Journey to the Center: A Meditation Workbook (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...a must for those who wish to understand the union between psychology and spirituality from inside their own lives." -- Ginny Morgan, Director, Mid-America Dharma Group

"...provides a significant and meaningful approach to living in and reaching beyond our day-to-day existence." -- Rabbi Martin Siegel, Chaplain for Amtrak

"Flickstein is both a psychotherapist and a meditation teacher. His attractively designed workbook on insight meditation is a fine and seamless joining of those two traditions.... ,This is a book to do rather than simply to read, a book to work with slowly and intensely but also joyfully." -- NAPRA ReView, November/December1998

"Matthew writes with intelligence, simplicity, and respect.... Wherever you are on your journey, you will find yourself in these pages...supported, challenged to grow, and even entertained." -- Sarah Sadler, Director, Evergreen Cove Holistic Learning Center

"There are very few books...that can change the lives of their readers. Journey to the Center is one of them." -- Stanley Krippner, Professor of Psychology, Saybrook Institute

Product Description

Using hands-on exercises, journal entries, guided meditations, and stories, Matthew Flickstein combines Eastern meditation techniques and methods of Western psychotherapy to offer this practical workbook for realizing one's greatest potential. Whether the goal is to reduce stress or to gain deeper insight and mastery over your inner life, this simple, straightforward guidebook is the tool to use for learning why and how to meditate. Through its unique workbook-style presentation, Journey to the Center leads the reader to discover a starting point, teaches how to gain mental clarity and remove the obstacles that are inevitably encountered, and helps identify the insights that are appropriate to each stage of the journey to spiritual and psychological maturity.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Wisdom Publications (October 25, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0861711416
• ISBN-13: 978-0861711413
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #161,516 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most helpful mediation guide to come out in a decade, November 1, 1998

By A Customer

Occasionally a book comes along that opens doors for its readers, a book that changes lives. The quality that books of this import often share is simplicity--the ability to present deep understandings in a way that is approachable, easy to grasp. and grounded in the well-worn workings of our everyday lives. Journey to the Center is such a book. There is no esoterica, no mystery, instead the gift of clarity is taught in a quiet, humor-filled, stepwise approach that tunes us bit by bit to the here and now. The book begins with a question--who are we beyond our self definitions? With the ten oxherding drawings from the Zen tradition as a framing metaphor, the reader is led through successive sets of meditation instructions that initiate the process of answering that question. Each set of instructions is linked to an oxherding drawing that metaphorically depicts each step of the Way. Flickstein also gives us an insight to work with that is associated with each stage. Insights are articulated to draw us gently deeper into our journey, to help us look carefully at the assumptive underpinnings of our beliefs so that they become conscious and not merely automatic. It is our unconscious material, our automatic reactions to life's situations, Flickstein maintains, that create stress and difficulty in our lives. But reading this book is not only about discovering the subtle threads of awakening in our lives. There is a homey story-telling style and a warmth permeating these pages that is a pleasure to read. This is the Satthipathana Sutta of the Buddha, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, brought to life with teaching tales from many traditions, riddles, homey wisdom, and best of all, a beacon-like clarity that pushes the in-your-face directness of freedom into view. As Flickstein delights in pointing out, it was there all along. To illustrate the point of how we miss the obvious source of our inner wealth by becoming mired in external information, he tells the story of a poor man, dressed in rags, who every day leads a donkey across the border from one kingdom to another. The border guards suspect that he is smuggling something so each day as the man passes they carefully search the donkey's saddlebags. Each day they find nothing but straw. The man begins to dress in finer clothing, he moves into a larger house. The border guards resolve to look more closely because now they are almost certain that the man is smuggling something. But daily as they search the saddlebags, they still come up with only straw. Finally, a border guard retires. He runs into the man and says, "Look, I've retired. I can no longer hurt you. Please tell me what you have been smuggling bacause I know it was something!" The man replies, "Because I know that you can no longer arrest me, I will tell you. I was smuggling donkeys." In this gentle, folksey way, Flickstein is pointing us toward the most obvious source of freedom, that it is not changing the content of what we think that gives us inner freedom, but rather placing our attention on "how" we think. Journey to the Center is destined to become a classic in the Insight Meditation tradition. It will become a sourcebook for meditators like Joseph Goldstein's The Experience of Insight, or the clear and definitive work written by Flickstein's own teacher Bante Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English. As Bante G Himself says in the book's preface, "This is not another book that you read passively--as if reading a novel curled up in a chair. This book invites you to put what you read into action. It is the kind of book that can change your life and point you toward greater peace and happiness"--the peace and happiness that is here all along.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful hands-on approach to spiritual awakening., November 14, 1998

By A Customer

In Journey to the Center, Matthew Flickstein guides the reader step-by-step through a path to spiritual awakening that was mapped by the Buddha 2500 years ago. Written in straight-forward, practical terms, and with great clarity, this book provides the reader with the tools to chart his or her own personal journey through actual experience and contemplation by following the suggestions and exercises offered at each step along the way. Unlike books that keep you "in your head", this book offers the opportunity to experience what is being discussed, so that a firm foundation can be laid for a deep understanding of the nature of all phenomena and the freedom that awaits us at the end of our journey, where "we can finally claim what has always been ours from the start." In the form of a workbook, it provides space to record and journal your experiences. This allows guidance and insight to emerge from the best teacher of all, the one that resides within. This book is unique among meditation guides and I highly recommend it.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Of all the self-help books I've read this one works., November 10, 1998

By A Customer

Of the hundreds of manuals, articles, books and lectures designed to improve our psyche, this is the most practical, easy-to-read self improvement book I have ever come across. As a stress management therapist I plan to put this book on the top of my suggested reading list for my patients. Matthew Flickstein has taken the elusive, frustrating and confusing search for lasting happiness and points us in a direction unseen before. It's like a caterpillar confined to its 2 dimensional flat world suddenly grows wings and takes flight into another dimension. Flickstein shows us we've been looking in the wrong direction all along.