(2003). Sharon G. Mijares, Ph.D. (Editor). Routledge Press.

Harness the psychospiritual healing potential of prayer, meditation, breathing, and more!

This thoughtful anthology illuminates ancient ways of psychospiritual healing. Research has shown the healing potential of prayer, meditation, controlled breathing, and other timeless spiritual disciplines. This extraordinary book brings together experts who explore these concepts from the perspectives of Christianity, Buddhism, Sufism, the Goddess tradition, Judaism, Native American spirituality, Taoism, and Hinduism/Yoga.

In Modern Psychology and Ancient Wisdom: Psychological Healing Practices from the World's Religious Traditions, you'll discover ancient techniques used by teachers, guides, and practitioners through the ages to facilitate psychological healing.

Forward

As the saying goes, the road narrows with time. As we grow older, we pay for our mistakes more dearly. A loss is more costly, the stakes are higher, the room for error is much less. This applies not only to individuals, but to the whole of humanity. We neglect our environment at the risk of destroying it. We ignore our traditions at the risk of losing them. We deal violently with differences, at the risk of mutual annihilation. Today’s world is so interconnected, so technologically powerful, so intimately small that truly, as the example in chaos theory poetically suggests, the wings of a butterfly flapping in Asia can effect weather patterns over Europe.

In such times, two challenges are especially immense. The first is recognizing and cultivating traditions that make us more compassionate, more aware, and perhaps a bit more wise. With so much stress in an uncertain, rapidly changing world, we must find ways to center, breathe, to listen deeper and love more clearly. Because there are many paths for doing this, none inherently superior to the others, we face a second challenge of dealing with these differences. You’re a Jew, and I’m not. You wear those funny clothes, and I don’t. You don’t believe or practice what I “know” to be the Truth, and that disturbs me.

So these two challenges—cultivating spiritual traditions that resonate with contemporary consciousness and forging new ways of creatively dealing with how differences bump up against one another—require both a connection to the past and its ancestral knowledge and an openness to a future that allows trans-traditional (you might say “world beat”) consciousness.  Sharon Mijares has addressed both these challenges in putting together this wonderful book on religious and psychological approaches. When I read it, I had the feeling of sitting raptly at a weaving ritual of multitudinous dimensions. Each chapter evokes a particular type of reverence, a special type of vibration, a unique feeling of wisdom and hope. When held together, they create a textured symphony of enlightened consciousness. You can’t help but feel hopeful about a future that allows all these different voices to be spoken in concert.

I think in the present challenging times, this book is really a great gift. It shares different historical roots, provides general frameworks, and offers specific and practical techniques by which we can both heal psychological woundedness and deepen spiritual awareness. I hope and trust that others will benefit from it as I have.

Stephen Gilligan

Psychologist and Author

Encinitas, CA

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http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Psychology-Ancient-Wisdom-Psychological/dp/0789017512