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The only drawback is that sometimes the author doesn't go into enough detail on some topics, but overall this book will get you going with your own website.
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Especially in light of the "openness theory" that is infiltrating Christian doctrine today, this book is an important work for Christians to read.
My recommendation is to use it as a Lord's Day study guide, as it beautifully directs your thoughts to adoration, and with the scriptures and the Holy Spirit's influence, can elicit a worshipful and humble response.
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What I love best about THE FORCE IS WITH YOU is the way it so clearly conveys a sense of hope, inspiration, and purposefulness about the way humanity learns about its worst fears and greatest hopes through stories. Yes, we love to vividly imagine the end of the world... but we also love to dream of ways we can find solutions to our biggest problems. We know that it's not easy being more spiritually and psychically evolved... but we love to imagine how those of us who are different can be accepted in mainstream society.
THE FORCE IS WITH YOU is priceless for clarifying what the new genre of "Spiritual Cinema" is all about, and for providing an inspiring list of the most spiritual movies of all time. It is my deepest hope that this book will help establish awareness in film-makers everywhere of the importance of making spiritual movies, as it helps movie-goers better understand the significance of the movies they see.
THE FORCE IS WITH YOU is a mesmerizing account of what it's like to be a movie producer. Besides sharing his own stories, Stephen Simon has written a thought provoking analogy of over 70 movies and the mystical messages he found in them.
Who will cherish this book? Movie lovers; people pursuing spiritual growth; anyone interested in any aspect of movie making... anyone...
I believe it was Mr. Simon's unquenchable love for humanity and the planet kept him going against all odds. The word "no" is unrecognizable in his consciousness. Oh - he's heard the word all right, more than most people. His heart has been shattered over and over, but love pieced it back together and motivated him on the relentless pursuit of his dreams. Did you know, for instance, that "What Dreams May Come" was 20 years in the making? Twenty years! And that "Somewhere In Time" bombed when it came out in theaters? Read the haunting and amazing story of how it resurrected itself and became one of the best loved
films of all times.
Stephen Simon is a visionary. The human race is evolving rapidly now and movies are one of the most profound tools we have to assist our evolution. Mr. Simon is forging a path for the genre of mystical movies (a genre Hollywood has not recognized). He discusses the industry and where he sees it heading.
Read this book. But be prepared to cry, to laugh, to be inspired and to grow in consciousness.
...
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If you are a fan of this great television series, then this book is certainly for you. I highly recommend it.
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Who are the dead? They are really the living dead, the spiritually dead -- those who are ignorant of "the knowledge of the heart", or Gnosis. Why do they return from Jerusalem? Because it is the symbolic home of the dogmatism and "dead creeds" which have blinded men to their own true nature.
This book is part gnostic treatise and part academic exegesis of Jung's "Seven Sermons". It serves as an extremely enlightening introduction to both Gnosticism and Jungian psychology. Hoeller clears up many misunderstandings about the ancient Gnostics, who have been vilified by mainstream Christians as "heretics" since ancient times. He also restores dignity to the notion that we (post)moderns can draw on a store of "ancient wisdom". New Age gurus who can't hold a candle to Hoeller bandy this phrase about ad nauseum. Hoeller's knowledge of history and primary texts and his own insight and wisdom shine through to create a unique and vital synthesis that puts the New Age crowd to shame.
Hoeller's writing is intellectually sound and spiritually compelling. There is no dry analysis or tedious language here. Indeed, Hoeller clearly loves the English language and uses it more creatively and adeptly than many native speakers (English is not his first language). His style tends toward the esoteric, but such is the clarity of his thought that the sometimes archaic vocabulary doesn't distract one's attention for an instant. To give an example, Hoeller explains the symbolism of the rooster-head found on images of the ancient Gnostic "god" Abraxas as follows:
"The head of the rooster symbolizes vigilant wakefulness and is related to both the human heart and to universal heart, the sun, the rising of which is invoked by the matutinal clarion call of the chanticleer."
If such highbrow style isn't your cup of tea -- well, then, this book isn't for you. As for me, I found joy on every page and give Stephan Hoeller's "The Gnostic Jung" the highest possible recommendation.
The seven sermons deal with the self as the androgynous being Abraxas, with the message that self-knowledge may be attained by the conscious assimilation of the contents of the subconscious, in order to achieve unity. The "dead" are those who stopped growing spiritually by not questioning their egos. By not growing, they are in essence the living dead.
Jung considered his own work a link in the golden chain from ancient gnosticism via philosophical alchemy to the modern psychology of the subconscious. Just as in those ancient texts, his work reveals a fragmented self in which the image of the divine may be found.
The author made his own translation of the sermons and provided a comprehensive preface, exegesis of the sermons and afterword in which he comments grippingly on Jung, gnosticism and the current era. His views on the survival of the pansophic/theosophic tradition (through the arts) are particularly enlightening.
Jung's central doctrine of individuation is an ancient concept of the western esoteric tradition - the tendency of the individual consciousness not to surrender its light into nothingness. Unlike many eastern spiritual systems, the Western tradition never knew the permanent dissolution of the individual consciousness in the divine.
Already in the first sermon this question is discussed, i.e. how to remain an individual while simultaneously achieving an optimal degree of unity with the ineffable greatness of the pleroma within us. Jung gives us an undivided model of reality in which both causal and acausal connections, spirit and matter, are reconciled.
As for belief, Jung convincingly argues that human beings have a religious need - not a need for belief, however, but one for religious experience. This is a psychical experience that leads to the integration of the soul. Inner wholeness - gnosis - is achieved not by belief in ideas, but by experience.
