The Soul's Upward Yearning

Author: Robert Spitzer
Publisher: Ignatius Press
ISBN: 1681496747
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 377

Book Description
Since the early twentieth century, scientific materialism has so undermined our belief in the human capacity for transcendence that many people find it difficult to believe in God and the human soul. The materialist perspective has not only cast its spell on the natural sciences, psychology, philosophy, and literature, it has also enthralled popular culture, which offers very little to encourage the"soul's upward yearning". There are many signs of the widespread loss of confidence in our ability to soar upward, and these have been noted by thinkers as diverse as Carl Jung (psychiatrist), Mircea Eliade (historian of religion), Gabriel Marcel (philosopher), and authors C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Their observations were validated by a 2004 study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry that linked the absence of religion with a marked increase in suicide, meaninglessness, substance abuse, separation from family members, and other psychological problems. Thus, the loss of transcendence is negatively affecting an entire society. It is stealing from countless individuals their sense of happiness, dignity, ideals, virtues, and destiny.Ironically, the evidence for transcendence is greater today than in any other period in history. The problem is, this evidence has not been compiled and made widely available—a challenge Father Spitzer aspires to meet with this book. Father Spitzer's work provides a bright light in the midst of the darkness by presenting traditional and contemporary evidence for God and a transphysical soul from several major sources. It shows that we are transcendent beings with souls capable of surviving bodily death; that we are self-reflective beings aware of and able to strive toward perfect truth, love, goodness, and beauty; that we have the dignity of being created in the very image of God. If we underestimate these truths, we undervalue one another, underlive our lives, and underachieve our destiny.

The Soul's Upward Yearning

Author: Robert Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D.
Publisher: Ignatius Press
ISBN: 1586179551
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 377

Book Description
Western culture has been moving away from its Christian roots for several centuries but the turn from Christianity accelerated in the 20th century. At the core of this decline is a loss of a sense of our own transcendence. Scientific materialism has so seriously impacted our belief in human transcendence that many people find it difficult to believe in God and the human soul. This anti-transcendent perspective has not only cast its spell on the natural sciences, psychology, philosophy, and literature, it has also negatively impacted popular culture through the writings of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and many others. The warning signs of this loss of transcendence have been expressed by thinkers as diverse as Carl Jung (psychiatrist), Mircea Eliade (historian of religion), Gabriel Marcel (philosopher), C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. These warnings were validated by a 2004 study in the American Journal of Psychiatry which showed that the absence of religion alone was responsible for a marked increase in suicide rates, sense of meaningless, substance abuse, separation from family, and other psychiatric problems. Thus, the loss of transcendence is negatively affecting not only individuals’ sense of happiness, dignity, ideals, virtues, and destiny, but also the culture. Ironically, the evidence for transcendence is greater today than in any other period in history. The problem is – this evidence has not been compiled and propagated. Fr. Spitzer’s book provides a bright light in the midst of this cultural darkness by presenting both traditional and contemporary evidence for God and a transphysical soul from several major sources. He also shows how human consciousness and intelligence is completely special – and cannot be replicated by artificial intelligence or animal consciousness. We are transcendent beings with souls capable of surviving bodily death – self-reflective beings aware of perfect truth, love, goodness, and beauty. We are beings with an unrestricted capacity to know and create science, law, culture, art, music, literature, and so much more. The evidence reveals that we have the dignity of being created in the very image of God, and if we underestimate it, we will undervalue one another, underlive our lives, and underachieve our destiny. This work is the most comprehensive treatment of human transcendence available today.

Five Pillars of the Spiritual Life

Author: Robert J. Spitzer
Publisher: Ignatius Press
ISBN: 1586172018
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Book Description
Fr. Spitzer, President of Gonzaga University and a highly regarded spiritual teacher and writer, presents a practical, yet rich guide for helping busy people develop a regular and deeper prayer life. Based on many successful retreats and seminars he has given to much acclaim over the years, this brilliant Jesuit priest presents five essential means through which the contemplative and active aspects of our lives can be fused together for a stronger spiritual life.

