From Barnes & Noble
A cofounder of the Omega Institute, Elizabeth Leser presents a holistic spiritual approach that combines religious, psychological, and healing traditions. She draws upon masters from a variety of backgrounds -- Zen, Judaism, Christianity, scientists, L.A. Lakers coach Phil Jackson, and author Maya Angelou. Her integrative approach is both appealing and unique, and ultimately transformative.
From the Publisher
In 1977, Elizabeth Lesser cofounded the Omega Institute, now America's largest adult-education center focusing on wellness and spirituality. Working with many of the eminent thinkers of our times, including Zen masters, rabbis, Christian monks, psychologists, scientists, and an array of noted American figures--from L.A. Lakers coach Phil Jackson to author Maya Angelou--Lesser found that by combining a variety of religious, psychological, and healing traditions, each of us has the unique ability to satisfy our spiritual hunger.
In The Seeker's Guid, she synthesizes the lessons learned from an immersion into the world's wisdom traditions and intertwines them with illuminating stories from her daily life. Recounting her own trials and errors and offering meditative exercises, she shows the reader how to create a personal practice, gauge one's progress, and choose effective spiritual teachers and habits. Warm, accessible, and wise, this book provides directions through the four landscapes of the spiritual journey:
THE MIND: learning meditation to ease stress and anxiety
THE HEART: dealing with grief, loss, and pain; opening the heart and becoming fully alive
THE BODY: returning the body to the spiritual fold to heal and
overcome the fear of aging and death
THE SOUL: experiencing daily life as an adventure of meaning and mystery
Los Angeles Times
There are moments of sublime clarity and depth.
Arizona Daily Star
A marvelous guide for people who want to dig below the surface of life.
Publishers Weekly
. . . blends autobiography with broader observation to offer readers a compelling, commonsense guide to a new American style of spiritual search. . . With honesty, warmth, and seasoned judgement. Lesser leads readers to the water.
Napra ReView
It's a book for the millenium that all true seekers should read.
New Age
An inspiring field guide.
What People Are Saying
Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
In this book, Elizabeth Lesser ranges with a clear mind over a wide field of human spiritual activity–with the added dimension of a woman's heart. She helps us to utilize the transformative ingredients that are available for every person's spiritual development. The Seeker's Guide is a book to study and to keep handy near your altar. You will always find something in it to raise the ceiling of your awareness.
—coauthor of Age-ing to Sage-ing
Michael Lerner
I've often been repelled by the flakiness and intellectual vacuity of those who claim to be presenting the world a new spirituality. So it was a delight to read Elizabeth Lesser's deep, serious, and intellectually stimulating portrayal of the range and possibilties of contemporary spiritual discourse and practice. Lesser has a remarkable capacity to highlight that which is most powerful and compelling in the revival of American spirituality. No serious intellectual could reasonably dismiss the lasting significance of the new interest in spirituality after reading Lesser's book.
—editor, Tikkun magazine, and author of The Politics of Meaning and Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation
Sam Keen
A comprehensive guide to what is best in the new spirituality that is delightful to read and will satisfy your mind, heart, and soul.
—author of Fire in the Belly and Hymns to an Unknown God
Joan Halifax
This beautiful book is a sensitive guide to the inner life as well as a revolutionary text on the new spirituality.
—author of Shamanic Voices and The Fruitful Darkness
Marion Woodman
As a founding member of Omega Institute, Elizabeth Lesser has known many of the leaders who have brought their spiritual insights to America over the past twenty years. Her own curiosity, discernment, and intuition have guided her in taking in what is authentically her own, and in letting go what is not for her. She shares this process in a style so honest and personal that readers are continually evaluating their own insights and saying yes or no from their own core. The Seeker's Guide is a tuning fork for where we ring true.
—author of Addiction to Perfection and Conscious Femininity, and coauthor (with Robert Bly) of The Maiden King
Julia Cameron
A lucid, provacative, and enlightening tour of the American spiritual landscape. Lesser has a storyteller's eye and a philosopher's spirit.
—author of The Artist's Way and The Vein of Gold
Phil Jackson
Those who are looking for an uncharted way of living their beliefs will find The Seeker's Guide a guiding light. Elizabeth Lesser's book defines what many have longed to see in print–a new Varieties of Religious Experience one hundred years after William James. This is a courageous book in which the author doesn't spare her own leaps of faith and dark moments of the soul, even as she encounters some great luminaries of our times. I was moved and affected–and I had a great time–reading her journey of a thousand stories that began with a girl's first halting spiritual steps. Her luminous sense of spirituality bubbles out of every deep pathway described along the way. For the seekers of the nineties and the visionaries of the next century, this book will shake your world too.
—coach of the L.A. Lakers and author Sacred Hoops
Bernie Siegel
The great sages of the past taught us all we could ever need to know about spirituality. The problem is their followers created religion, which instead of joining us together has created more problems. Bringing spirituality into modern life is vital and this book can help you do just that. Do not wait for a life-threatening illness to awaken you. Instead, read this book, and find the revelation and transformation to begin a process of spiritual rebirth now.
—author of Love, Medicine and Miracles and Peace, Love and Healing
Rachel Naomi Remen
As the cofounder of the internationally known Omega Institute, Elizabeth Lesser has witnessed the search for God in America from a front-row seat. As both an observer and a participant, she is funny, profoundly moving, unpretentious, and simply brilliant. In The Seeker's Guide, she validates our spiritual hunger, offering us the clarity to separate what will nourish it from what will not. This is a book for anyone who wants to read their own spiritual story more clearly and find the inner compass that can lead them home.
—author of Kitchen Table Wisdom
Steven Levine
The Seeker's Guide is a dynamic tale of the search for the true self. As one of the primary founders of growth centers in America, Elizabeth Lesser has had a profound influence on the development of the spiritual movement in this country. Follow her trail to your heart.
—authors of Who Dies?, Healing into Life and Death, and A Year to Live
Jean Shinoda Bolen
Through her particular vantage point at the Omega Institute, Elizabeth Lesser has been an observer, participant, and evaluator of the rich smorgasbord of teachings and teachers who have had an enormous effect on the spiritual perspective and practices that are now entering the American mainstream. America has historically been known as a melting pot, and as a union of individual states. The new American spirituality of which Elizabeth Lesser writes follows in this tradition, and can be appreciated as a democracy of spiritual perspectives, a freedom to choose to follow that which has personal meaning, an egalitarian sense of valuing body, mind, and spirit, and not elevating one above another.
I appreciated Elizabeth's inclusion of details of her own spiritual journey, because she is like so many who lives and beliefs have been affected by the civil rights and women's movements, by the influx of Eastern thought and teachers, and by the need to find one's own path. To have authentic spiritual experiences woven throughout a book like this is what the new American spirituality is all about.
—author of Goddesses in Every Woman, Crossing to Avalon, and Close to the Bone
Daniel Goleman
Elizabeth Lesser offers up to a rich cornucopia of lessons for the soul in The Seeker's Guide, a warm and fascinating account of a modern pilgrimage.
—author of Emotional Intelligence
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