Probing the Mind to Free the Soul

Probing the Mind to Free the Soul PDF Author: Stephen G. Fowler
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1498243320
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 211

Book Description
Christian theology presents an overly simplistic portrayal of the mind and nature of man, his needs, his longings, his beliefs and his aspirations for God. A psychoanalytic protest theology aims at bringing psychoanalytic complexity regarding the mind to theology. Organized Christianity has failed to account for how the unconscious influences interpretations of Scripture and also how application of Scripture to lived life can be damaging if complex unconscious factors are not considered in theology. This book attempts to employ psychoanalytic insights in the exploration of critically important themes addressed by theology. Among them: morality and conscience, autonomy and destiny, and relationship and sexuality, including the sexuality of God, suffering, and law, along with its correlation with death. This is intended to serve an integrative constructive purpose. Both classical psychoanalysis and Christian Scriptures conceptualize sexuality in its large sense as residing at the core of the mind of mankind. Christianity has tended to cope with sexuality by adopting a notion of attainable sexual purity, a myth that this work seeks to expose and dismantle, with a view to enabling the church to more effectively and compassionately engage with real people whose sexuality is characteristically complicated and troublesome.

Anatomy of the Soul

Anatomy of the Soul PDF Author: Curt Thompson
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
ISBN: 1414334141
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Book Description
Do you want to improve your relationships and experience lasting personal change? Join Curt Thompson, M.D., on an amazing journey to discover the surprising pathways for transformation hidden inside your own mind. Integrating new findings in neuroscience and attachment with Christian spirituality, Dr. Thompson reveals how it is possible to rewire your mind, altering your brain patterns and literally making you more like the person God intended you to be. Explaining discoveries about the brain in layman’s terms, he shows how you can be mentally transformed through spiritual practices, interaction with Scripture, and connections with other people. He also provides practical exercises to help you experience healing in areas where you’ve been struggling. Insightful and challenging, "Anatomy of the Soul" illustrates how learning about one of God’s most miraculous creations—your brain—can enrich your life, your relationships, and your impact on the world around you.

The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul

The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul PDF Author: Paul M. Churchland
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262531429
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
This work summarizes results from neuroscience and recent work with artificial neural networks that together suggest a unified set of answers to questions about how the brain actually works; how it sustains a thinking, feeling, dreaming self; and how it sustains a self-conscious person.

The Mind's I

The Mind's I PDF Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780710803528
Category : Artificial intelligence
Languages : en
Pages : 501

Book Description


Phantoms in the Brain

Phantoms in the Brain PDF Author: V. S. Ramachandran
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0688172172
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran is internationally renowned for uncovering answers to the deep and quirky questions of human nature that few scientists have dared to address. His bold insights about the brain are matched only by the stunning simplicity of his experiments -- using such low-tech tools as cotton swabs, glasses of water and dime-store mirrors. In Phantoms in the Brain, Dr. Ramachandran recounts how his work with patients who have bizarre neurological disorders has shed new light on the deep architecture of the brain, and what these findings tell us about who we are, how we construct our body image, why we laugh or become depressed, why we may believe in God, how we make decisions, deceive ourselves and dream, perhaps even why we're so clever at philosophy, music and art. Some of his most notable cases: A woman paralyzed on the left side of her body who believes she is lifting a tray of drinks with both hands offers a unique opportunity to test Freud's theory of denial. A man who insists he is talking with God challenges us to ask: Could we be "wired" for religious experience? A woman who hallucinates cartoon characters illustrates how, in a sense, we are all hallucinating, all the time. Dr. Ramachandran's inspired medical detective work pushes the boundaries of medicine's last great frontier -- the human mind -- yielding new and provocative insights into the "big questions" about consciousness and the self.

Mind and Cosmos

Mind and Cosmos PDF Author: Thomas Nagel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199919755
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 141

Book Description
The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.

Yoga Journal

Yoga Journal PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 148

Book Description
For more than 30 years, Yoga Journal has been helping readers achieve the balance and well-being they seek in their everyday lives. With every issue,Yoga Journal strives to inform and empower readers to make lifestyle choices that are healthy for their bodies and minds. We are dedicated to providing in-depth, thoughtful editorial on topics such as yoga, food, nutrition, fitness, wellness, travel, and fashion and beauty.

God Hides in Plain Sight

God Hides in Plain Sight PDF Author: Dean Nelson
Publisher: Brazos Press
ISBN: 1587432331
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
This colorful, story-driven introduction to sacramental living offers a way to see the presence of God amid the chaos and monotony of everyday life.

Spirit-identity

Spirit-identity PDF Author: William Stainton Moses
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Spiritualism
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Book Description


Nature and the Human Soul

Nature and the Human Soul PDF Author: Bill Plotkin
Publisher: New World Library
ISBN: 1577313542
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 530

Book Description
Addressing the pervasive longing for meaning and fulfillment in this time of crisis, Nature and the Human Soul introduces a visionary ecopsychology of human development that reveals how fully and creatively we can mature when soul and wild nature guide us. Depth psychologist and wilderness guide Bill Plotkin presents a model for a human life span rooted in the cycles and qualities of the natural world, a blueprint for individual development that ultimately yields a strategy for cultural transformation. If it is true, as Plotkin and others observe, that we live in a culture dominated by adolescent habits and desires, then the enduring societal changes we so desperately need won’t happen until we individually and collectively evolve into an engaged, authentic adulthood. With evocative language and personal stories, including those of elders Thomas Berry and Joanna Macy, this book defines eight stages of human life — Innocent, Explorer, Thespian, Wanderer, Soul Apprentice, Artisan, Master, and Sage — and describes the challenges and benefits of each. Plotkin offers a way of progressing from our current egocentric, aggressively competitive, consumer society to an ecocentric, soul-based one that is sustainable, cooperative, and compassionate. At once a primer on human development and a manifesto for change, Nature and the Human Soul fashions a template for a more mature, fulfilling, and purposeful life — and a better world.