Offers a holistic approach to spiritual direction and pastoral counseling.

Imagining the Course of Life offers a rich portrait of rural life in contemporary Southeast Asia and an accessible introduction to the complexities of Theravada Buddhism as it is actually lived and experienced. It is both an ethnography of indigenous views of human development and a theoretical consideration of how any ethnopsychology is embedded in society and culture. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in a Shan village in northern Thailand, Nancy Eberhardt illustrates how indigenous theories of the life course are connected to local constructions of self and personhood. In the process, she draws our attention to contrasting models in the Euro-American tradition and invites us to reconsider how we think about the trajectory of a human life. Moving beyond the entrenched categories that can hamper our understanding of other views, Imagining the Course of Life demonstrates the real-life connections between the "religious" and the "psychological." Eberhardt shows how such beliefs and practices are used, sometimes strategically, in people's constructions of themselves, in their interpretations of others' behavior, and in their attempts at social positioning. Individual chapters explore Shan ideas about the overall course of human development, from infancy to old age and beyond, and show how these ideas inform people's understanding of personhood and maturity, gender and social inequality, illness and well-being, emotions and mental health.

The Sutra of Golden Light has captured imaginations for centuries but remains as mysterious as it is beautiful. With skill and clarity, Sangharakshita translates the images and episodes, providing an exploration filled with practical insights. Retaining the magic of the original sutra, he shows how this ancient text can help us through a range of contemporary issues such as ecology and economics, culture, and morality while all the time showing that if we wish to change the world, the most important step we can take is to start with ourselves.

The book raises a broad scope of themes including the intellectual, psychological, cultural, definitional and structural issues that academic instruction librarians face in higher education environments. The chapters in this book represent the voices of eight instruction librarians, including two Immersion faculty members. Other perspectives come from a library dean, a library school faculty member, a library coordinator of school library media certification programs, and a director emerita from a School of Education.

This book presents a state-of-the-art, robust, and adaptable process, the Theory of Being, that offers strategies for working across Difference, and for embarking on constructive dialogue around the issues that drive us apart, both individually and collectively. Whether around racial, gender, and/or social class inequity, core beliefs, uses of power or other points of cultural conflict, this book offers a research-validated approach, developed and refined over twenty years, to engage in difficult dialogues. The Theory of Being includes personal, relational, and community practices that support individuals and communities to better work through the difficult dialogues necessary to transform systems of structural inequity. It describes and offers applications of Being to help the reader understand and apply principles and practices that invite openness to controversy through facilitating deep reflection and shifting the focus of conflict from individuals to centering the issue of contention as a Third Thing about which participants can more safely express experiences and emotions.Via cases and narratives, the editors and contributors demonstrate how, through productively situating feelings of vulnerability and anger, individuals, organizations, and communities can work together to continuously evolve responsive, inclusive, and equitable practices that value social and cultural differences. This book focuses on strategies for the “how” we interact, demonstrating an orientation to process rather than prioritizing outcomes. A process-orientation can increase the quality of interaction between individuals, and the likelihood of traversing problems associated with controversial social difference in ways that result in sustainable strategies to disrupt systems of oppression. A range of applications exemplify this approach throughout the text.The primary audience is higher education leaders and leaders-in-training including student affairs professional staff, campus administrators, higher education and student affairs faculty, and undergraduate and graduate students. However, the approach has broad implications for any persons who want to productively engage across Difference in their personal and/or professional lives.

Research approaches in the field of transpersonal psychology can be transformative for researchers, participants, and the audience of a project. This book offers these transformative approaches to those conducting research across the human sciences and the humanities. Rosemarie Anderson and William Braud first described such methods in Transpersonal Research Methods for the Social Sciences (1998). Since that time, in hundreds of empirical studies, these methods have been tested and integrated with qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method research designs. Anderson and Braud, writing with a contribution from Jennifer Clements, invite scholars to bring multiple ways of knowing and personal resources to their scholarship. While emphasizing established research conventions for rigor, Anderson and Braud encourage researchers to plumb the depths of intuition, imagination, play, mindfulness, compassion, creativity, and embodied writing as research skills. Experiential exercises to help readers develop these skills are provided.

Kristin Neff, Ph.D., says that it’s time to “stop beating yourself up and leave insecurity behind.” Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind offers expert advice on how to limit self-criticism and offset its negative effects, enabling you to achieve your highest potential and a more contented, fulfilled life. More and more, psychologists are turning away from an emphasis on self-esteem and moving toward self-compassion in the treatment of their patients—and Dr. Neff’s extraordinary book offers exercises and action plans for dealing with every emotionally debilitating struggle, be it parenting, weight loss, or any of the numerous trials of everyday living.