The Power of Face ReadingRose Rosetree

Paperback, 384 pages

Women’s Intuition Worldwide, 2nd edition

ISBN: 978-0965114516

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If you’ve read this blog before, you’ll know that I like to feature books that encourage, inspire, and cajole us to be our best, to grow our kindness and greatness. At first glance, The Power of Face Reading might strike you as another of those New Age “cookbooks” designed to make you hyper-conscious of your every thought and mood. Far from it. Rose Rosetree, the mind/body/spirit pioneer who adapted the 5,000-year-old art of face reading – physiognomy – in 1986, takes an enlightened approach. She urges us to use face reading to see what is best in ourselves and others. When we see something we find “disagreeable,” this author urges us to use the knowledge she teaches to adapt our communication and work style so that we’re able to more harmoniously and compassionately coexist with them. Now that’s my kind of book!

What intrigues me most of all about The Power of Face Reading is its insistence that faces are exactly as they should be, regardless of the societal aversions and attachments that cause us to dub a face odd, ugly, beautiful, or plain. Our faces reveal the talents, challenges, strengths, and styles that we are here on Earth to work with and to learn from. Therefore, Rosetree asserts – and she has demonstrated it in thousands of celebrity and other face readings since 1986 – that our faces reflect lessons learned over time. This author urges us to see faces with eyes of curiosity and compassion, rather than with the thoughtless derision that the culture of the “perfect celebrity face” unquestioningly accepts and perpetuates.

See Stephen Colbert’s response to Rose’s reading of his face on The Colbert Report.

Your face might show you to be impatient and desirous of praise at age 37, while revealing you to be calmly assertive and detached from the opinions of others in your late 50’s, depending on how you’ve grown and evolved with the lessons and challenges Life has handed you. One glance across a room and Rosetree sees whether you’ve made lemonade out of your lemons, or whether you’ve allowed them to contort your face in avoidance and disgust!

Whether or not you believe that the length of your nose, the height of your ears, or the arch of your eyebrows may hold the key to invigorating your relationship or boosting your career, Rosetree’s sense of humor makes this a fun read. The book is divided into sections balanced between examining parts of the face and addressing life issues with the help of face reading. Each section features lively Q&A with the author, whose answers ring with the magnetism of a standup comedian. Wherever you begin reading, The Power of Face Reading will teach you something you can take away with you and practically apply. Or, the next time your party hits a lull, haul out this book (along with a good mirror) and buttonhole your three bravest guests for a spontaneous reading!

Do you believe that books can awaken and transform?

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Ceci Miller owns CeciBooks, an editorial and book publishing consultancy that empowers authors to write, publish, and market irresistible books that uplift and inspire. Ceci has written, co-authored, and edited books with bestselling authors and experts since 1988. See new and popular book projects. Also . . . Find expert information on writing, publishing, and marketing a book in CeciBooks Chats (Getting Started series is FREE).A graduate of the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Ceci Miller is also the author of two published children’s picture books, and former contributing editor for Darshan, an international magazine. A student of yoga and meditation since 1976, Ceci leads seminars that explore language as a vehicle for personal transformation. Based on her book Sacred Visitations, and the popular book she co-authored with John Lee, Writing from the Body, Ceci’s work (both with CeciBooks authors and in public programs) blends writing, intuitive guidance, and contemplative practices that connect right brain creativity with your true intention.

Three Cups of Tea

One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time

David Oliver Relin and Greg Mortenson

83 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List

Paperback, 368 pages

Penguin (non-classics)

ISBN 978-0143038252

$15.00

Buy the book here

(Scroll to link at bottom of page — 7% of proceeds donated to Central Asia Institute)

If you haven’t yet heard about this book, I’m glad you’re reading this. My husband and I took turns reading Three Cups of Tea to each other on a recent vacation, and its story has inspired us both to greater service and generosity. Even if you just love a gripping tale full of heroic love, intrigue, and suspense, Three Cups of Tea will not disappoint. The book begins with Greg Mortenson’s failed attempt to climb K2, in which he becomes dangerously lost and is cared for in the village of Korphe. In gratitude, the young mountain climber pledges to build the village a school, and thus begins the saga of “one man’s mission to promote peace, one school at a time.”

