The Inner Alphabet offers a spiritual approach for learning the ABCs. While most alphabet books are externally focused, The Inner Alphabet is internally focused. Each letter has a word and corresponding statement to help children understand the word’s meaning. The age-appropriate statements are intended to be conversation starters for adults to teach children about the mind-set and choices that form the foundation for healthy, balanced living. For instance, A is for “Appreciation,” encouraging kids to look for things to appreciate. The letter B is for “Body;” children have bodies, but they also have souls. C is for “Confidence;” children should believe in themselves and know they are capable, and so on. This book is an excellent tool for adults who want children to develop the habit of being self-aware, which is a key component to social and emotional well being. Not only does The Inner Alphabet guide children on a path to self-realization, but it also builds literacy and vocabulary skills. Help your child learn the ABCs of authentic and happy living. It’s an alphabet book for the soul!

This book-length meditation on the Hebrew alphabet offers profound insights into many important ideas found in Jewish thought. From time immemorial, the Hebrew alphabet has been considered to be more than a collection of individual letters. Indeed, the essence of each letter of the Hebrew alphabet can be seen as a fundamental building block of the world. Jewish scholars throughout the ages have meditated on these letters, deriving spiritual inspiration in the process. In The Inner Meaning of the Hebrew Letters, Robert M. Haralick looks closely at each of the Hebrew characters, helping us to gain insight from this remarkable tradition. Drawing primarily upon traditional kabbalistic and chasidic thought, Haralick combines his own insights with those of great Jewish personalities such as Moshe Chayim Luzzatto and Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, as well as drawing upon classical texts, including the Bahir, the Zohar, the Midrash, and the Talmud. One of Haralick's main sources of inspiration is the ancient Jewish art of gematria, where each letter has a numerical value as does each combination of letters. Through this traditional methodology, Haralick shows his readers the many, often dazzling, ways that the Hebrew alphabet has been examined.

Sefer Yetzirah (the "Book of Creation"), one of the earliest Kabbalistic works, teaches that the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are the building blocks of creation. Each letter has its own significance, spiritual energy, and reason for existing. In this revised version of Rabbi Ginsburgh's best-selling The Alef-Beit, Jewish Thought Revealed Through the Hebrew Letters, he explains how each letter's name, form, and numerical value play a role in the creative process of the cosmos. He draws on the understandings of the well-known mystic, the Baal Shem Tov, in depicting how each letter has nine dimensions, with impact in three worlds--the physical, spiritual, and Divine. In every letter there is the true completion of the soul, a chance to unite consciousness with the code of creation. Includes glossary, footnotes, and index.

"My Moms was a good person. She cared, but she just couldn't hack us no more. She kept saying she gonna kill herself, too. The day she died, she told me that my father hit her, and I told her, That was good for you, for not cooking for him. And she left. I didn't know she took the pills, though. The next day, they told me she was dead."--Pistol This searing portrait of inner-city life takes us inside one of America's deadly urban battlefronts--the Puerto Rican neighborhood of Alphabet City on New York's Lower East Side. With unnerving clarity, Geoffrey Biddle shows us the people who live there, summoning their spirit against the brutalizing conditions of poverty, joblessness, drugs, crime, and violence. Capturing life in this ghetto on film and in words with rawness and compassion, he shows the human toll of impoverishment and neglect. In 1977 Geoffrey Biddle photographed the residents of Alphabet City for the first time. Ten years later, he returned to this same area and photographed many of the same people again, this time also interviewing them. Alphabet City is the result of those encounters. While the stories are unique, they coalesce into a single tale all the more jarring for the matter-of-fact tone in which it is told. There is Ariel, whose dreams of becoming a boxer were destroyed when he contracted AIDS. And Linda, raising three sons while sleeping in the street, hungry and drug-addicted. There are also tales of human resilience like Richard's, a defiant former gang member who now attends college. These stories belong not only to one New York neighborhood, but to urban ghettos across the United States. Framed by Miguel Algarn's compelling introduction and dramatized by the speakers' own testimony, Geoffrey Biddle's photographs are haunting portrayals of a ravaged community battling ineffectually against deprivation and betrayal. This book forces us to see faces and to hear voices that won't be easy to forget, and yet which in the end are not so different from our own. "My Moms was a good person. She cared, but she just couldn't hack us no more. She kept saying she gonna kill herself, too. The day she died, she told me that my father hit her, and I told her, That was good for you, for not cooking for him. And she left. I didn't know she took the pills, though. The next day, they told me she was dead."--Pistol This searing portrait of inner-city life takes us inside one of America's deadly urban battlefronts--the Puerto Rican neighborhood of Alphabet City on New York's Lower East Side. With unnerving clarity, Geoffrey Biddle shows us the people who live there, summoning their spirit against the brutalizing conditions of poverty, joblessness, drugs, crime, and violence. Capturing life in this ghetto on film and in words with rawness and compassion, he shows the human toll of impoverishment and neglect. In 1977 Geoffrey Biddle photographed the residents of Alphabet City for the first time. Ten years later, he returned to this same area and photographed many of the same people again, this time also interviewing them. Alphabet City is the result of those encounters. While the stories are unique, they coalesce into a single tale all the more jarring for the matter-of-fact tone in which it is told. There is Ariel, whose dreams of becoming a boxer were destroyed when he contracted AIDS. And Linda, raising three sons while sleeping in the street, hungry and drug-addicted. There are also tales of human resilience like Richard's, a defiant former gang member who now attends college. These stories belong not only to one New York neighborhood, but to urban ghettos across the United States. Framed by Miguel Algarn's compelling introduction and dramatized by the speakers' own testimony, Geoffrey Biddle's photographs are haunting portrayals of a ravaged community battling ineffectually against deprivation and betrayal. This book forces us to see faces and to hear voices that won't be easy to forget, and yet which in the end are not so different from our own.

This is a Kriya Yoga book intended to be read and practised by everyone, with/without initiation. Every word uttered by a Yogi has a special meaning that is totally unintelligible to even the highly intellectual people. This book is written in such a way that everyone can follow it up while trading the path of Kriya. People think that they are very intelligent, but if they try to understand very seriously, they realize perfectly that nothing is happening according to their intellect. Only those whose breath is not blowing in the left or right nostril are intelligent in this world. When breathing is faster, then in one day and one night respiration can flow up to 113,680 times. Normally during the same time, the figure is 21,600 times. During a day and night, if respiration is faster than usual, the breath can flow in and out 113,680 times. Normally, in the course of a day and night, there are 21,600 breaths. This figure is reduced by Kriya practice to 2,000 times. So, breathing 1,000 times in the day and 1,000 times in the night, in a normal course, provides greater Tranquility to a Yogi. One of his breaths takes about 44 seconds. Such a Yogi is matured in Kriya practice. Thoughts are inseparably related to breathing. So, when the number of breaths is reduced, thoughts are reduced proportionately. Eventually, with the tranquilization of breath, thoughts are dissolved. Thereby, the seeker can attain the After-effect-poise of Kriya, or eternal Tranquility, which is Amrita, nectar proper.