In the place of a god to believe in, Jung thus offers us an existential truth that we can experience. He rejects the "god of belief" in favor of a symbol of lasting validity, and instead of the much abused concept of "belief", he offers the power of the imagination as the way to gnosis, just as in the magickal and alchemical traditions.
The seven sermons are gripping and poetic, while the commentary is full of insight and enriched by quotes from inter alia the Nag Hammadi texts, Plotinus, Helena Blavatsky, Emerson and others. The most beautiful is a moving poem by the mystic Angelus Silesius, of which I quote a part:
"God is such as he is,
I am what I must be;
If you know one, in truth
You know both him and me.
I am the vine, which he
Doth plant and cherish most;
The fruit which grows from me
Is God, the holy ghost."
This text, and Basilides' thoughts on the pleroma (fullness of god), reminded me of Patti Smith's song "Hymn" on her album Wave:
"When I am troubled in the night
He comes to comfort me
He wills me through the darkness
And the empty child is free
To take his hand, his sacred heart
The heart that breaks the dawn, amen.
And when I think I've had my fill
He fills me up again."
I highly recommend this book as a bridge between psychology and religion, or rather the religious experience in the human psyche. It ought to be read together with William James' "The Varieties of Religious experience" and Richard Maurice Bucke's "Cosmic Consciousness", for a breathtaking metaphysical and metatextual experience.
In 1916 Jung wrote a short set of "sermons" under the name of the ancient Gnostic Basilides. He had them privately printed and later cited them as the inspiration for his subsequent psychological theories. This book not only makes a vivid case for Jung's thought as "a psychological restatement of Gnosticism," but also defines the major Gnostic doctrines with clarity and sympathy. Hoeller is a Gnostic himself and wants to recover this "heresy" from the accusations that drove it underground when Rome colonized Christianity. He takes on many critiques of the Gnostics, which run the gamut from early Church Fathers to modern thinkers like Martin Buber, and shows how Jungian psychology gives Gnosticism a new lease on life by transforming its beliefs into powerful symbols of the human psyche. That he's not afraid to step down from the lectern and argue as a believer gives the study an urgency you rarely find in more academic accounts of the Gnostics (see, for example, James M. Robinson's excellent introduction to the one-volume Nag Hammadi Library).
I finished the book with two minds about Gnosticism, which seems about right for a worldview so taken with binaries! On the one hand, the Gnostics insist on our essential divinity. Each individual carries a piece of the light within and is free to develop it without the constraints of dogmas or moral laws. With 9/11 so fresh on the brain, that must sound appealing to anyone reading this right now. On the other hand, the view of creation as evil, or at least inferior to the higher realities of the spirit, troubles me. I agree with Hoeller that it's probably unfair to brand the Gnostics as "World Haters." But to revive this ancient sect, even in Jung's symbolic form, I think you have to come to grips with its disdain for the material world of bodies and atoms and things that modern science makes more attractive to us all the time. With so much power in our merely human hands, the point shouldn't be to escape physical reality, but redeem it. Why save your own soul if you lose the whole world? That sounds pretentious even as I write it! But I'm clearer on where I stand after reading this lucid book and I think you will be, too.
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Although it provides information from 1939 to 1945 the information relating to the tables of organization, tactics, equipment and uniforms refers mainly to the period 1944-45.
For example, you can find the TO&E of an army and SS panzerdivision in 1944 but not in 1939 or 1940.
Also, it is important to note that due to the nature of the book it is mainly a WHAT and HOW book (provides data and factual information )but is not a WHY book. That is, you will notice that a motorized infantry battalion differs organizationaly from a regular infantry battalion but it is not explained WHY. Other books give the explanation. This is not a problem with the book, it is just its scope. Overall it is a highly recommended book for anyone interested in the details that are not covered in most WW2 books.
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We find Gould in a more contemplative mood within these pages, being reflective and personal as he speaks about the importance within our lives of the connections to our past and ancestral generations. But as Gould would put it, " a theme of supreme importance to evolutionists who study a world in which extinction is the ultimate fate of all and prolonged persistence the only meaningful measure of success."
There are essays on extenction, fishtails and frog calls, the coloration of pigeons, the eyes of mole rats, and an in depth personal essay about his maternal grandfather. This last essay brought some fond memories back to me, as I was growing up... yet time waits for no man.
For variety, range, depth and a refinement in writing style, this tome is one of Gould's best, as you read, Gould hits his stride and leads you toward his conclusions, just like my grandfather taught me to be observent and not take things for granted. But to question, the way things are as they seem, just like Gould does to his readers, bringing information to them and through observation and a brilliant mind making things clear.
This is an eductional book, as well, as you read, Gould makes the reader learn painlessly... a good storyteller of thirty-one essays that are truly fascinating.
Read and enjoy this well thought out collection of essays.
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This is the story of actress Nicolette Stallings who only feels powerful when seducing someone of the opposite sex. The sexual game of cat and mouse soon turns deadly when she propositions a man she meets in a restaurant who she playfully dubs as "Wally Wall Street". After their one night encounter at a high class hotel Nick finds it hard to get rid of "Wally" who now blames her for the break up of his marriage. After an unsuccessful attempt on his own life "Wally" otherwise known as Jeffery White, finally does succeed in killing himself but not before he manages to frame Nick for his murder! As Nick becomes the center of the medias attention and hunted by the police she tries to find a way to prove her innocence not without having a few sexual encounters along the way.
'Eye Contact" is an excellent erotic thriller not for the timid and will keep you at the edge of your seat trying to figure out how everything will play out in the end. Who would have though that the minister from 7th Heaven could write like this?
If you don't believe me - buy it and read it yourself.