See Greg Mortenson Slide Show

To date Mortenson, now Executive Director of Central Asia Institute, has built 55 schools in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan where often the only schools are madrassas raised by the Taliban to train boys as jihadis. By providing education to poor children, and to girls in particular in this otherwise volatile region, Mortenson offers a workable alternative to non-extremist schooling and its tragic outcomes.

Mortenson’s story ranges far and wide: we follow him from the remote villages of Pakistan; to his whirlwind marriage to his wife, Tara; to sharing tea with Taliban leaders; back to his modest home in Bozeman, Montana; even to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s office at the Pentagon. For the sake of girls in Muslim countries whom he has never met, Mortenson has endured hunger, terror, kidnapping, humiliation, and heartbreak. Despite all this, the undeniable message of Three Cups of Tea is that it is by serving others that one finds joy in life. Mortenson’s smile is contagious, and so is his mission. If you haven’t yet jumped up to get this book, please do so. Read it right away. You can write in and thank me later.

Written by journalist David Oliver Relin, Three Cups of Tea has won numerous awards, including the Kiriyama Prize for nonfiction and Time Magazine’s Asia Book of the Year.

In August 2008, National Public Radio aired a segment on Greg Mortenson’s work and his long history forging relationships with tribal chiefs, mullahs, and imams in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Listen here

Believe that books can make a difference?

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Ceci Miller owns CeciBooks, an editorial and book publishing consultancy that empowers authors to write, publish, and market irresistible books that uplift and inspire. Ceci has written, co-authored, and edited books with bestselling authors and experts since 1988. See new and popular book projects. Also . . . Find expert information on writing, publishing, and marketing a book in CeciBooks Chats (Getting Started series is FREE).A graduate of the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Ceci Miller is also the author of two published children’s picture books, and former contributing editor for Darshan, an international magazine. A student of yoga and meditation since 1976, Ceci leads seminars that explore language as a vehicle for personal transformation. Based on her book Sacred Visitations, and the popular book she co-authored with John Lee, Writing from the Body, Ceci’s work (both with CeciBooks authors and in public programs) blends writing, intuitive guidance, and contemplative practices that connect right brain creativity with your true intention.

Paperback * 83 pages
$12.95

Vibrant Press
ISBN 978-0978795207

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Having worked on a number of personal growth books as an editor, I welcomed the opportunity to work on Dr. Shelton’s Transforming Burnout. As we went deeper into the project, it became clear just how passionately and personally this author cared about his subject. He had been burned out, and he had come back! To say that Dr. Shelton is a joyful and exuberant man is like saying an apple is sweet — you just don’t know how sweet it really is until you try it for yourself. This guy is a good apple, and he has written an inspiring and very useful book.

The reason Dr. Alan Shelton took to writing about burnout is as interesting as his method is effective. Known to those he worked with at the medical clinic where he had been seeing Native American patients at a tribal clinic for nearly 20 years, this normally sweet-natured, energetic doctor inexplicably became irritable and sullen. Out of her deep concern, a co-worker of native descent made an appointment with a native medicine man for the medical doctor. Not wishing to offend her or hurt her feelings, he kept the appointment. I won’t spoil it for you, but the end result? The author rediscovered that the foundation of his life, energy, and joy was in spirituality.

This story of a physician healed through balance and compassion is not to be missed. Dr. Shelton’s story offers, above all, a means to reconnect with the transcendent power of spirituality that can restore one’s body and mind to the exuberance that is our natural way of being. Sadly, these days just about everyone knows somebody who is burned out at work. Readers who give away a copy of Dr. Shelton’s brief-but-important book, or the audiobook on CD.

