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Essential Spirituality: The 7 Central Practices to Awaken Heart and Mind

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Go into any bookstore and you'll find piles of books on spirituality, featuring spiritual paths ranging from Evangelical Christianity and pseudo-Vedantist guru worship to Americanized Zen and reconstructionist Neo-Pagan goddess worship. With people turning away from the churches they were raised in and world-weary atheists searching for spirituality, the spiritual marketplace is going through a boom period with no end in sight. But in the midst of such selection, how can one tell who's faking it, and who's the real deal? Is the teacher or author a committed seeker or a devious charlatan? Modern, sceptical Americans often avoid spirituality all together due to horror stories of silly cults and gurus perpetrating spiritual scams on the unsuspecting public. Who can we trust?

How about an Australian philosopher-psychiatrist with years of experience dealing with spirituality, transpersonal psychology, and mental illness? Roger Walsh makes no claims to have attained a spurious level of "enlightenment" beyond a measure of basic sanity in this world gone slightly mad. In "Essential Spirituality", Walsh provides the perfect companion to Huxley's classic "The Perennial Philosophy"- a book of practical spiritual exercises, advice, and wisdom from sages the world over. Divided into seven sections on what Walsh believes to be the seven essential practices of the world's "Wisdom Traditions", Walsh provides advice on reducing craving, cultivating emotional wisdom, living ethically, meditating, awakening the senses, growing intuition, and pursuing spiritual action. This isn't New Age mysticism- "Essential Spirituality" is grounded in the teachings of saints throughout the world and history, extensively documented by Dr. Walsh. Even the most sceptical mind can see the gentle wisdom in his approach to spirituality.

I give this book my highest recommendation to seekers of all faiths and none- may it help you on your way.

This small book contains gems from Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Confucianism. Not merely a compilation of sound bites, the author explores core practices revered by these major world religions. Most importantly, he provides concrete examples of how to incorporate these practices, little by little, into everyday life, until a new, throughly unique fabric is created by the reader's personal choices.

The individual chapters address craving, difficult emotions, ethics, calming the mind, vision, wisdom, and serving others. Each section contains a number of exercises that you can try, modify, or adopt completely as best suits your own life and outlook. As time goes on, the practices can serve as springboards to discovering new sources of inner guidance.

The discussion of various intersections of the religions is valuable for several reasons. The background provides specific reasons for engaging in spiritual practice. Rote repetition of formulas does not have the value of mindful attention to our actions, and these explanations help to put the practices in perspective. In addition, the discussion often reflects the gut-level experience of the seeker, and will likely resonate strongly with those on a spiritual journey. Also, the practices do not conflict with observance of any of these religions, and would instead enrich one's spiritual experience, irrespective of its formal context. Finally, the discussion of common ground is a beautiful example of how we can rejoice in our similarities, respect our differences, and share common goals for peace, rather than allow religion to divide us and breed hatred.

As the introduction by His Holiness the Dalai Lama states, a few minutes a day devoted to engaging in the practices and contemplating their significance will go a long way towards bringing compassion, and ultimately a sense of inner peace, into your everyday life.

This is a terrific book-perfect for beginners as well as psychologists and psychotherapists who wish to introduce meditation to their clients. Walsh has been at this for nearly 30 years, and it shows in his elegantly simple rendering of cross-cultural spiritual practices. A wonderful companion to Huxley's "Perennial Philosophy" and Harvey's "Essential Mystics." Those books leave out the "how" of practice. Walsh fills in the details.

This book, more than any other I have ever read, integrates the spiritual practices of the world's religions into a workable framework for the secular person. Walsh's methods not only bring the various religions together in a theologically interesting way, he shows us that living life to the full is a spiritual issue that all faiths seek. Their timeless wisdom and practical living are desperately needed in a world that moves away from wisdom and embraces an ethical vaccuum.

We moderns have a difficult life. We are aware of suffering on a global scale as well as struggling with our personal suffering. We have been able to alleviate some of it with our science and technology and in other ways we have made it worse. The materialistic philosophy of modern times undercuts our spiritual hopes, but we are spiritual beings and we must find a way to live that gives us deeper meaning than nihilism or consumerism. So many of us have turned to ancient traditions, like Buddhism, and found various degrees of satisfaction, but the ancient traditions often seem too simple for the complexity of modern times - and we can't really turn our backs on the fact that we are moderns, steeped in a scientific view of the world, which has much truth in it.