Beginning to Pray

Author: Anthony Bloom
Publisher: Paulist Press
ISBN: 9780809115099
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 126

Book Description
Offers meditations on our relationship with God through prayer and tells how to find consolation, express thankfulness, and apprehend the presence of the Lord

Creating the Soul Body

Author: Robert E. Cox
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 159477756X
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Book Description
Outlines the principles and mechanics of the soul body, the spiritual vehicle that enables individual consciousness to survive the body’s death • Shows that the ancient Vedic, Egyptian, Hebraic, and Pythagorean traditions shared and understood this spiritual practice • Reveals modern science as only now awakening to this ancient sacred science Ancient peoples the world over understood that individual consciousness is rooted in a universal field of consciousness and is therefore eternal, surviving the passing of the physical body. They engaged in spiritual practices to make that transition maximally auspicious. These practices can be described as a kind of alchemy, in which base elements are discarded and higher levels of consciousness are realized. The result is the creation of a vehicle, a soul body, that carries consciousness beyond physical death. These spiritual preparations are symbolized in the Vedic, Egyptian, and Hebraic traditions as a divine stairway or ladder, a step-by-step path of ascent in which the practitioner raises consciousness by degrees until it comes to rest in the bosom of the infinite, thereby becoming “immortal.” This spiritual process explains the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, for example, whose reincarnation is confirmed in infancy through physical and spiritual signs, indicating that the consciousness has been carried from one lifetime to the next. In Creating the Soul Body, Robert Cox maps the spiritual journey of consciousness behind this sacred science of immortality and reveals the practice of creating a soul body in detail. He also shows that this ancient spiritual science resembles advanced theories of modern science, such as wave and particle theory and the unified field theory, and reveals that modern science is only now awakening to this ancient science of “immortality.”

Finding True Happiness

Author: Robert Spitzer
Publisher: Ignatius Press
ISBN: 1681496550
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 314

Book Description
One of the hottest topics in contemporary culture is happiness so much so that the United Nations declared an International Happiness Day in response to the immense popularity of Pharrell Williamsಙ song ಜHappyಝ. The explanation for this current fixation seems to lie in the contrary phenomenon unhappiness. Despite the fact that we have tremendous access to every imaginable form of entertainment, we experience a pervading sense of insecurity, emptiness, and malaise amid sporadic peak experiences. The problem seems to lie less in the external environment than in the internal one. We seem, in the words of Viktor Frankl, to be suffering from an absence of meaning that pervades both individuals and societies, giving rise to a collective emptiness, loneliness, and alienation. Finding True Happiness attempts to provide a way out of this personal and cultural vacuum by helping people to identify and then reach for happiness. As Aristotle noted 2,400 years ago, happiness is the one thing we can choose for its own sake everything else is chosen for the sake of happiness. After an exhaustive investigation of philosophical, psychological, and theological systems of happiness, author Fr. Spitzer developed the ಜFour Levels of Happinessಝ, which he based on the classical thinkers Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas; the contemporary philosophers Marcel, Scheler, Buber, Ricoeur, and Jaspers; and the modern psychologists Maslow, Frankl, Erikson, Seligman, Kohlberg and Gilligan. Finding True Happiness is both a philosophical itinerary and a practical guidebook for lifeಙs most important journey from the mundane and the meaningless to transcendent fulfillment. No other book currently available combines such breadth of practical advice and such depth of philosophical, psychological, and spiritual wisdom.

God So Loved the World

Author: Robert Spitzer
Publisher: Ignatius Press
ISBN: 1681497018
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 441

