Social Skills 101

This book gives the reader a deep and accessible analysis of how our minds work and where our thinking is conditioned by old beliefs and values. The authors guide us into new ways of looking at ourselves and the global human crisis. “Care” for ourselves and each other takes a central role in this undertaking. They give us the hope that if we can see how we undermine ourselves we can prevail. It is a fresh and exciting look at life with valuable rewards for the reader.
Rating: 5 / 5

The Passionate Mind Revisited is a promising re-visioning of age-old philosophical dilemmas in a contemporary setting with important social and political implications.

In the Introduction, the authors adumbrate their intention to cut the Gordian knot of “the One and the Many,” conceptually re-casting the fertile contexts of group and individual, spiritual and material. They treat the seemingly irreconcilable opposites as interwoven poles of an evolutionary dialectic, equally as embedded in one another as are inhaling and exhaling in breathing. The crucial chapter on Time offers a well-argued re-thinking of traditional contrasts between ecstatic experience of timelessness (unity, being, surrender) and ordinary goal-oriented being-in-time (multiplicity, becoming, control). The authors are poignantly aware of the effects that Eastern thought and practice have had on spiritually inclined individuals in America over the past half-century, and they challenge head-on many assumptions flowing from their own and others’ earlier teachings. Their systematic demonstration leads to the stirring conclusion that a spiritually aware, caring life has to be lived in time and future-oriented – not in some timeless realm.

In freshly illuminating the roles of thought and diversity in a life of spiritual awareness, the authors’ book would re-orient and rejuvenate spiritual work, bringing it back into the world of time to become more effective and more socially relevant. The occasionally dense reading is well worth the effort.
Rating: 4 / 5

As an activist for a future of greater Earth/human harmony, I believe that I encounter many of the core challenges facing our society in these times and strive to develop and implement meaningful, achievable and timely responses to them. Ranging from the personal to personalities, from the individual to the collective, from the local to the international, these are all contexts where issues of worldviews, belief structures, power and control play out between us (even when the best of intentions truly exist). All too often, the land and the water and the rest of life (other-than-human) all too often pay the price for our choices, power struggles and misguided beliefs.

To have deeper, clearer, more pragmatic (without excessive cynicism or losing sight of worthy ideals) approaches to my work and thus, I believe, to the future of humanity and life on Earth– this has been one of the key gifts of Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad’s writings in the Passionate Mind Revisited. Greater clarity helps to prevent and./or mitigate the inevitable losses (both emotionally and practically), navigate the mazes and avoid the pitfalls, and celebrate the successes for what they are.

In a real sense, my life is substantially richer for the insights they have provided. I believe that my own thinking is clearer (though I’ll warn you, that is not always a welcome phenomena, for blind faith is often preferred!) And I sense that my world view and experience of the spiritual dimensions of life are both more grounded and more expansive from the exposure to their thinking and exploration of their ideas.

These gifts, for me, are quantifiable in the quality of my life every day. Not that they provide

“all the answers” but that they help me to ask better questions. They shed light on the dynamics that are behind the behavior, motivations and actions of people and society. And I find that can integrate and “own” these insights for myself, I can extrapolate upon them, and I can thereby think better for myself. In fact, through these explorations I honestly experience myself accessing my own intelligence to a greater degree. Through this, my life is more meaningful, effective, and fulfilling – while also contemplating the extent of life’s utter mystery.

If you find a thread of interest here, I heartily recommend that you pull on it! Much awaits you in exploring your own passionate mind! And the Earth needs our passion and clarity today every day, more than ever.
Rating: 5 / 5