This book is a stand-alone guide to, and practices for, Awakening and is composed of poems based on articles in 'Enlightenment Is For All', which are themselves based on new discoveries, replies to questions and internet discussions on Awakening. The thrust of the book is that the initial awakening which reveals that, in essence, we are Pure Awareness is very simple to obtain. Then this needs to be established by repeated awakenings due to the natural tendency to 'nod off' and re-identify oneself as a separate object in a universe of separate objects. When one is awake then anxiety and unnecessary mental suffering disappear, for these are caused by this misidentification which causes us to see each other, and the world, through a murky filter of self-interest, self-concern, self-promotion, self-aggrandizement, self-loathing, the list is almost endless. It is this world-view that causes the anxiety and mental suffering based on concern for the future and feeling we are bound by the past

THE POETRY OF ENLIGHTENMENT contains translations and commentaries of ancient Chinese Ch'an (Zen) masters poems. The poems provide guidance for all students of meditation.

What warranted the skewering of Richard Bentley (whom Rhodri Lewis called “perhaps the most notable—and notorious—scholar ever to have English as a mother tongue”) by two of the literary giants of his day? Kristine Haugen offers a fascinating portrait of Europe’s most infamous classical scholar and the intellectual turmoil he set in motion.

"Nancy's poems are vital reading for anyone exploring or experiencing what we call a nondual perspective but will touch the heart of everyone who loves poetry. Nancy's poetry breaks free of the boundaries of thought and language, revealing our shared dream of life with eyes open wide in wonder, streaming tears of joy and unutterable beauty. This latest collection of poems breaks our hearts open to life, evoking subtle reflections and life-shattering perceptions with original and masterful literary artistry, alive with deftly crafted lines that will take your breath away as they work their way deep into your heart. " The Dream Of Enlightenment And The Wonder Of It All " is a dance of language, a language of the dream we walk through; a vision of the world beheld by eyes ablaze with fire. Nancy sings a song that echoes all that is reflected before us, all that is known and so much that is unknowable and cannot be spoken of in any other way. Poetry is a way of saying what words can otherwise not even hint at, and Nancy's flowing verse is a river that runs through the essence of our human experience, opening the floodgates of unnamed emotions we can only call love; a sense of ineffable wonder and awe at life's mysterious dance that is rarely glimpsed, and far less frequently rendered into words."Miranda Warren

John Keats is generally considered to be the least intellectually sophisticated of all the major Romantic poets, but he was a more serious thinker than either his contemporaries or later scholars have acknowledged. This book provides a major reassessment of Keats's intellectual life by considering his engagement with a formidable body of eighteenth-century thought from the work of Voltaire, Robertson, and Gibbon to Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith.The book re-examines some of Keats's most important poems, including The Eve of St Agnes, Hyperion, Lamia, and Ode to Psyche, in the light of a range of Enlightenment ideas and contexts from literary history and cultural progress to anthropology, political economy, and moral philosophy. By demonstrating that the language and ideas of the Enlightenment played a key role in establishing his poetic agenda, Keats's poetry is shown to be less the expression of an intuitive young genius than the product of the cultural and intellectual contexts of his time.

Thrall examines the deeply ingrained and often unexamined notions of racial difference across time and space. Through a consideration of historical documents and paintings, Natasha Trethewey--Pulitzer-prize winning author of Native Guard--highlight the contours and complexities of her relationship with her white father and the ongoing history of race in America.