It took me awhile to understand that I was on a spiritual path. I started out as an actor, and working in the theater brought me joy. But as time passed, and I turned to writing novels, the same questions kept emerging: “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” I began to see that I was on a spiritual journey. With A Poet of the Invisible World, I finally felt ready to write about that journey. Nouri’s adventures chart the twists and turns—as well as the deep rewards—of the spiritual path. It’s a book that’s very close to my heart.
A Poet of the Invisible World is the story of Nouri, a boy born in thirteenth century Persia with four ears instead of two. Orphaned as an infant, he’s taken into a Sufi order, where he meets an assortment of dervishes and embarks on a path towards spiritual awakening. As he journeys to the lavish court of a Spanish sultan, the barren farm of a mountain shepherd, a bustling city on the north coast of Africa, and an ascetic monastery high in the mountains, he faces a series of trials that shatter his inner obstacles—and leads him on toward transcendence.
Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha is the story of a young Brahmin boy who abandons the comfort of his wealthy family to seek illumination. Written in rich, seductive prose, it helps the reader to understand that the spiritual journey doesn’t prevent the seeker from living. Siddhartha lives fully—which allows him to release the things of this world and find salvation. One of the greatest lessons of the novel is that there are no shortcuts on the spiritual path. You will lose and find your way many times. What matters is that you don’t give up.
Here the spirituality of the East and the West have met in a novel that enfigures deep human wisdom with a rich and colorful imagination.
Written in a prose of almost biblical simplicity and beauty, it is the story of a soul's long quest in search of he ultimate answer to the enigma of man's role on this earth. As a youth, the young Indian Siddhartha meets the Buddha but cannot be content with a disciple's role: he must work out his own destiny and solve his own doubt-a tortuous road that carries him through the sensuality of a love…
The hero of Somerset Maugham’sThe Razor’s Edge, Larry Darrell, is a classic seeker. Crushed by his time in the war, he leaves his family and fiancé behind and heads to Paris—then Germany—and finally India. He’s not really sure what he’s looking for, but he knows that the answers lie down a path far different from the one he’s left behind. Larry’s friends back home feel sure that he’s lost his way; only when their own worlds begin to crumble do they start to realize what he’s attained. The Razor’s Edge makes it clear that the spiritual journey may lead you far from what’s familiar to you. But the journey is worth every sacrifice.
Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of this spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham's most brillant characters - his fiancee Isabel, whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliot Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. The most ambitious of Maugham's novels, this is also one in which Maugham himself plays a considerable part as he wanders in and out of the story, to observe his characters struggling with their fates.
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson is one of literature’s most intimate records of the struggle to know God. Emily Dickinson spent most of her life in Amherst, Massachusetts, in the Calvinist home where she grew up. But while she eventually drifted away from organized faith, she found God in other ways: “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church/ I keep it, staying at Home.” Like so many spiritual seekers, Dickinson experienced doubt: “Of Course—I prayed—/ And did God care?” Yet her faith persisted: “I know that He exists/ Somewhere—in silence—”. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson reveals the seeker’s need to move beyond forms. And it shows how God, in the end, permeates everything.
Though generally overlooked during her lifetime, Emily Dickinson's poetry has achieved acclaim due to her experiments in prosody, her tragic vision and the range of her emotional and intellectual explorations.
There are no other poems like Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Lyrical and intense, they express the poet’s struggle with existence, and his deep belief in the transformative power of suffering. Rilke asks the question that all spiritual seekers ask: “Look, I live. And for what?” He offers the answer that we live to strengthen the soul. In the Duino Elegies, Rilke encourages the reader to use his or her suffering to become closer to God. Reading his work helps the seeker to understand that the spiritual journey is on a larger scale than that of one’s fleeting life.
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic orders? and even if one of them pressed me suddenly to his heart: I'd be consumed in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we can just barely endure, and we stand in awe of it as it coolly disdains to destroy us. Every angel is terrifying. -from "The First Elegy"
Over the last fifteen years, in his two volumes of New Poems as well as in The Book of Images and Uncollected Poems, Edward Snow has emerged as one of Rainer Maria…
Peter Ouspensky’sIn Search of the Miraculous is an inspiring record of the author’s spiritual quest. Published in 1949, just after the author’s death, it recounts the time he spent with the great spiritual teacher George Gurdjieff. In Search of the Miraculous presents Gurdjieff’s system—“The Fourth Way”—as a kind of golden thread that runs through all spiritual teachings. For some, his ideas seem too scientific to lead to enlightenment. But Ouspensky suggests that all paths lead to the same destination: consciousness, presence, God. If you feel the need to shake off the ancient traditions,In Search of the Miraculous may be the perfect map for your spiritual quest.
My life and work have been profoundly affected by the central circumstance of my existence: I was born into a very large military Catholic family in the United States of America. As a child surrounded by many others in the 60s, I wrote, performed, and directed family plays with my numerous brothers and sisters. Although I fell in love with a Canadian and moved to Canada, my family of origin still exerts considerable personal influence. My central struggle, coming from that place of chaos, order, and conformity, is to have the courage to live an authentic life based on my own experience of connectedness and individuality, to speak and be heard.
Trapped in her enormous, devout Catholic family in 1963, Annie creates a hilarious campaign of lies when the pope dies and their family friend, Cardinal Stefanucci, is unexpectedly on the shortlist to be elected the first American pope.
Driven to elevate her family to the holiest of holy rollers in the parish, Annie is tortured by her own dishonesty. But when “The Hands” visits her in her bed and when her sister finds herself facing a scandal, Annie discovers her parents will do almost anything to uphold their reputation and keep their secrets safe.
Questioning all she has believed and torn between her own gut instinct and years of Catholic guilt, Annie takes courageous risks to wrest salvation from the tragic sequence of events set in motion by her parents’ betrayal.
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