Posts Tagged ‘Buddha’
The Four Noble Truths of Love – Book Review
Monday, July 9th, 2018
Susan Piver’s book, The Four Noble Truths of Love, is an inner course on navigating relationships and well-being. In her new book, New York Times bestselling author and mindfulness expert, Susan Piver applies classic Buddhist wisdom to modern relationships, including her own long-term marriage.
The Four Noble Truths of Love will challenge expectations we have about dating, love, and romance. This mindful approach towards relationships and love invites us to explore our heart fiercely, deepen communications with our partner, increase our compassion, and lead us toward a path of wisdom and happiness.
Through the lens of both her Buddhist practices and her own experience in a 20-year marriage, Piver interweaves personal anecdotes with practical wisdom to arrive at the Four Noble Truths of Love. Piver spends time in each truth: Relationships never stabilize; Expecting relationships to be stable is what makes them unstable; Meeting instability together is love; The path to liberation. While her practices come from a Buddhist background and her study of the Four Noble Truths, the Four Noble Truths of Love are an invitation to be questioned and examined from our own experience/s.
It’s when we stop trying to see a relationship as only an extended love affair that we gain access to its unique and often undercelebrated powers: of warmth; of solace; of protection; of friendship; a connection that slows and deepens until it subsumes both hearts and blurs the lines between you, me, and us. –Susan Piver
Piver shares from her own personal experience of marriage including some personal struggles and revelations. She shares that if a couple meets their instability together – this is love. This book is a teaching on love from a “big” mind. There are insights about the phases of relationships, from irritation to deep compassion. Piver also offers practical wisdom, including meditation practices. Meditation can be a practice of love.
Everything in this book is a practice – of the heart, of the mind, of the Self. Love at its core is about being vulnerable, open, and kindhearted. Love shows us our inherent goodness and it can also reveal our unhealed pain. Love isn’t about hiding the pain, rather its’ about uncovering it. This path takes great courage – and the noble truths of love offer wise insight to practice that courage.
*I received an advance review copy of Susan Piver’s The Four Noble Truths of Love. I have also met Susan Piver and taken courses with the Open Heart Project.
Fear as an Ally
Thursday, January 24th, 2013
Fear doesn’t have to rule your life. You can do it, even if you have to do it afraid. ~Joyce Meyer
One of my favorite Joyce Meyer’s quotes is “Do it afraid.” That is exactly what came to mind as I was reading the new book by Jaimal Yogis, The Fear Project: What Our Most Primal Emotion Taught Me About Survival, Success, Surfing…and Love. The book explores both his personal experience as well as interviewing leading neuroscientists and other experts about the most primal emotion – fear.
Is fear something we overcome or simply an ally that pushes us forward in the world? Can you deep dive into fear so as to befriend it and allow fear to push personal limits?
Through amazing stories such as swimming in the wild currents of the San Francisco Bay to surfing 40+ foot waves in the winter, Yogis touches upon our innate fears – the fear of not trusting, the fear of losing someone we love, and our own internal fears of not being enough.
The book will give you insight as to why fear can dominate your life and ways to use fear as an ally. His personal stories have universal themes and you will find yourself laughing out loud. As Yogis says, “Much as we like to make it into the villain, fear isn’t bad. In fact, as we’ll learn, it’s often our fear of fear – our aversion to accepting and understanding this very natural emotion – that can cause fear to spin into unhelpful panic and anxiety disorders.”
The Fear Project will give you a better understanding of “good and bad fear” and how to push through what gets in our way to fulfilling our potential – doing it afraid.
Yogis connects his personal stories to scientific research in real and fun ways. It combines what I love best – storytelling and neuroscience. I was a huge fan of his previous book, Saltwater Buddha. This book took me to the depths of my fears – the current one of uncertainty – and gave me insight to relate to it in new and emerging ways.
When you are ready to explore fear as an ally, go read this book. Do it afraid.