New Book on Facing Death without Fear

New Book Starts an Interfaith Conversation to Reflect on Dying with Practices, Meditations, Life Review Exercises

We’ve noticed in the recent reviews for this new book on Amazon.com that people are touched by the deaths of Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett Majors and Ed McMann—noting how easily and superficially we discuss the deaths of celebrities. Yet when faced with terminal illness such as cancer, unexpected deaths of our loved ones, or facing the idea our own deaths, we are unable to get past our own fears.

What if we could ponder our own wishes and worries about dying by talking with some of the wisest elders in America?  Living Fully, Dying Well: Reflecting on Death to Find Your Life’s Meaning (Sounds True, June 2009)—co-authored by Edward Bastian and Tina Staley and edited by Netanel Miles-Yepez—opens the topic by inviting readers to join a conversation, as if sitting at the kitchen table with this wise group of spiritual elders and renowned medical experts. By “listening” to them talk about their personal stories and professional experiences surrounding death and dying, readers have a chance to ease into their own questions, fears, and answers. 

What if we could ponder our own wishes and worries about dying by talking with some of the wisest elders in America? A new book offers readers that chance. Living Fully, Dying Well: Reflecting on Death to Find Your Life’s Meaning (Sounds True, June 2009)—co-authored by Edward Bastian and Tina Staley and edited by Netanel Miles-Yepez—opens the topic by inviting readers to join a conversation, as if sitting at the kitchen table with this wise group of spiritual elders and renowned medical experts. By “listening” to them talk about their personal stories and professional experiences surrounding death and dying, readers have a chance to ease into their own questions, fears, and answers.  Read excerpts and more at the online presskit. 

The book begins as co-author Edward Bastian tells the story of his first near-death experience from a bee sting after which he awakes in the hospital, glad to be alive, humbled and a bit humiliated by having “died” so unconsciously, without any spiritual prayers or meditation. A few years later, he has two more brushes with death, but this time is prepared. His personal quest to understand death resulted in this book full of stories, reflections and discussions among experts.

“That night I was prepared to die.,” writes Bastian. “I had been preparing for this night ever since my ‘death’ by bee sting and, it seems, many years before that. After five hours of writing, meditating, and praying, the sun rose in the east, and I was still alive. I had lived through the night and the many nights that followed, and I am now deeply grateful for this opportunity to rehearse the moment of my death. This predeath experience was a kind of practicum where I could try to put into service my years of training and preparation.”

Read Chapter 1: Coming to Terms with Our Mortality.

Edward W. Bastian, PhD, is a Buddhist scholar and teacher and was executive producer for a series of award-winning BBC and PBS programs about religion and three films about Tibetan Buddhism for the National Endowment for the Humanities. He taught classes about world religion and directed the biodiversity program at the Smithsonian Institution. He is president of the Spiritual Paths Foundation (www.spiritualpaths.net), which offers a two-year certificate program about InterSpiritual Wisdom, weekend retreats, and programs about spirituality and the environment.

Tina L. Staley, LCSW, MSW, is director of Pathfinders at Duke University Comprehensive Cancer Center. She co-founded the Pathfinder program in Aspen, Colorado, for empowering cancer patients and their families to rediscover their inner strengths and take back their lives. Visit www.pathfindersinternational.org.

Contributors include Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a Hasidic rebbe and the founder of the Jewish Renewal and Spiritual Eldering movements; Joan Halifax Roshi, an expert on care for the dying and Shamanism and a Zen abbess; Mother Tessa Bielecki, cofounder of the Spiritual Life Institute and a former Carmelite Christian abbess; Dr. Ira Byock, bestselling author and one of the world’s foremost authorities on palliative care; Dr. Marilyn Schlitz, president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences; as well as author and grief counselor Mirabai Starr.

L to R: Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Mother Tessa Bielecki,
Dr. Edward Bastian, Joan Halifax Roshi, and Netanel Miles-Yepez.
Photograph by Julia Jitkoff, 2004.

 Authors are available for book signings in California, Colorado, New Mexico, and North Carolina.    Go to online presskit.  Request a review copy of this book by sending email to publicity@soundstrue.com.

Living Fully, Dying Well: Reflecting on Death to Find Your Life’s Meaning / Hardcover Book / K1347 / 352 pages / ISBN: 978-1-59179-701-2 / UPC: 600835-134781 / U.S. $24.95

 

Meet Author Linda Howe at INATS

Meet Linda Howe and visit Sounds True at the International New Age Trade Show, Booth #537, June 27-29, 2009, Denver.

• Linda Howe, author of How to Read the Akashic Records: Accessing the Archive of the Soul and Its Journey , will sign her book on Sunday, June 28, 2009, at 2 p.m. in the Buyers Lounge. 
• Also join us for a round table discussion with Linda from 3:30-4:30 p.m. in The Plaza. Learn about options for call-in bookstore discussion groups.
• Linda will also be signing her book at the ISSSEEM Bookstore at noon on Monday, June 29.  

Read the full interview with Linda Howe, Are You Ready to Read the Akashic Records?  Here’s an excerpt:

Sounds True: Let’s talk more about experience. How to Read the Akashic Records intends to help readers learn how to experience it for themselves. One of the misconceptions about the Records is that you have to be a spiritual master or mystic in order to gain access. But you teach that anybody can do this.

Linda Howe: People have been working in the Records throughout time. Historically, it has always been the domain of mystics and scholars and saints, as it should be.

