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Hymns to an Unknown God: Awakening The Spirit In Everyday Life
 
 
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Hymns to an Unknown God: Awakening The Spirit In Everyday Life [Paperback]

Sam Keen (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Book Description

September 1, 1995
There is no doubt that America is in the midst of a spiritual crisis.  Millions of people are trying to find meaning in their lives by returning to old-time religions, or by seeking out new cults, fads, channelers, 12-step programs, and self-help books. Bill Moyers has called this search for spirituality "the biggest story -- not only of the decade but of the century."  Now, Sam Keen, the New York Times bestselling author of Fire in the Belly, addresses this crisis and provides a blueprint for bringing spirituality into everyday life in Hymns to an Unknown God:  Awakening the Spirit in Everyday Life.

Using practical examples from his and other people's lives, Keen tells readers how to cut through what he calls the "spiritual bullshit," and recover the sacred in their love affairs, families, jobs, and politics -- in short, how to recover the "Unknown God." Down-to-earth and articulate, Sam Keen is a popular social commentator, philosopher, and teacher. He describes himself as "overeducated at the Ivies," with degrees from Harvard and Princeton. His work has been featured in a special Bill Moyers PBS interview, and for over twenty years he was a consulting editor at Psychology Today.

How to Use Your Spiritual Bullshit Detector: In a world of one-minute solutions, false spiritual leaders, and instant spirituality, how can you tell which beliefs are valid and separate the bogus from the genuine.

Sex and the Spirit: Why is it that sex and spirituality are so interconnected and confusing? Keen explains the conflict between "I want" and "I should," and tells readers how to integrate sensuality, sexuality and spirituality to experience truly deep and loving relationships.

Consecrating Our Days: Rituals for Living: Keen gives more than a dozen suggestions for personal rituals to remind readers of the sacredness in their everyday lives, including creating a private place as a personal sanctuary, learning to make time to think deeply, setting aside personal days as times of celebration, and more.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Defining the quest to unlock spirituality as "the reverse of the religious pilgrimage," bestselling author Sam Keen ( Fire in the Belly ) nonetheless sets out immediately to blend Eastern and Western religious traditions with philosophy, psychology and autobiography. The result is a New Age-ish "now-and-then spiritual journey" whose indirect path may result in confusion for questers seeking less amorphous guidance. Ambiguity is implicit even in Keen's naming of the unknown god--"some missing value, some absent purpose, some new meaning, some presence of the sacred"; and Keen sees a constant questioning of religious authority as essential to spiritual transcendence. "A soulful life," Keen posits, "is more about getting rhythm and tuning into the music of the spheres than it is about getting the words correct." To further aid this quest in an era emerging from the 20th century's frayed "technological-economic myth of progress," the author offers a "spiritual bull-shit detector" as well as rituals for consecrating sex and work, family and other relationships, local communities and the global environment.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Keen (Fire in the Belly, LJ 2/15/91) provides a wonderfully celebratory guide to spiritual growth. He charts the spiritual path as beginning with psychological cleansing, "peeling away the myths and illusions that have misinformed us," a phase wherein "men and women follow opposite and complementary paths to recover what was denied in their adolescent sundering into gender." Next there is a journey common to both genders toward "the Unknown God to whom we may surrender," a journey increasingly outward from self to God, to other people, to the ecological commonwealth, to global community, to the terror and trust of death. His final chapter provides rituals for consecrating our days so that they become hymns to the mysterious God. Highly recommended for public and seminary libraries.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Bantam (September 1, 1995)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0553375172
  • ISBN-13: 978-0553375176
  • Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #187,931 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

SAM KEEN'S VITA I was over educated at Harvard and Princeton and was a professor of philosophy and religion at various legitimate institutions for 20 years before becoming a contributing editor of Psychology Today, a freelance thinker, lecturer, seminar leader and consultant. I am the author of a bakers dozen books, a co-producer of an award winning PBS documentary, Faces of the Enemy. My work was the subject of a 60 minute PBS special Bill Moyers-Your Mythic Journey with Sam Keen.

When not writing or traveling around the world lecturing and doing seminars on a wide range of topics on which I am not necessarily an expert but a skilled explorer, I fiddle with growing things on my farm in the hills above Sonoma, and practice the flying trapeze.

 

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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars a must have for the 90's seeker, November 5, 1998
This review is from: Hymns to an Unknown God: Awakening The Spirit In Everyday Life (Paperback)
keen's blend of psychology and spirituality is very appealing to me.exploring the truths and mysteries of the seen and unseen where organized religion dare not go.a no nonsense book on spirituality in everdaylife.if you are one that seeks yearns and desires but are not happy with any of the already laid paths....this is a great starting point to set the mind spirit and imagination on fire!
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8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A bible for the 21st century ?, December 20, 2001
By 
J. E. J. Lloyd (Charlton Marshall, Dorset, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Hymns to an Unknown God: Awakening The Spirit In Everyday Life (Paperback)
I was delighted to read, in the magazine review of the book, an opinion that 'Hymns' was a theology for the New Age. My reaction was very similar, a sudden thought crossed my mind that this was a bible for the 21st century. There have been, admittedly, a number of such bibles produced towards the end of the last century, not the least of them being the Seth books, but the fascinating aspect is that they all follow the same spiritual path and they all contain some form of Myth emphasis that dwells upom Man's pathway through life and his own personal responsibilities in following that path. It is no coincidence that Keen's message comes at the same time as Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings, and other modern dramas bearing a powerful Myth content. The thirst of a confused Mankind for new forms of digestible myth, carrying the same ancient wisdoms but with refreshed archetypes and modern symbols, is evident. It is a thirst that has been rejected by the churches to their cost. Keen's book encapsulates the spirituality of the new century, the desperate need for balance between every aspect of Man's being and the substitution of knowledge, spiritual knowledge that is, in the place of emotion and unquestioning belief.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Delicious! Reading this is pure bliss!, December 12, 2011
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This review is from: Hymns to an Unknown God: Awakening The Spirit In Everyday Life (Paperback)
Excerpt:

The Yearning: "In every cycle of breath, between the emptying and the inflowing, there is a moment of absolute calm,an instant when history comes to an end. Then, the yearning begins, the divine discontent, the lungs praying to be filled, the body longing to be animated by spirit. To catch the invisible wind, to map the itinerary of spirit,study the outlines of your longing. Just as an echo in a cavebrings news of unfathomable depths, in our yearning is our nostalgia for the future. In the emptiness between breaths we hear a whispered promise of fulfillment, we sense the redolence of a rose now only in the bud.

Breathe through us, breath of God, fill us with life anew."

If that speaks to you, the entire book will, I promise.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
At dusk on a bleak November day in 1957, I sat in a classic old lecture hall at Harvard and listened to Paul Tillich, possibly the greatest Protestant theologian of our century. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
great mythic questions, spirited life, compassionate community, character armor, heroic task
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
The Hymnbook, San Francisco, New York, Paul Tillich, Compassionate Commonwealth, Sam Keen, Joseph Campbell, Saint Paul, The Path Through the Mindscape, Gabriel Marcel, Howard Thurman, Los Angeles, Mount Analogue, New Testament, Tibetan Buddhism, Carlos Castenada, Embodying the Spirit, Fritz Perls, Garden of Eden, Georgia O'Keeffe, Graceful Sensuality, Ida Rolf, John Calvin, Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, Plato's Retreat
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