Wouldn't it be helpful to have some guidance from someone who is both a scientist and a spiritual practitioner, who has managed to integrate both approaches to reality? Roger Walsh's Essential Spirituality is such help.

I was fortunate to see this book in manuscript form when the publisher asked me for a promotional quote. I was very rushed at the time and could only read through the manuscript lightly, but knowing the quality and depth of Walsh's work, I was able to enthusiastically say "I could not imagine a better person to write this book." I knew he was not only a first class scholar and writer in these areas, but indeed someone with a serious personal practice informing his writing. Rereading the book more thoroughly for this review has been a pleasure and a privilege, for the clarity, depth, and importance of it is very great indeed.

I should also take this as a lesson about the hurry in my life and what it costs me. Allowing oneself to be carried away by the rush of life is, as Walsh points out in Essential Spirituality, very costly:

"You need to have a routine of some kind with sacred time carefully set aside. Otherwise the world's distractions and demands will consume every open moment and leave you astounded to find that yet another day, month, year, or even decade has disappeared into oblivion with only a few scattered moments devoted to spiritual practice."

This is an example of the clarity and practicality of the advice Walsh gives. Essential Spirituality is a complete introduction to the spiritual path¾and an essential refresher for those of us who think we already know something about it!

Walsh has isolated a common core of seven practices or directions of development. He not only explains them, but gives practical exercises for realizing them. The seven are:

-Transform your motivation: reduce craving and find your soul's desire.
-Cultivate emotional wisdom: heal your heart and learn to love.
-Live ethically: feel good by doing good.
-Concentrate and calm your mind.
-Awaken your spiritual vision: see clearly and recognize the sacred in all things.
-Cultivate spiritual intelligence: develop wisdom and understand life.
-Express spirit in action: embrace generosity and the joy of service.

It is hard to know what is best to quote to illustrate the practicality (and compassion) in the book, there is so much of excellence, so I will first quote the beginning of the first chapter on how to use the book:

"Each practice, exercise, and idea in this book is applicable to life and helpful in transforming it. Test them for yourself. This book allows you to do just that."

"These practices require no specific religious belief, nor do they require giving up any specific religious belief. This book is much more concerned with learning and living than with believing. All that is necessary is an open mind and a willingness to experiment. The crucial question is whether the practices are helpful to you."

"This is not to imply that spiritual practice is easy . It takes courage to examine yourself and your life carefully. It takes effort to do the exercises regularly and commitment to keep doing them during difficult times. Fortunately, the more you practice, the more these essential qualities grow. Above all, be patient. Transforming yourself and your life is a gradual process."

Throughout the book Walsh emphasizes experimenting with the various practices, recognizing your own natural rhythms, finding what works best for you, and being kind to yourself. The sections on work with negative emotions are particularly valuable, for we often tend to have harsh superegos and so are counterproductively hard on ourselves.

When I was younger, I used to think that spirituality was mainly about special states of mystical revelation. Now, while not devaluing those, I think that compassion and kindness toward others are what it's really all about, so I'm pleased that Walsh gives so much attention to these qualities. Near the end of Essential Spirituality he wisely reminds us that:

"The power of practice depends in part on why it is done. This is why practicing for the well-being and awakening of everyone, including ourselves, is more potent than practicing for ourselves alone. To focus solely on our own well-being is to separate ourselves from others and to starve beneficial qualities such as love and generosity."

"To practice for the benefit of all people-even all creatures- is to expand our circle of care and to cultivate emotions such as love and kindness. Over time it becomes increasingly obvious that the happiness of others is our own and that to practice for the benefit of all is not a sacrifice but rather a delight. Our spiritual work not only helps us but is, according to Ramana Maharshi, "the best help you can possibly render to others." Our task is simply to do our practice as fully as we can. In this way we gradually learn to awaken ourselves, to love and serve life in all its infinite forms, to see the sacred in all things, and to care for our troubled world."

A real contribution!

If you only read one book on spirituality in your whole life, perhaps it should be this one. Roger Walsh is one of the greatest western writers in the spiritual traditions. His stories, his messages, and his ability to write in a way that most everyone can relate to are second to none. In this book, he provides practical advice on what to do to lead a more spiritual life. These ideas are extrapolated from the practices of various sages from a variety of spiritual traditions around the world. If you are ready to explore the spiritual side of yourself in depth, this is a great book to read. If you are interested in the psychology aspect of spirituality but not so much in spirituality itself or if your want more reading on how psychology is related to spiritual growth, may I suggest the excellent book called "The Ever-Transcending Spirit" by Toru Sato. Both books are extremely insightful and not written in a pretentious "I will teach you how to become enlightened" kind of way. In fact, the more enlightened we become, the less we teach, the less we preach, and the more appreciative we become of the process of growth both in ourselves and in others. Both authors claim that they are just regular individuals like you and me seeking glimpses of enlightenment and trying to understand what it all means. In any case, they still seem to know much more than me so I am happy that they have decided to share what they know by writing these books. These books are highly recommended.

