From Sigmund Freud's writings on telepathy to secret CIA experiments on remote viewing, from leading-edge neuroscience to the strange world of quantum physics, Dr. Mayer reveals a wealth of credible and fascinating research into the realm where the mind seems to trump the laws of nature. 

Since 1980, depth psychologist Bill Plotkin has been guiding women and men into the wilderness - the redrock canyons and snow-crested mountains of the American West - but also into the wilds of the soul. He calls this work soulcraft. There's a great longing in all people to uncover the secrets and mysteries of our individual lives, to find the unique gift we were born to bring to our communities, and to experience our full membership in the more-than-human world.

Most of us are unable to develop our capacities for love on the only level that really counts — a love that is compounded of maturity, self-knowledge, and courage. Learning to love, like other arts, demands practice and concentration. Even more than any other art, it demands genuine insight and understanding.

The spiritual path is like any other road - it’s going to have its share of potholes and detours. Safe travel requires a quality rarely taught yet critically important in today’s world: discernment. In Eyes Wide Open, Mariana Caplan supports us in cultivating the acute judgment and discrimination that will help us to live a spiritual life with intelligence, clarity, and authenticity. Is enlightenment less about fireworks and bliss and more about dismantling illusions? How do we fully integrate our practice into daily living?

Jack Kornfield's A Path with Heart has been acclaimed as the most significant book yet about American Buddhism, a definitive guide to the practice of traditional mindfulness in America today. On this audio edition, Kornfield teaches the key principles of Buddhism's cherished vipassana (insight) tradition and puts them into direct service, with the unique needs of the contemporary seeker in mind.

Bittersweetness is a tendency to states of long­ing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute aware­ness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world. It recognizes that light and dark, birth and death - bitter and sweet - are forever paired. Susan Cain em­ploys the same mix of research, storytelling, and memoir she used in Quiet to explore why we experience sorrow and longing, and how embracing the bittersweetness at the heart of life is the true path to creativity, con­nection, and transcendence. 

Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight, helping us to discover what matters most. Life and death are a package deal. They cannot be pulled apart, and we cannot truly live unless we are aware of death. The Five Invitations is an exhilarating meditation on the meaning of life and how maintaining an ever-present consciousness of death can bring us closer to our truest selves.

Empaths not only sense other people’s emotions, but also absorb them - sometimes to their own disadvantage, often leading to overwhelming sensory overload and feelings of confusion or low self-esteem. Their willingness to help and please others might make them prey to opportunists or cause them to give away more energy than they can afford.

From multiple New York Times best-selling author, neuroscientist, and "new atheist" Sam Harris, Waking Up is for the 30 percent of Americans who follow no religion, but who suspect that Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi, and the other saints and sages of history could not have all been epileptics, schizophrenics, or frauds.

The relentless pursuit of high self-esteem has become a virtual religion - and a tyrannical one at that. Our ultracompetitive culture tells us we need to be constantly above average to feel good about ourselves, but there is always someone more attractive, successful, or intelligent than we are. And even when we do manage to grab hold of high self-esteem for a brief moment, we can't seem to keep it. Our sense of self-worth goes up and down like a ping-pong ball, rising and falling in lockstep with our latest success or failure.

What does it really mean to be a grown-up in today's world? We assume that once we "get it together" with the right job, marry the right person, have children, and buy a home, all is settled and well. But adulthood presents varying levels of growth and is rarely the respite of stability we expected. Turbulent emotional shifts can take place anywhere between the ages of 35 and 70 when we question the choices we've made, realize our limitations, and feel stuck - commonly known as the "midlife crisis".

What if you could profoundly change your life just by becoming more mindful of your breathing? According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, you can. What if "paying attention on purpose and non-judgmentally" could improve your health? Again, according to Dr. Kabat-Zinn, it can.

In this original and groundbreaking book, Andrew Newberg, M.D., and Mark Robert Waldman turn their attention to the pinnacle of the human experience: enlightenment. Through his brain-scan studies on Brazilian psychic mediums, Sufi mystics, Buddhist meditators, Franciscan nuns, Pentecostals, and participants in secular spirituality rituals, Newberg has discovered the specific neurological mechanisms associated with the enlightenment experience - and how we might activate those circuits in our own brains.

Demystify mysticism and learn techniques to move yourself beyond emotional and intellectual blocks into a realm of clear insight and inner peace. In this complete curriculum for self-investigation Shinzen Young - one of America's foremost meditation teachers - covers traditional teachings, scientific insights, and practical instruction to show you exactly how enlightenment works, and how to begin your own journey to inner liberation. Topics include concentration, awareness, and merging techniques to explore the self and the world around you, how spiritual practices work in Buddhism, Christianity, Jewish mysticism, Sufism, Hinduism, shamanism, and many other mystical traditions, as well as 6 complete guided meditation sessions and a host of insights on how to choose and establish your own meditation practice.

Evolving Dharma is the definitive guide to the meditation revolution. Fearless, unorthodox, and irreverent scholar and activist Jay Michaelson shows how meditation and mindfulness have moved from ashrams and self-help groups to classrooms and hospitals and offers unusually straight talk about the “Big E” - enlightenment. Michaelson introduces us to maverick brain hackers, postmodern Buddhist monks, and cutting-edge neuroscientists and shares his own stories of months-long silent retreats, powerful mystical experiences, and many pitfalls along the way.