Ceci Miller owns CeciBooks, an editorial and book publishing consultancy that empowers authors to write, publish, and market irresistible books that uplift and inspire. Ceci has written, co-authored, and edited books with bestselling authors and experts since 1988. See book projects here.

A graduate of the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Ceci Miller is also the author of two published children’s picture books, and former contributing editor for Darshan, an international magazine dedicated to fostering sacred awareness in daily life. A student of yoga and meditation since 1976, Ceci leads seminars that explore language as a vehicle for personal transformation. Based on her book (and audiobook) Sacred Visitations, and the popular book she co-authored with John Lee, Writing from the Body: For Writers, Artists & Dreamers, Ceci’s work (both with CeciBooks authors and in public programs) blends writing and intuitive guidance with contemplative practices that connect your right brain creativity with your true intention.

Paperback * 152 pages
$14.95

Polaris Publishing
ISBN 978-0977144105

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“The Empowerment Triangle is a highly original and effective escape from the Drama Triangle.”
— Stephen Karpman, PhD

For more than 40 years, Dr. Stephen Karpman’s Drama Triangle diagram has been used by counselors, clergy, and others to elucidate the cycle perpetuated through the roles of Victim, Rescuer, and Perpetrator. That Dr. Karpman considers David Emerald’s Empowerment Dynamic (”The Empowerment Triangle”) not only a viable, but a valuable, augmentation to his classic Drama Triangle (referred to in The Power of TED as the Dreaded Drama Triange, or DDT) tips off readers that this book is a classic in the making.

The short, poignant fable of an Everyman features David, a good-natured but confused fellow recovering from his recent divorce; Ted, a wise man (and master of The Empowerment Dynamic) who takes a seat next to him on the bench as he sits contemplating the mess he’s in; and Sophia, a veteran practitioner of TED*, the model that brings all three together in a common story. We follow David as he learns, with Ted’s and Sophia’s help and humor, how to move from Victimhood to the role of a responsible Creator in his own life. It’s a profound discovery, revealed in compelling layers that will keep readers turning pages as they recognize the signs of the DDT (the Dreaded Drama Triangle, TED*’s nemesis) having crept into their own lives.

Readers made squirmy by acronyms and diagrams will need to exercise a little patience here. You’ll be presented with FISBe, the dynamics of the DDT and, of course, TED, The Empowerment Dynamic. But they’re delivered in a user-friendly package that features the playful illustrations of Obadinah. Instead of dry pie charts and mind maps, readers walk with David, Ted, and Sophia along the beach as now and then Ted stops to draw in the sand with a stick or a seashell. We’re treated to glimpses of David’s journal as he takes notes on all the great new stuff he’s learning.

It’s no surprise that coaches, business leaders, teachers, public servants, and even prison officials have taken a shine to this book. Its message of hope resonates with disparate groups because everyone is susceptible to the go-nowhere outlook of victimhood.

The slightly tweaked 2nd edition, to be released this Fall, includes a new Preface by the author as well as a helpful synopsis of The Empowerment Dynamic that follows the sequence of the fable.

Business folks, counselors, clergy, those who work in healthcare — readeres of all shapes, sizes, and inclinations — will find in The Power of TED* a helpful guide to taking hold of life’s difficulties and turning them around.

Ceci Miller owns CeciBooks, an editorial and book publishing consultancy that empowers authors to write, publish, and market irresistible books that uplift and inspire. Ceci has written, co-authored, and edited books with bestselling authors and experts since 1988. See book projects here.

A graduate of the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Ceci Miller is also the author of two published children’s picture books, and former contributing editor for Darshan, an international magazine dedicated to fostering sacred awareness in daily life. A student of yoga and meditation since 1976, Ceci leads seminars that explore language as a vehicle for personal transformation. Based on her book (and audio) Sacred Visitations, and the popular book she co-authored with John Lee, Writing from the Body: For Writers, Artists & Dreamers, Ceci’s work (both with CeciBooks authors and in public programs) blends writing and intuitive guidance with contemplative practices that connect your right brain creativity with your true intention.

