A compilation of poetry and prose with themes of: transcendence, love and rebirth... A serious journey through the lifes challenges in the twenty-first century, yet speaks to a universal audience in theme and meaning.

A narcotics task force police officer's risk-taking heroics to keep the public safe can take the very thing away from that person that they are trying to protect, which is life. Tom Maxwell is a man who comes from a background that almost inevitably led him down the path of trying to preserve life. He was forced to witness the terrors of substance abuse and the outcomes of the darkness that shrouds it, which was death. The son of a science teacher could not escape the questions that drive and inspire scientists. He had heard the word "hypothesis" more times than any classmate at a dinner table, that much he could guarantee. But the most intriguing hypothesis of all time to the greatest of scientists will always be the imagined solutions or possibilities to the questions that mankind cannot answer. What happens to us after we die? Is there such thing as a soul? Is there a religion that is right? Why is space too large for us to reach the ends of it? Are any of our archeological finds and understanding of mankind's history truly accurate? The answers to these unknowns are the top-shelf beverages, the high-end cigars, and the top-performing engines of the most sophisticated minds in any of our cultures throughout history. They are the crème de la crème of placing your mark in history. If a scientist was to ever accurately propose or discover the answers to any of these questions, well, he or she would have done the impossible. They would have achieved the goal that perhaps has led us to where we are today. If we were able to answer the unanswerable, then what would become of motivation, belief, faith, and imagination? Maybe the beauty of the unanswerable questions of mankind is that they are that way by design. Not being able to answer certain questions makes us motivated, keeps us dreaming, and enables us to have passion. As in any puzzle that we try to solve, love always complicates the pathways that we choose, and Tom Maxwell finds himself in a bind. Fighting the same fight of his past, when his love chooses an addiction too familiar to his adolescent life, leaves him damaged. He finds himself living a life where his decisions and actions depict who he will become. A hero is only a hero when his actions and timing are aligned with a heroic outcome. A dead man with the wrong timing is not branded with the champion insignia the way that a dead man with the right timing is labeled a hero. Tom faces a world filled with the need to master and understand timing. He will need to learn why our existence needs balance and how we grow at a pace spaced out over time, by design. Life will throw him into a cyclone of sink-or-swim type of learning, which will force him to protect the fate of mankind's future. He will be challenged to learn a new way of life and protect the intention of life's very design, the way that God had intended for mankind as mankind attempts to redesign their destiny. He is forced to learn the past of a scientist and will struggle with control issues regarding fate. Love will complicate him, birth will give him greater purpose, understanding other people's perspectives based on their histories will challenge him on being able to pursue their demise, because life is never black and white. It is always complicated, and people are the way they are because of what they've been through. A hero sometimes becomes legend because over time they ceased to exist.

An introduction to Luciferianism and the Left-Hand Path.

Many of us are starting to become tired of this game of life. We have been comparing and striving all our life. But no matter how much success we have achieved—we are still hollow and still have found nothing fulfilling. We don’t even know if happiness exists because it is no longer a living thing in our experience—it has become dead, as we only know it as a concept or memory. We have sought self-help advice, philosophies, and religious teachings to transform ourselves but have not gotten anywhere. We have made some superficial improvements—like adopting a new mindset—but our core remains the same. We are still competitive, still fearful, and we get disturbed all the time. The problem with all attempts at self-improvement is that we do not address the fundamental problem, which is: who is the “you” who needs to be improved? We do not see that the one who is making the improvement is the same one who needs to be improved. The more we try to improve, the more conflict we introduce, within and without. The more knowledge we stuff in our heads, the more we become trapped in a conceptual prison of reality. Inevitably, the more confused we get in life. The book guides the reader out of their distorted beliefs to experience reality beyond the mind. When the deeper intelligence is allowed to flourish without our mind's interference, then the game of life becomes effortless.

Here Gananath Obeyesekere debunks one of the most enduring myths of imperialism, civilization, and conquest: the notion that the Western civilizer is a god to savages. Using shipboard journals and logs kept by Captain James Cook and his officers, Obeyesekere reveals the captain as both the self-conscious civilizer and as the person who, his mission gone awry, becomes a "savage" himself. In this new edition of The Apotheosis of Captain Cook, the author addresses, in a lengthy afterword, Marshall Sahlins's 1994 book, How "Natives" Think, which was a direct response to this work.

"The art of Paul Wayland Bartlett (1865-1925) and turn-of-the-century sculpture in general have been attracting increasing attention. A leading American sculptor of international reputation, Bartlett was one of the best-known artists in the United States." "Bartlett's sculptural decoration for the House pediment at the U.S. Capitol Building was his most prestigious public monument and one of the most historically important federal commissions to be awarded in the United States during the early twentieth century. Its installation in the long-vacant House pediment finally brought to completion a project of Capitol expansion that had begun more than a half-century earlier. As such, it provides a valuable opportunity for exploring the early development of government-sponsored public sculpture in the United States. Unveiled just eight months prior to U.S. entry into World war I, the pediment also represents one of the most visible public expressions of the ideals of the late American Renaissance (1876-1917)."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

With both the Roman Empire and contemporary scholarship as backdrop, this book contrasts the Imperial Platonism of Plotinus with Plato's own by distinguishing one as a master enlightening disciples, and the other as an Athenian teacher who taught students to discover the truth for themselves in the Academy.

Helio Apotheosis-Part 1: The Scorched Third begins with a mystery as a man, lying on his back in the dust, wakes up, opens his eyes, and sees above him a brown sky. He discovers that his surroundings, baked dry, are unfamiliar to him. Equally unknown are the details of his past. He does not know how he came to this desiccated locale. Thus, his journey for knowledge, understanding, and perspective begins. In time, he will come to realize his world confronts him with challenges, and he will begin to see that his enemies are both internal and external. The adventure that follows will prove to test his character to lengths he never thought possible. With the help of his angel and his God, will he overcome his enemies without and within? Helio Apotheosis-Part 1: The Scorched Third reveals the beginnings of a journey of discovery, endings and beginnings, defeats and victories, and the search for a revelation that will clarify the meaning of all that began in mystery, shrouded in a cloud of dust.