This book is designed to provide important information about how we make our choices in life, encouragement for each of us to make positive changes where we identify the need and practical ideas, techniques and methodologies for correcting the direction of our life path to where we want it to go. There is no "one-size-fits-all" approach to making our life better. Throughout this book, we are encouraged to draw upon the many resources around us, within us and available to us to make our life what we once wished and expected it to be. It was written for you to see that you are the master of every area of your life. It is empowering in every way. This work does not conflict with your chosen religion. Exercising this power will allow you to rise above all negative programming from your youth; your self-imposed learning limitations, the fear and anxiety you experience from watching news programs; your dysfunctional relationships, any low self-esteem issues; involvement in self-damaging habits and so on.

Life can be hard, cold, and painful. Or it can be pleasant, warm, and rewarding. The consequences of the choices we make in life determine which way it will be. We cant control many of lifes events, but we can control how we deal with them. Our responsibility is to build a successful life in a world of confusion, pain, and disorientation. In Choices: Responsible Decisions for a Godly Life, author Dr. Robert F. Kirk explains that each of us is responsible for the outcome of our life. The individual choices we make in life determine what we will become. Kirk discusses the natural and spiritual choices that determine our success or failure, and he recommends the Book of Proverbs as a guide for Godly wisdom to assist us in those decisions. The Book of Proverbs, a powerful book that provides instruction and guidance, instructs us to partner with God in our choices using His wisdom. We dont have to travel the road of life alone. However, we must make our own choices and we need to choose wisely to be successful. Choices: Responsible Decisions for a Godly Life will help you make a plan for wise decisions in your life.

Pulling together a collection of richly informative essays Rethinking Imagination addresses competing sets of ideas, oscillating between the modern and post-modern, creativity and sublimity, progress and apocalypse, democracy and redemption Enlightenment and Romanticism and reason and imagination. Aiming to thematise these debates from the perspective of the imagination, Rethinking Imagination takes two directions. The first addresses a socio-cultural interpretation in which the distinguishing figures of modernity can be viewed as continuing differentiation and autonomatization of spheres and systems that goes well beyond the divisions of labour. The second is an ongoing philosophical discourse about the imagination and its relation to reason which has been present since Enlightenment. Divided into two separate yet interconnected parts, this book is a highly significant collection of essays and a valuable contribution to the field of philosophical and socio-cultural sociology. It is a key book for undergraduate, postgraduate and academic researchers.

In the early eleventh century the Indian Buddhist master Atisha condensed essential points from the sutras and ordered them into the text Lamp of the Path. These were then expanded upon in the fourteenth century by the Tibetan Buddhist master LamaTsongkhapa into the text The Great Exposition on the Gradual Path to Enlightenment(Lamrim Chenmo). Venerable Thubten Chodron taught on this text over several years at Dharma Friendship Foundation, and related these practical teachings to our daily lives. These ebooks are lightly-edited transcripts of those teachings. They have been organized and formatted by Lai Wee Chiang. This second volume contains teachings on: - Remembering Death - The Actual Way to Become Mindful of Death - The Lower Realms - Taking Refuge - The Objects of Refuge - How to Take Refuge - The Benefits of Having Taken Refuge - Guidelines for the Practice of Refuge - Karma - 10 Destructive Actions and Their Results - Constructive Actions and Their Results - The Intensity of Karma - Other Ways of Differentiating Actions - Specific Aspects of Actions and Their Results - General Advice on Engaging in Positive Actions and Avoiding Destructive Ones

The moral problems of abortion, infanticide, suicide, euthanasia, capital punshiment, war and othe life-or-death choices.

