Concentration is a choice. It excludes all except its object of concentration; it is a narrowing. If you are walking on the street, you will have to narrow your consciousness in order to walk. You cannot ordinarily be aware of all that is happening because if you are aware of everything that is happening you will become unfocused. So concentration is a need. Concentration of the mind is a need in order to live–to survive and exist. That is why every culture, in its own way, tries to narrow the mind of the child.

"Ecstasy is about waking up and finding that you are in love with life." Most people think of ecstasy in terms of sexual ecstasy, which Tantric sex expert Margot Anand wrote about in her bestselling The Art of Sexual Ecstasy. Now, in The Art of Everyday Ecstasy, Anand expands our definition of ecstasy and shows how we can harness its energy to help us live, work, and love more passionately, joyfully, and with true spiritual focus. Our modern, work-obsessed, stress-filled culture--what Anand calls the "anti-ecstatic conspiracy"--has dulled our spirits, thrown us off balance, and alienated us from meaningful everyday experiences. In this inspirational journey toward finding the healing nature of ecstasy, Anand explains how the two types of ecstatic experiences--the moments of epiphany called Ecstatic Awakenings, and EveryDay Ecstasy, or the Ecstasy of Flow, a connection to our power and inner wisdom--can help us move beyond pain and doubt to reach our highest potential. Based on the spiritual path of Tantra, Anand shows how to use the natural energy system of our bodies--the seven chakras--as a map to ecstasy. As she guides us through the chakras, she explains how each one plays an important role in transforming energy into erotic passion, healing, empowerment, compassion, creativity, insight, and gratitude. Blocked chakras manifest themselves in surprising ways; wholeness can be achieved only when all of the chakras are open with energy flowing freely. By transforming negative behavioral patterns into positive ones and strengthening ourselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually, we can improve our health, sex life, career, relationships, and find profound meaning in everyday moments. With personal anecdotes, exercises, meditations, and rituals, The Art of Everyday Ecstasy shows us how to bring ecstatic energy into the body, mind, heart, and spirit--"to embrace every moment in our totality, to respond bodily, feel from the heart, perceive with clarity, and be fully present to others and to life."

In book volume one we learned how organic life was created. We also learned our purpose in life and where were going. Now in book two were going much deeper into advanced meditation skills. In order to create we need to get into the Light of Ecstasy in a fl ash while working. God-awareness is what we need! In book two we learn how to put into action what we learned in the 541 pages of book one. Our request for guidance from God must be from Light of your soul to the Light of God. We must be within the Light wordlessly to understand God. Well actually experience ecstasy in book two with the 3-second meditation skills we learned in book one.

The Ecstasy Beyond Knowing represents the distilled wisdom of Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan’s long lifetime of spiritual seeking and experiences, his dialogues and deep friendships with other mystics and spiritual teachers, and his explorations into the nature of reality with scientists and philosophers.Meditation techniques are explained in detail along with the principles behind them, including practices with breath, light, energy, sound and mantram, inspired visualizations, and the Sufi dhikr. The Sufi process and stages of transformation are interwoven with those of Hinduism, Buddhism, the Jewish Kabbalah, the glorification of the Christian Mass, and the alchemical process of self-transfiguration. The height, depth and breadth of mystical experiences are integrated with the insights of psychology and contemporary scientific discoveries, and the creativity inherent in all human nature is invoked to aid in transforming and beautifying the personality as well as the world. Pir Vilayat reveals the way to develop a deep connection with the soul and spirit, and offers advice on maintaining the awareness and integrity of that connection through the joys and sorrows, challenges and adventures of everyday life. “Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan’s Ecstasy Beyond Knowing is a unique and monumental guidebook, the fruit of a lifetime’s experience in teaching and guiding meditation for the most diverse audiences around the world. It is at once a comprehensive practical handbook for meditation, covering such basic subjects as working with the breath, sound, and levels of consciousness; a wide-ranging comparative study of interpretive and theoretical accounts of meditation in Sufi, Hindu, Buddhist and Kabbalistic traditions; and an insightful, suggestive guide for the integration of one’s meditation practice in the wider processes and stages of individual spiritual growth.” Professor James W. Morris, Boston College

This collection presents twenty-seven new essays in Japanese aesthetics by leading experts in the field. Beginning with an extended foreword by the renowned scholar and artist Stephen Addiss and a comprehensive introduction that surveys the history of Japanese aesthetics and the ways in which it is similar to and different from Western aesthetics, this groundbreaking work brings together a large variety of disciplinary perspectives—including philosophy, literature, and cultural politics—to shed light on the artistic and aesthetic traditions of Japan and the central themes in Japanese art and aesthetics. Contributors explore topics from the philosophical groundings for Japanese aesthetics and the Japanese aesthetics of imperfection and insufficiency to the Japanese love of and respect for nature and the paradoxical ability of Japanese art and culture to absorb enormous amounts of foreign influence and yet maintain its own unique identity. New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics will appeal not only to a wide range of humanities scholars but also to graduate and undergraduate students of Japanese aesthetics, art, philosophy, literature, culture, and civilization. Masterfully articulating the contributors’ Japanese-aesthetical concerns and their application to Japanese arts (including literature, theater, film, drawing, painting, calligraphy, ceramics, crafts, music, fashion, comics, cooking, packaging, gardening, landscape architecture, flower arrangement, the martial arts, and the tea ceremony), these engaging and penetrating essays will also appealto nonacademic professionals and general audiences. This seminal work will be essential reading for anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of Japanese aesthetics.

Some people meditate because they want to attain to enlightenment but all most people really want is to reduce their stress levels and bring more confidence, love and happiness into their life. This book will give you a thorough grounding in how to meditate. You will learn how to witness; how to watch the breath; how to run an awareness continuum; how to silence the internal dialogue and enter no mind states. The information is carefully sequenced to make it easy for a beginner to grasp the concepts and also provides techniques to guide the experienced meditator in their exploration of consciousness. My intention in creating this publication has been to transform age old spiritual practises by drawing upon the more recent body of knowledge from the fields of hypnosis and NLP, to create new procedures, applications, aesthetics, insights and understandings. The reader is encouraged to use this publication to make their own personal discoveries, based upon existential experience rather than knowledge. Abby Eagle