Falling Awake

Think you have no time for mindfulness? Think again. "Thoughtful and provocative.... The relevance of this work is unquestionable, as it leaves us inspired and optimistic that true healing really is possible" (Sharon Salzberg). For four decades, Jon Kabat-Zinn has been teaching the tangible benefits of meditation in the mainstream. Today millions of people have taken up a formal mindfulness meditation practice as part of their everyday lives. But how do you actually go about meditating? What does a formal meditation practice look like? And how can we overcome some of the common obstacles to incorporating meditation into daily life in an age of perpetual self-distraction? Falling Awake directly answers these urgent and timely questions. Originally published in 2005 as part of a larger book titled Coming to Our Senses, it has been updated with a new foreword by the author and is even more relevant today. Science shows that the tangible benefits of a mindfulness meditation practice are impossible to ignore. Kabat-Zinn explains how to incorporate them into our hectic, modern lives. Read on for a master class from one of the pioneers of the worldwide mindfulness movement.

Winner of the Costa Poetry Award • Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Award and the Forward Prize “These lyrics…illustrate poetry’s unique ability to shock readers into a renewed awareness of the world.” —Washington Post Falling Awake, winner of the Costa Award for Poetry, “give[s] us the sensation of living alongside the natural world, of being a spectator to the changes that mark our mortality” (Dan Chiasson, The New Yorker). Falling Awake expands on the imagery of fallen soldiers from Homer’s Iliad portrayed in her previous volume, Memorial—defining life as a slowly falling weight, where beings fight against their inevitable end. Oswald reimagines classical figures such as Orpheus and Tithonus alive in an English landscape together with shadows, flies, villagers, dew, crickets—all characterized in tension between the weight of death and their own willpower. FROM “VERTIGO” let me shuffle forward and tell you the two minute life of rain starting right now lips open and lidless cold all-seeing gaze

Waking is a natural shift from unconsciousness to awareness. Falling awake is a special case of waking where we relax out of old patterns, ease out of resistance, and surrender to the grace and love that are always present beneath the surface of appearances. Although falling awake, like falling asleep, cannot be forced, it can be prepared for. Integrating perspectives from physical, social and psychological sciences, philosophy, religion and energy awareness, and calling on many years of experience as a teacher, counsellor and Buddhist monk, Blattner takes us step by step into an expanded understanding of the universe in which we live, the mind/body system that we call "self ", and that which may lie beyond. With gentleness and kindness, Falling Awake shows us how to move beyond the programs and limiting belief systems that support the problems in our lives, and awaken into an increasingly gentle, joyful, and expanded experience of the art of living....

After reading Falling Awake, I feel clearer about almost everything. Even truths I thought I already knew, seem more natural and easily attainable. This book is a beautiful presentation of some wondrous thoughts about the things that matter most. Marianne Williamson, author of Illuminata and The Healing of America.

These are poems of the present, of commercials and human interest stories, of the drive-in windows that make banks and bedrooms of our cars. These poems trace the faint erasures of time and human relationships-following runners as they pause by the Ticonderoga ferry and Lake Champlain, riding with tourists across a river to an old fort, the distant sounds of a historic slaughter obscured by the misfiring pistons of an inboard motor and by the unforgiving surf. Describing the world he has seen and loved as well as how that world sometimes threatens itself, Gary Margolis speaks with caring humor and seriousness of the brokenness and beauty of America's present.

Isabel Wright spends her days at the Belvedere Centre for Sleep Research analyzing the dreams of others. It's satisfying, lucrative work, but it can be emotionally draining at times. Especially when one of her anonymous subjects, known only as Client Number Two, captures her imagination through his compelling dream narratives. Client Number Two's real name is Ellis Cutler. A loner who learned long ago not to let anyone get too close, he works for a highly classified government agency with an interest in the potential value of lucid dreaming. And he has just been ordered by his boss to make contact with Isabel, who's been fired after the sudden death of her boss, Dr. Belvedere. When they meet in the flesh, the dream becomes real enough to touch. And a waking nightmare begins. For a suspicious hit-and-run leads them into a perilous web of passion, betrayal and murder, and forces them to walk the razor-thin line between dreams and reality

A red-hot, suspenseful novel about a free-spirited dream researcher-and the gorgeous man who brings her dreams to life.

Carli Thornley and Josh Thornton grew up together in the picturesque town of August Lake. Despite their family’s differences, the two banded together to face the challenges of high school, becoming best friends. Carli immerses herself in her education, while Josh lives for hockey and his dream of becoming the Red Valley Ravens' next draft pick. One warm spring day, in broad daylight, Carli’s worst fears come true. In the blink of an eye, a terrible accident happens, and Josh slips into a coma. His family is torn apart, and Carli is left to pick up the shattered pieces alone. Her loyalty is tested like she never could have imagined, and shocking secrets about Josh’s family are revealed. Carli strives to hold his family together, but even with her best efforts, Josh remains unreachable. Until one day, everything changes. In the summer that follows the accident, Carli must face the consequences of that single fateful day and find a way to cope…or the courage to move on.

Haden Black changed Theia Alderson's life when he appeared in her dreams. And to save Haden, Theia sacrificed everything, but the dangerous bargain she made could have lasting repercussions. Now Theia is susceptible to the same deadly hungers that Haden has long struggled with-and their return to Serendipity Falls could test their control. And someone from Haden's past is determined to destroy Theia from the inside out, starting with those closest to her...

Theia Alderson has always led a sheltered life in the small California town of Serendipity Falls. But when a devastatingly handsome boy appears in the halls of her school, Theia knows she's seen Haden before- not around town, but in her dreams. As the Haden of both the night and the day beckons her closer one moment and pushes her away the next, the only thing Theia knows for sure is that the incredible pull she feels towards him is stronger than her fear. And when she discovers what Haden truly is, Theia's not sure if she wants to resist him, even if the cost is her soul.