Paperback * 224 pages
$19.00

Synergy Books
ISBN 978-0974764481

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In these presidential campaign days in the U.S. of A. we have politics perpetually on the brain, and once again we’re wondering what went wrong. Surely this media mud-wrestling is not what the founders intended.

Enter Donna Zajonc, an author with impressive and eclectic credentials. A Registered Nurse all too familiar with death and dying, she was recently married and had just reached the ripe age of 28 when a friend (a politico of some note) suggested she had the stuff of a successful public servant. She accepted the challenge, ran for office (”Zajonc: Just Say John”), and although in campaign midstream she discovered she was (egads!) pregnant with her first daughter, the author persevered. Not only that, but to the consternation of the old guard in her state, she won. The place was to get a rapid education in how a professional woman just coming of age in the 70s, newly elected to public office, would handle motherhood and public office in tandem.

This maverick state legislator was elected to another two terms and then, as the good ones in politics so often do, became jaded and deeply disillusioned, leaving the scene to succeed wildly in business. But the notion of public service (with an emphasis on service) still called to her, and in time Zajonc emerged from her political malaise. Now as an executive coach specializing in non-partisan work with public leaders, she teaches and lives the principles put forth in The Politics of Hope: that we must evolve from fear to hope if we are to change the face of politics as we now know it, so that once again we may, without flinching, look ourselves in the mirror.

First published in 2004, The Politics of Hope presents the Four Stages of Political Evolution, which brilliantly charts a transformational course that Zajonc clearly considers to be absolutely vital, especially for disillusioned citizens of an ailing democracy. These four transformational stages, inspired by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ stages of death & dying, are synopsized as follows:

“From Stage One Anarchy to Stage Two Traditionalism (the two-party war) we remain polarized and afraid of one another, unable to accomplish our common goals. In Stage Three Political Resignation we stand at the doorway to Stage Four Conscious Public Leadership, of the Politics of Hope. In Stage Four we join the greatest leaders of humanity, by putting we before me. Our political life then reflects the spirit of cooperation, mutual inspiration, and unwavering concern for the collective good.”

The outcome, as the author points up, invoking the voices of historic leaders such as Ghandi, King, and others, is no less than an enlightened society. Interestingly, shortly after Zajonc’s 2004 title was released, its seeming oxymoron was invoked by two other tired-of-politics-as-usual candidates: John Edwards in his 2004 bid for the U.S. Presidency, and (more famously now due to the bestseller status of The Audacity of Hope and the immense popularity of its author) Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in his 2004 Keynote Address to the Democratic National Convention.Folks in need of positive reading at a time when too often the U.S. political process is no more than a junkyard scuffle, will welcome Zajonc’s The Politics of Hope. It offers not only rhetoric (we’ve all heard plenty of that) but fresh air and a map by which to reach higher ground. This is a book for those who realize that, in a democracy, it’s not “they” who are going to change things for the better; it’s us.

Ceci Miller owns CeciBooks, an editorial and book publishing consultancy that empowers authors to write, publish, and market irresistible books that uplift and inspire. Ceci has written, co-authored, and edited books with bestselling authors and experts since 1988. See book projects here.

A graduate of the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Ceci Miller is also the author of two published children’s picture books, and former contributing editor for Darshan, an international magazine dedicated to fostering sacred awareness in daily life. A student of yoga and meditation since 1976, Ceci leads seminars that explore language as a vehicle for personal transformation. Based on her book (and audio) Sacred Visitations, and the popular book she co-authored with John Lee, Writing from the Body: For Writers, Artists & Dreamers, Ceci’s work (both with CeciBooks authors and in public programs) blends writing and intuitive guidance with contemplative practices that connect your right brain creativity with your true intention.