Walsh takes the universal wisdoms from our major world religions and miraculously compacts them into one mere 285 page book. Combining the common beliefs and practices of all the major religions allows for anyone with an open mind to discover important practices and philosophies for spiritual development. The exercises are simple and benevolent. He quotes and demonstrates with stories, the teachings of Jesus, Mohammad, Confusius, and Buddha. Possibly the easiest to understand and practice of any of the spiritual or religious books I have read.

This is an important psychology book. It is an Aristotelian categorization of psychotherapy sayings of Buddhism, psychotherapy, Christianity, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Taoism, with a strong leaning toward Buddhism.

And, this is the best foundation book I've read that can use our heritage of religious mental healing knowledge to build a new religion, ethics, and psychotherapy. Because Walsh so expertly defines the psychotherapy terms used in religions, another writer can use these terms as a building block for new religious-psychotherapy ethics.

It is so difficult to wade through the mountains of pages of these various religions, with their esoteric metaphysics and ancient practices, to extract the elements of psychotherapy. The author has done this, and presents a cataloguing of the various practices. He, for the most part, accurately ties in the sayings from these many religions to show that they are all describing the same principles.

For example, "The Kingdom of heaven is within you" (Christianity), "Atman and Brahman are One" (Hinduism), "In the depths of the soul, one sees the Divine, the One" (Chinese Book of Changes"), "Those who know themselves, know their Lord" (Islam), etc.; all these are pointing at the same concept, as Walsh expertly points out.

From here, Mr. Walsh lays out a method for improving oneself, in psychotherapy and "spiritual" terms. The method is Buddhist, but Mr. Walsh points out that the other religions also have components of this methodology.

One of the few matters not described in this book is the meaning of feelings and how these are suppressed. Without defining this and knowing what it is, it still remains somewhat haphazard to apply time-tested techniques to cure psychological illnesses. Perhaps Walsh will write (or has already written) another book on this topic.

Overall, this is a timely, important book that sets the foundations that others, I hope, will follow, to create a modern psychology and religion. As Nietzsche points out, the overman shall set his own ethics. Walsh is providing the dictionary for the overman.

For your quick reference, the seven practices to awaken heart and mind (stated in the front cover) as summarized by the author in pg 14 are as follows:-

1. Transform your motivation; reduce craving and find your soul's desire.
2. Cultivate emotional wisdom: heal your heart and learn to love.
3. Live ethically: feel good by doing good.
4. Concentrate and calm your mind.
5. Awaken your spiritual vision: see clearly and recognise the sacred in all things
6. Cultivate spiritual intelligence: develop wisdom and understand life.
7. Express spirit in action: embrace generosity and the joy of service.

If the above are what you want, buy it. I assure you that the author did write a very sophisticated but easy reading book which can satisfy you well, with his excellent writing skill and intelligent choice of wise sayings from various religions. Below please find some copy and paste for your reference:-

It is in the silence of the heart that God speaks.
- Mother Teresa

Any natural act, if hallowed, leads to God.
- Jewish teaching

There is pleasure.
There is bliss.
Forgo the first to possess the second.
- Buddha

No drives, no compulsions
No needs, no attractions;
Then your affairs
are under control.
You are a free person.
- Chuang Tzu, Taoist sage

I stumbled on to this book at the Library and started reading it. Before I finished this book I went on line and ordered a copies for myself and my friends.
I have read many books that could be summed up in a paragraph. In this book, every paragraph is a book in itself full of reflection and wonderful thought.
Ton's of information to go back through at least a second time if not more to write down and remind yourself daily of the important things in life.
Dr. Walsh made me feel good in my own skin and I felt like he was talking to me.
He really hit's the nail on the head about Attachments and False Goals of Happiness. It is really clear how Western Society is full of meanless and soul-less existence. We tend to look down on 3rd world nations as being behind in the times but Dr. Walsh shows how they have had some of the answers to happiness all along.
I will keep this book with me forever.