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Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Abolitionist Donaldina Cameron was a courageous, compassionate zealot who is credited with rescuing some 3,000 people from slavery and breaking the back of the Chinese slave trade in the U.S.

Donaldina Cameron barged into brothels and uncovered hidden trap doors to find the terrified teenage girls held behind them. She stood up to threats from the gangs who made money from trafficking in Chinese slavery. She raised hundreds of girls in the mission house, wiping away tears, giving in to requests for midnight snacks, and gradually training previous enslaved young women to live on their own. She advocated in the courts on their behalf.

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Buddhist Pronoia

The Wise Heart by Jack Kornfield

You have within you unlimited capacities for extraordinary love, for joy, for communion with life, and for unshakable freedom.

So says Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield and my co-conspirator in spreading pronoia. His book The Wise Heart provides practices in how to fully awaken that good stuff.

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A new book that provides a flood of evidence that pronoia is a perfectly rational philosophy: Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think

See the video by the author as he explains why and how the world is getting better and better:

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Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide by Joshua S. Goldstein

Read the newspapers, and you’ll think that war is worse than ever. But as the book “Winning the War on War” shows, the reality is just the opposite. We are in the midst of a decline in armed conflict that is extraordinary in human history. Global peacekeeping efforts are working; large-scale looting, sexual assault, and genocidal atrocities are being stopped. 2010 had one of the lowest death rates from war.

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An Alternate History of Heroes

Calendar of Jubilee Saints

Hundreds of radical cultural and political heroes are celebrated here, along with the animating idea that guides this project — the pleasure of overthrowing the Planetary Work Machine.

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Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition by Charles Eisenstein

The book presents a vision about our money system that is original yet commonsense, radical yet gentle, and increasingly relevant as the crises of our civilization deepen. How can you live according to your ideals in a world seemingly ruled by money?

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The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker

Many people think we live in the most violent age ever. But this book shows the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia. For most of history, war, slavery, infanticide, child abuse, pogroms, gruesome punishments, and genocide were ordinary features of life. But today, these have all dwindled and are widely condemned.

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No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life by Thich Nhat Hanh. Is it possible to live a life unfettered by fear?

Zen master Nhat Hanh turns his hard-earned wisdom as a survivor of war, persecution, and exile to the age-old dilemma of what happens when one dies. If the greatest fear is, as he suggests, that one becomes nothing, then how is one to live with this threat of complete annihilation? Using Buddhist parables and anecdotes, Nhat Hanh offers an alternative perspective. Buddhists see birth and death as mere concepts, not manifestations of reality. When someone dies, they are still with us, just in a different form. In this view, a continuation, a connection between people and nature persists because time is understood as being circular: nothing begins; nothing ends; it just is.

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Our Pronoiac Heroes, Part 3

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

In fairy-tale justice, as in the deep psyche, kindness to that which seems less is rewarded by good, and refusal to do good for one who is not beautiful is reviled and punished. When we enlarge ourselves to touch the not-beautiful, we are rewarded. If we spurn the not-beautiful, we are severed from life and left out in the cold.

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Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology by David Abram – learning from all the other intelligences that share this planet with us.

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A Complete Guide to the Soul

There is an aspect to the question of what the soul is which is startling and strange, but so widespread that it cannot be avoided. It is connected to the popular idea that we all have a guardian angel. According to a US poll in the 1990s, sixty-nine per cent of Americans believe in angels. Forty-six per cent have their own guardian angels and thirty-two per cent have felt an angelic presence.

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Brave New Prayers by Hunter Reynolds

Here’s the blurb that I wrote for Hunter’s fantastic book:

Hunter Reynolds’ Brave New Prayers is the single best collection of prayers I’ve ever found. And by best, I mean holiest, rowdiest, truest, and most intimately aligned with the tricky nature of the Divine Wow. I’m keeping his book beneath my pillow, sandwiched between Rumi and Hafiz, so I can soak up its tonic effervescence while I dream.

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Association For The Betterment Of Sex

Shouldn’t we all be laughing more while we have sex? (May not be safe for work))

Sex has notoriously been a difficult, dare we say “touchy,” subject to discuss, so for generations there have been guidebooks about human sexuality such as the classic “Our Bodies Our Selves.” Now, from writer Mike Sacks (McSweeney’s, Vanity Fair) and his comedy-writing group “The Pleasure Syndicate”, consisting of Scott Jacobson (“The Daily Show”), Todd Levin (“The Tonight Show”), Jason Roeder (The Onion), and Ted Travelstead (Esquire) comes “Sex: Our Bodies, Our Junk,” a humorous sexual guidebook for the 21st century.

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The Improving State of the World: Why We’re Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet by Indur M. Goklany

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A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink

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The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin

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The book about the company that guarantees its workers jobs for life.

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Cynic’s Guide to a Rich, Full Life

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Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World

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The Secret History of Dreaming by Robert Moss

After escaping from slavery in 1849, Harriet Tubman helped organize the Underground Railroad and personally led 300 slaves to freedom. Few history books note that she relied on her dreams to provide specific information about where to find safe houses, helpers, and passages through dangerous territory.

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