It’s my belief that humanity has been growing and waking up to the truth of its identity throughout time. What we’re in right now, which I just think is fascinating, is that we’re in a time right now where the Records are now available to secular people like ourselves. This is the first time in the history of humanity that “regular people” can move into a conscious relationship with the Record, with the essential truth of their soul. This is such an exciting time for all of us.

Sounds True: Can you give us an example of someone in recent times who read the Records?

Linda Howe: Well, this historical point in time for humanity that I’m speaking about first started to happen in the 1950s with Edgar Cayce. He was probably the most famous modern person to work in the Records. He was known as “the sleeping prophet,” because, interestingly, he was unconscious when he worked in the Records. He would be in a trance state, and someone would transcribe for him. It’s important to restate that he was a rare phenomenon, and that he was not conscious when he was in the Record.

What’s been happening in the last 20 years is that people have started to work in the Record consciously. On How to Read the Akashic Records, I teach a process that accesses the heart of the Records and opens us to a conscious relationship with the Record while fully awake, fully present. We’re actually channeling the energy of the Records, which is a very high-frequency, very expansive light energy. We channel the energy first, and then the information second. And there aren’t enough superlatives, as far as I’m concerned, for this! People have a chance to consciously discover the truth of themselves, the truth of their soul, the qualities of their soul, and their potential to really be in an active relationship with that. It’s just, it’s fabulous, exciting.

Sounds True: Do you have any theories about why this time is so special?

Linda Howe: What I think is that we have moved out of the age of the priest, the age of the spiritual intermediary, the age where humanity has been in its adolescence. And what’s happening now is that humanity is moving into its prime, its own spiritual maturity. We are at a time now where we’re in a position to have direct relationship with our own spiritual authority. The age of the priest is over. We have been growing into an age of greater personal responsibility, where we can and we do take responsibility for who we are, what we’re up to, our behavior, our choices. It’s the age of responsibility. It’s the age of spiritual maturity.

 

Visit the online press kit.   Request a review copy of this book or audio from publicity@soundstrue.com

 

 

 

Sound True Wins Two Gold Nautilus Book Awards

A highlight of this past weekend at Book Expo America was the announcement of the 2009 Nautilus Book Award gold winners.  The Nautilus Book Award recognizes books and audio books that promote spiritual growth, conscious living, and positive social change, and stimulate the imagination and inspire the reader to new possibilities for a better world. Sounds True is proud to announce two books that received this honor, both of which connect the topics of science and spirituality:

Winning gold in the parenting/family category is Building Emotional Intelligence: Techniques to Cultivate Inner Strength in Children by Linda Lantieri, with introduction and practices guided by Daniel Goleman. In the introduction chapter, Goleman writes “Brain science tells us that a child’s brain goes through major growth that does not end until the mid-20s. Neuroplasticity, as scientists call it, means that the sculpting of the brain’s circuitry during this period of brain growth depends to a great degree on what a child experiences day-to-day. During this window these environmental influences on brain growth are particularly powerful in shaping a child’s social and emotional neural circuits. Children who are well-nurtured and whose parents help them learn how to calm down when they are upset, for instance, seem to develop greater strength in the brain’s circuits for managing distress.

“When children do not have strategies for decreasing their anxiety, less attention is available to them to learn, solve problems, and grasp new ideas. A child, for example, who gets panicked by a pop quiz, will actually imprint that response rather than the details of any material in the quiz. Distress kills learning. Scientists now believe that improving attention and memory, along with freeing the mind from impulsivity and distress, puts a child’s mind in the best zone for learning. And social and emotional learning does just that…Linda has developed a curriculum that can help any child calm the body, quiet the mind, and pay better attention.”

Read more about Linda Lantieri’s book and her work on teaching students to manage stress in an interview on Edutopia.org in August 2008.

Gold winner in the category of cosmology / new science is Measuring the Immeasurable: The Scientific Case for Spirituality, an anthology featuring: Daniel Goleman, Bruce H. Lipton, Candace Pert, Gary Small, Jeanne Achterberg, Lynne McTaggart, Dan Siegel, Andrew Newberg, Peter Levine, Larry Dossey, Gregg Braden, Robert Emmons, Peter Russell, James Austin, Marilyn Schlitz, Dean Radin, Cassandra Vieten, Tina Amorok, William Tiller, Susanne C. Segerstrom, Rick Hanson, Les Fehmi, Jim Robbins, Charles Tart, Owen Flanagan, Dawson Church, Sandra Ingerman, Stanley Krippner, Garret Yount, Sara Warber, Katherine N. Irvine, Joan H. Hageman, and Ian Wickramasekera.

“Measuring the Immeasurable introduces readers to this new field of inquiry through the writings of forty-three different scientific researchers, journalists, healers, and visionaries,” writes Sounds True publisher and founder, Tami Simon, in her introduction to the anthology. “Our hope is that it furthers the dialogue in this important new area of inquiry, utilizing the best of our scientific measuring tools to deepen our understanding of what matters most—our moment-to-moment connection with each other and the wholeness of life.”

Follow the links above to see the press kits and excerpts for these books, both published in 2008.

Nautilus Book Awards silver and gold winners are selected in a three-tier judging process by experienced teams of book reviewers, librarians, authors, editors, book store owners, and leaders in the publishing industry. Learn more about the Nautilus Book Awards, organized by Marilyn Maguire. Visit the Nautilus Book Awards Gold Winners announcements page.