Reddit reviews A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life
We found 5 Reddit comments about A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Great product!
Learn to meditate and do it daily; and find a good therapist and see them regularly. As has been mentioned, these questions are good ones to talk over with a therapist.
I've found the combination of meditation and therapy to be very good at increasing self-love and letting go of self-hatred and wanting to please others. Meditation helps you get to know yourself, and be able to tolerate discomfort and feel your feelings without needing to react or blame. It's a practice and it takes time and effort, like going to to the gym, but for self-love - but even 5 minutes a day does amazing things.
Therapy (talk therapy with a psychotherapist, hypnotherapy, or mindfulness-centered therapy) helps you understand yourself better and you and your therapist can create healing experiences that heal emotional trauma and wounds - lack of self-love often comes from emotional wounds you may not even know you have. It helps with finding your power within.
Meditation - most Buddhist centers will teach you for free and have regular classes or retreats to deepen your practice. You don't have to be a Buddhist or convert to Buddhism to do it. There are Shambhala centers in most major world cities where you can get free instruction; the Insight Meditation Society is also a good option. Reading about meditation helps (any books by Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness is one of my favorites. Jack Kornfield is another great author and meditator who talks about loving yourself, A Path With Heart is another favorite of mine), but there's no substitute for actually doing it.
Therapy systems that have worked for me have been Hakomi somatic psychotherapy and Wellness hypnotherapy - therapists run in tribes and these two places train therapists that helped me. There are lots of different therapists and modalities. You may have to try a few to find one that works for you. It paid off for me- I'm a lot happier, healthier, and have more self-love for seeing a therapist.
Loving yourself is an inside job - not something that will happen overnight, but a lifelong journey, a path of growth.
Congratulations for taking the first steps on it!
This may be controversial, but I definitely wouldn’t recommend these two books because it will confuse the fuck out of you. All of the stuff inside is surely profound and deep but I think you won’t be able to understand what buddhism is about. I know this is /r/zen, but I would recommend you to start with something more general like A Path with Heart. It’s down-to-earth stuff about meditation and eventual awakening and that’s what buddhism is.
I think the first book I’ve started with was actually Zen Flesh, Zen Bones and only after about 2 years of self-study and practice it starts to feel that I’m doing some progress. Make your choice, but don’t sweat it. In the end, there’s no rush.
All you need to know: Path with Heart
Section 4 of the Urantia Book.
I was a young adult, and very disillusioned with the kind of Christianity I was brought up with. I was an athiest, but I wasn't comfortable with my newfound atheism. I very angry that I thought I had been lied too for all those years. I thought that my Atheism was truth, and Christians were just a bunch of cowards that lied to themselves to provide a little comfort. This bloomed into a very obnoxious "You're at best an idiot, at worst a liar." type of attitude toward anyone that professed any type of belief in something. In short, I had become an elitist dick.
But also during this time, I found myself exploring the world's religions, including plenty of new age crap. I was reading stuff like The Tao of Pooh, A Path With Heart and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I experimented with meditation, played with I Ching and Tarot Cards. Losing my belief in God had left a festering dark spot in me that I subconsciously sought to fill.
I read the Urantia Book off an on over many years, mostly as entertainment, but eventually I gradually realized that I wasn't athiest anymore. I really believed in the Jesus portrayed in Section 4 of the UB. I found myself saying yes, yes this is what my God is like.