Paperback * 314 pages
$16.95

Green Mountain Books
ISBN 978-0-9793218-0-1

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“I stand in awe of Olivia’s honesty, determination, courage, and, if she doesn’t mind my saying so, of the majesty of her loving, not just of Hob, but of life, and of hard-won integrity. I also stand in awe of her gentle voice as both writer and teacher.”

— from the Foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Zinn’s words point to the crux of this unique memoir. Having made, along with her husband, a commitment to face the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s “consciously and lovingly,” the author shares what it takes to respond with creativity and kindness while watching the slow disintegration of her husband’s mental faculties. It is a challenge that takes everything and gives in return a level of compassion rarely seen. Olivia Hoblitzelle and her husband, known as “Hob” to his students, is not only a writer but a therapist and teacher whose dedication to help alleviate suffering associated with Alzheimer’s and dementia no doubt stems from her 30+ years practicing Buddhist meditation.

As she struggles to understand Hob’s increasingly confused speech, Olivia makes a discovery that lightens her task. A lifelong student and teacher of literature, Hob miraculously is still able to recite snippets of poems, plays, and songs to communicate his thoughts and feelings. This he does even as the thief of memory is dismantling the works. And yet despite their shared strength and frequent good humor in facing Hob’s fatal illness, the couple succumb at times to just the sort of resentful thoughts and angry feelings you’d expect to be evoked by a challenge of this magnitude. The author’s willingness to “go there” and to share how she worked with these thoughts and emotions will be of immeasurable benefit to anyone facing the mental diminishment of a loved one.

Despite Olivia’s honesty, some readers may have trouble believing that anyone could act with such consistent and purposeful kindness, moment by moment. To them I would recommend looking into Buddhist study and practice. Excellent sources from all branches of Buddhist teaching now exist in English, concerning the timeless themes introduced in The Majesty of Your Loving. This ancient guidance includes compassion practice, or tonglen, forgiveness practice, and the practice of mindfulness, as well as the clear light meditation for the time of death.

Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle is eminently practical in treating the subject of her memoir. Eldercare support groups, clergy, and end-of-life counselors will appreciate Olivia’s reflections, discussion questions, and contemplative “seed thoughts” that appear at the end of each chapter, as well as her well-appointed Appendices and Bibliography. The book offers down-to-earth guidance for those intent on giving heartfelt care to friends or relatives suffering from dementia, extending even to care for loved ones in death.

Above all, this book reveals a loss deeply lived, one from which the author has surely wrung every last drop of wisdom. Besides being a fine resource, this book is so elegantly and tenderly written that certain passages seem literally to penetrate the heart.

Ceci Miller owns CeciBooks, an editorial and book publishing consultancy that empowers authors to write, publish, and market irresistible books that uplift and inspire. Ceci has written, co-authored, and edited books with bestselling authors and experts since 1988. See book projects here.

A graduate of the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Ceci Miller is also the author of two published children’s picture books, and former contributing editor for Darshan, an international magazine dedicated to fostering sacred awareness in daily life. A student of yoga and meditation since 1976, Ceci leads seminars that explore language as a vehicle for personal transformation. Based on her book Sacred Visitations, winner of the Bronze IPPY Award in Spirituality, and the popular book she co-authored with John Lee, Writing from the Body: For Writers, Artists & Dreamers, Ceci’s work (both with CeciBooks authors and in public programs) blends writing and intuitive guidance with contemplative practices that connect your right brain creativity with your true intention.

Paperback * 375 pages
$18.95

Snow Lion Publications
ISBN 978-1559393010

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A work of easeful humor as well as scholarship that artfully synthesizes a wide variety of authoritative Buddhist teachings on death and dying, Mind Beyond Death is a wisdom treasure from one of the greatest meditation masters teaching today. Readers willing to contemplate the inevitable are likely to find these teachings on the bardos of life and death fascinating and thrilling.

