sickbed with an unspecified illness and spends a restless night drifting between dreams and memories, revisiting the important chapters of his life: his ongoing fascination with the Middle East and his numerous travels to Istanbul, Aleppo, Damascus, and Tehran, as well as the various writers, artists, musicians, academics, orientalists, and explorers who populate this vast dreamscape. At the center of these memories is his elusive, unrequited love, Sarah, a fiercely intelligent French scholar caught in the intricate tension between Europe and the Middle East. With exhilarating prose and sweeping erudition, Mathias Énard pulls astonishing elements from disparate sources—nineteenth-century composers and esoteric orientalists, Balzac and Agatha Christie—and binds them together in a most magical way.

Rounding out its thesis with examples from history and etymology, Paul V. Zylstra's Our Spiritual Compass: The Conscience and Morality describes the immaterial parts of man in general and the conscience in detail as found in the Bible. These concepts are used to describe conflicts with modern philosophy, psychology, the legal system, and modern decision-making techniques and how they are used to condition the conscience to reject morality. Zylstra looks at the effects of government structures and the legal system on the conscience--following this thoughtful guide, lawmakers and jurists alike could make more Christian decisions and rulings. Our Spiritual Compass concludes with a discussion of conscientious objection and the need to protect the conscience of the individual. The book offers a peaceful alternative to counter some devastating effects of political correctness. Our Spiritual Compass is the second in a series of four books for Christian counselors working with people dealing with divorce, addiction, PTSD, and depression.