Book Description
In this volume the brilliant Fr. Spitzer probes in detail the major question that if an intelligent Creator God – manifest in logical proofs, scientific evidence, and near death experiences - who is the source of our desire for the sacred, and the transcendental desires for truth, love, goodness, and beauty, would want to reveal himself to us personally and ultimately. He then shows this is reasonable not only in light of our interior experience of a transcendent Reality, but also that a completely intelligent Reality is completely positive--implying its possession of a completely positive virtue – namely love, defined as agape. This leads to the question whether God might be unconditionally loving, and if he is, whether he would want to make a personal appearance to us in a perfect act of empathy – face to face. After examining the rational evidence for this, he reviews all world religions to see if there is one that reveals such a God – an unconditionally loving God who would want to be with us in perfect empathy. This leads us to the extraordinary claim of Jesus Christ who taught that God is "Abba", the unconditionally loving Father. Jesus' claims go further, saying that He is also unconditional love, and that his mission is to give us that love through an act of complete self-sacrifice. He also claims to be the exclusive Son of the Father, sent by God to save the world, and the one who possesses divine power and authority. The rest of the book does an in-depth examination of the evidence for Jesus' unconditional love of sinners, his teachings, his miracles, and his rising from the dead. As well as the evidence for Jesus' gift of the Holy Spirit that enabled his disciples to perform miracles in his name, and evidence for the presence of the Holy Spirit today. If this strong evidence convinces us to believe that Jesus is our ultimate meaning and destiny, and desire His saving presence in our lives, that evidence should galvanize the Holy Spirit within us to show that Jesus is Lord and Savior, the way, the truth, and the life. And our faith in him will transform everything we think about our nature, dignity, and destiny– and how we live, endure suffering, contend with evil, and treat our neighbor.

Escape From Evil's Darkness

Author: Fr. Robert Spitzer, S.J
Publisher: Ignatius Press
ISBN: 1621644189
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 626

Book Description
In this second volume of the Called Out of Darkness trilogy, Father Robert Spitzer, S.J., draws together some of the best advice given by Catholic spiritual masters across the ages and brings it into harmony with modern scientific research, offering practical ways to live out the gospel in our busy days. It is a roadmap to a deeper relationship with the Lord and to authentic transformation through the imitation of Christ. Giving evidence that Jesus established just one Church, with Peter as its head, Spitzer shows that the Catholic Church—with its rich array of sacraments, teachings, prayer traditions, and lived examples of holiness—continues to be fertile ground for profound Christian conversion. But no true conversion is purely spiritual; it must bear fruit in our daily lives. Father Spitzer guides readers through the workings of moral transformation, with detailed sketches of all the cardinal and theological virtues, especially love. Using insights from Saint Ignatius of Loyola, as well as from modern psychology, Escape from Evil's Darkness concludes with an in-depth study of the sacrament of confession and the staggering power of God's loving mercy.

Baxter's Explore the Book

Author: J. Sidlow Baxter
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 0310871395
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 1846

Book Description
Explore the Book is not a commentary with verse-by-verse annotations. Neither is it just a series of analyses and outlines. Rather, it is a complete Bible survey course. No one can finish this series of studies and remain unchanged. The reader will receive lifelong benefit and be enriched by these practical and understandable studies. Exposition, commentary, and practical application of the meaning and message of the Bible will be found throughout this giant volume. Bible students without any background in Bible study will find this book of immense help as will those who have spent much time studying the Scriptures, including pastors and teachers. Explore the Book is the result and culmination of a lifetime of dedicated Bible study and exposition on the part of Dr. Baxter. It shows throughout a deep awareness and appreciation of the grand themes of the gospel, as found from the opening book of the Bible through Revelation.

Christ Versus. Satan in Our Daily Lives

Author: Robert Spitzer
Publisher: Ignatius Press
ISBN: 1642291374
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 450

Book Description
Spiritual writer, theologian, and philosopher Jesuit Fr. Robert Spitzer tackles the topic of recognizing and overcoming spiritual evil. His focus is the human heart. His goal: our moral and spiritual transformation, which leads to true peace and genuine happiness. The book is divided into two main parts: the realities of God's goodness and of spiritual evil, and recognizing and overcoming diabolical tactics, which range from temptation and deception to the Deadly Sins. Father Spitzer shows readers how to experience God's peace even during times of suffering and persecution. He examines the basics of the spiritual life and Christian mysticism, including the contemplative dimension. He explains the purgative, illuminative, and unitive aspects of spirituality, as well as the Lord's consolation and the passive Dark Night of the Spirit. Father Spitzer provides the biblical and theological background of Jesus' victory over Satan. The author also explores the reality of the Devil, including extraordinary manifestations of diabolic activity such as possession. He recalls the true story of the famous possession case on which the novel and film The Exorcist were based. In the final sections of the book the author explains: how diabolical spiritual forces operate how temptation works, and what to do to defeat it the "deadly sins" and how to overcome them