The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, founder of the international Buddhist sangha Nalandabodhi and one of the foremost scholars and educators of his generation in the Nyingma and Kagyu schools of Tibetan Buddhism, is known for delivering the most profound teachings while at the same time citing funny, often irreverent references to popular culture, to the great delight of his western students. Mind Beyond Death follows this model, offering a thorough and systematic tour through the complex bardo teachings in a way that elucidates the specific practices that prepare one for death. Along with this, readers receive guidance that will enable them to make good use of all manner of experience (light, sound, pain and sickness, delight and misery, as well as emotions). This is real instruction for real life! Throughout the book, the author compassionately lays out the context of view, practice, and meditation within which each section of these teachings can be most fruitfully considered.

A detailed diagram of the stages of death appears in the book which Buddhist practitioners will appreciate as an ongoing reference and which other seekers will find worthy of close consideration. The appendices include songs of realization composed by Khenchen Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, Gotsangpa, and Guru Rinpoche. Included as well are two poems by the author, an accomplished poet and calligrapher. Happily, the four pages of vivid color inserts depicting the buddhas and deities described in the book are retained in the new paperback edition.

Anyone who has ever pondered the impermanence of his or her present existence will find value in this well-written and timeless instruction from a master teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. Look here for help in preparing for death — your own and others’ — as well as to acquire a deeper understanding of life.

Ceci Miller owns CeciBooks, an editorial and book publishing consultancy that empowers authors to write, publish, and market irresistible books that uplift and inspire. Ceci has written, co-authored, and edited books with bestselling authors and experts since 1988. See book projects here.

A graduate of the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Ceci Miller is also the author of two published children’s picture books, and former contributing editor for Darshan, an international magazine dedicated to fostering sacred awareness in daily life. A student of yoga and meditation since 1976, Ceci leads seminars that explore language as a vehicle for personal transformation. Based on her book Sacred Visitations, and the popular book she co-authored with John Lee, Writing from the Body: For Writers, Artists & Dreamers, Ceci’s work (both with CeciBooks authors and in public programs) blends writing and intuitive guidance with contemplative practices that connect your right brain creativity with your true intention.

Cloth * 160 pages
$24.95
Texas Tech University Press
ISBN 978-0-89672-630-7

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This review may be a little more plainspoken than others because the author of the book is, well, my mother. It just wouldn’t do to attempt to dispassionately report on a project that, for both of us, has been a 10-year labor of love.

After two years of begging and cajoling, my mother — a storyteller and scholar of no small renown, despite her insistence to the contrary — finally admitted that for someone who had been a featured teller of family tales at The National Storytelling Festival, an early member of the Tejas Storytelling Association, and a pillar of The Mesquite Storytellers Guild of Abilene, not to collect her Texas stories into a book would be bordering on criminal. So Mom (ahem, Dr. Herndon) agreed to record her West Texas gems of oral tradition, honed by years of telling, into a single volume. And the angels rejoiced.

To explain our long timeline I can only say that life interrupts even the most worthy project with its churlishness, and that with a project of this kind, “some assembly is required.” Luckily I’m a book editor anyway, and I love my mother’s stories. I mean, I liked them before, but I’ve now read, edited, reread, and re-edited accounts of these Scottish West Texans and the stories still hold me riveted. It took this level of intimacy to show me the depth of their value — historical as well as literary. That accomplished, I could hardly wait to see the book in print! 
Around Year Six, I began to feel as though I would forever be circumambulating my ancestry in a sort of endless tribute. I felt this book could soon be of interest to the Guinness people (the record-keepers, not the beer-brewers). As a gourmet dish, it might have won a prize for Slowest Congealing Aspic in History. We began to worry that it might never be tasted by anyone but ourselves (both of whom are known to scarf down half-firmed jello right from the fridge). We began to wonder if this fine offering and all its layered subtleties, would remain forever in its Waterford mold against a backdrop of well-starched linens, unable to be eaten until all of the guests had arrived.