Law's Judgement elucidates and defends a feature of contemporary law that is currently either overlooked or too glibly dismissed as morally troublesome or historically anachronistic. That feature is the abstract nature of law's judgement and its three components show that, when law judges us, it often does so in ignorance of our particular characters and abilities, on the one hand, and in ignorance of our context and circumstances, on the other. Law's judgement is thus insensitive to all or much that makes us the particular people we are. The book explores various connections between this mode of judgement and some of our most important legal and political values. It shows that law's abstract judgement is closely related to important juristic conceptions of personhood, responsibility and impartiality, and that these notions are not without moral significance. The book also examines the connections between modern law's judgement and three of our most important political values, namely, dignity, equality and community. It argues that, if we value particular conceptions of dignity, equality and community, then we must also value law's judgement. Illuminating these connections therefore serves a double purpose: first, it makes a case against those who counsel liberation from law's abstract judgement and, second, it redirects attention to the task of morally evaluating law's abstract judgement in its own terms.

In Ricoeur's Critical Theory, David M. Kaplan revisits the Habermas-Gadamer debates to show how Paul Ricoeur's narrative-hermeneutics and moral-political philosophy provide a superior interpretive, normative, and critical framework. Arguing that Ricoeur's unique version of critical theory surpasses the hermeneutic philosophy of Gadamer, Kaplan adds a theory of argumentation necessary to criticize false consciousness and distorted communication. He also argues that Ricoeur develops Habermas's critical theory, adding an imaginative, creative dimension and a concern for community values and ideas of the Good Life. He then shows how Ricoeur's political philosophy steers a delicate path between liberalism, communitarianism, and socialism. Ricoeur's version of critical theory not only identifies and criticizes social pathologies, posits Kaplan, but also projects utopian alternatives for personal and social transformation that would counter and heal the effects of unjust societies. The author concludes by applying Ricoeur's critical theory to three related problems—the politics of identity and recognition, technology, and globalization and democracy—to show how his works add depth, complexity, and practical solutions to these problems.

Traill examines the issue of why God put Adam and Eve out of the Garden. He asks whether it because of the eating of the fruit of disobedience or if there is more to the picture.

Thoughts are very real things. They can be compared to the elements that create the weather we experience. From clear and sunny to overcast and dreary, your thought-machine mind creates your reality. Whether or not you are consciously aware of it, you alone control the angles and rotations of the kaleidoscopic mirrors within the workings of your mind. If you dont like your reality, you can always adjust your outlook simply by adjusting your way of thinking. One of lifes mercies is that we can retrain our mind. This guide is an appeal for rational thinking. When all is said and done, there are only three fundamental areas over which you have any real control in your life: how you think/feel (as in two sides of the same coin), how you act, and how you react. When you are unhappy in life or love, the best place to start looking for both the cause and the cure is within the inner narrative of your thoughts. It is here you will find the fountainhead of resiliency from which your strength and well-being flow. Resiliency in people is not an accidental occurrence; rather, it is the cumulative effect of an individuals decision making. In a nutshell, humans need not always interpret things in the negative, instead, the choice to view things either as a positive or as a negative is entirely your own to make. The intelligent approach insists you strive to see both the positive and the negative in people, situations, and events. Doing so wont negate the negative, it simply helps to balance it. The knowledge contained in A Users Guide to Your Mind is threefold: how to live mindfully of your thoughts, how to exercise emotional intelligence in relationships, and how to exercise social intelligence in everyday life. Exercising social and emotional intelligencealong with good old common senseis essential to soundly managing your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. If you are tired of just talking about making changes and are now actually prepared to do something about it, the guidance within will provide detailed blueprints to get you started in redesigning your life and relationships. Best of all, you can implement what you learn as you see fit, according to your own goals, value system, and moral principles. This book shows you how.

Saint Paul declares, "Live by the Spirit" (Gal 5:6). This means our way of living ought to be guided by the Holy Spirit. Through a series of theoretical reflections, questions, and directed activities, this activity book will help you understand the relationship between spirituality and ethics, provide you some theoretical tools and practices for doing ethics and living spiritually, and encourage you to clarify your own manner of approaching ethical questions, founding moral values, and theological positions that undergird ethics and spirituality. Your moral imagination will be stimulated. Have fun!