Now that you’re all here, let’s dig in! These stories are, above all else, delicious, the characters so poignantly eccentric that they could only have been plucked from real life. If I thought before that my mother, Rosanna Herndon, was a gifted storyteller, I know her today as a fine writer. The genealogy is thoroughly well-researched (for such is the way in which a lifelong academic constructs her family tales), and the selections offer not only an authentic look at early West Texas but also an intimate stroll through generations of transplanted Scots doing what they could with hard land in hard times.

What strikes me most about these stories, having lived with them now through many tellings and readings, is how they nudge me toward the strength of character of their unlikely heroes and heroines. These are ordinary people made extraordinary by centuries of survival against the odds, and their stories illuminate us as to why certain West Texans are almost painfully frugal with themselves and tight-lipped about their generosities to others. Fair warning: Some of the selections in this book may touch you to the point of tears. Others may make you laugh so hard that your eyes emit a joyful moisture. (Have a hanky on hand, is my point).

What kind of reader is most likely to find in this book a great Texas read and a wealth of inspiration for living? Anyone whose breath shows up on a mirror. You can take that all the way to the bank. And I’m not just saying that because the author is my mother.

Ceci Miller is founder and president of CeciBooks, an editorial and book publishing consultancy that empowers authors to write, publish, and market irresistible books that uplift and inspire. Ceci has written, co-authored, and edited books with bestselling authors and experts since 1988. See book projects here.

A graduate of the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Ceci Miller is also the author of two published children’s picture books, and former contributing editor for Darshan, an international magazine dedicated to fostering sacred awareness in daily life. A student of yoga and meditation since 1976, Ceci leads seminars that explore language and the creative process as a vehicle for personal transformation. Based on her book Sacred Visitations, and the popular book she co-authored with John Lee, Writing from the Body: For Writers, Artists & Dreamers, Ceci’s work blends writing and intuitive guidance with contemplation and meditation practices that connect your right brain creativity with your intention for writing.

One City: A Declaration of Interdependence

by Ethan Nichtern

Wisdom Publications

http://theidproject.com

Paperback 15.95   

If you haven’t yet encountered Ethan Nichtern’s One City: A Declaration of Interdependence, buy a copy and read it immediately. One City is destined to be one of those books you’ll talk about, turn over in your mind, and contemplate for years. Nichtern appeal to readers to try his simple experiment: to walk around for a day (or the rest of your life) in conscious awareness of “the real Internet” — the global interconnectedness within which we all live and breathe, and without which we wouldn’t. Composed by a longtime mindfulness junkie with a brain the size of New York City, the wisdom here packs a wallop. As does the wit. Far more than the musings of an uneasy activist, Nichtern’s studies of Buddhism (he’s a student of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche) give his analyses both grace and grit. 

I had the good fortune to meet Ethan Nichtern, founder and executive director of The Interdependence Project, a non-profit grassroots organization based in NYC’s East Village. (The ID Project offers classes, workshops, arts events, as well as events centered around community service and responsible consumption.) Attending his book talk at Nalanda West in Seattle, Washington, I happily shook this man’s hand after he spoke with disarming logic and self-deprecating humor about the daily fact of our interdependence. The reality, not theory, that we absolutely depend on everything and everyone else on the planet for our very existence. I thanked Ethan out of a deep appreciation for his easeful, lucid teaching style, and I thanked the Web of Existence for bringing itself to our attention as One City, via Ethan’s book.

I sincerely hope you’ll read One City. But more than that, I hope you’ll talk about it to the people you know and care about. Because One City is one of those books that bears repeating. You can see and hear Ethan talk about his breakout book on his blog, or to talk to him directly (tell him what you think about the book and otherwise support the cause of interdependent awareness) check out http://theidproject.com.