Yoga and the Quest for the True Self

'What a delight to find a book on spiritual practice that's as compelling to read as a good novel. This honest, intelligent, and beautifully written book is required reading for anyone intersted in spiritual practice today.'-Lilias Folan, host of the PVBS series Lilias!

Millions of Americans know yoga as a superb form of exercise and as a potent source of calm in our stress-filled lives. Far fewer are aware of the full promise of yoga as a 4,000-year-old practical path of liberation-a path that fits the needs of modern Western seekers wtih startling precison.

Now Stephen Cope, a Western-trained psychotherapist who has lived and taught for more than ten years at the largest yoga center in America, offers this marvelously lively and show more irreverent 'pilgrim's progress' for today's world. He demystifies the philosophy, psychology, and practice of yoga, and shows how it applies to our most human dilemmas: from loss, disappointment, and addiction, to the eternal conflicts around sex and relationship. And he shows us that in yoga, 'liberation' does not require us to leave our everyday lives for some transcendent spiritual plane-life itself is the path.

Above all, Cope shows how yoga can heal the suffering of self-estrangement that pervades our society, leading us to a new sense of purpose and to a deeper, more satisying life in the world.

'A tour de force...a book grounded in yoga psychology that will be meaningful and useful to spiritual practitioners in many traditions.'-Sylvia Boorsein, author of It's Easier Tnan You Think and That's Funny, You Don't Look Buddhist

Contents

Introduction
A note to readers
Prologue: Viveka's Tale
Part One: The discovery of the royal secret
1 Waking up is hard to do
2 To the mountaintop
3 Brahman: Ecstatic union with the one
4 Shakti: The play of the divine mother
Part Two: The self in exile
5 Yo are not who you appear to be
6 A house on fire: The identity project
7 The suffering of the false self
Part Three: Encounters with the mother and the seer
9 The win pillars of the reality project
10 Equanimity: On holding and being held
11 Awareness: On seeing and being seen
12 Awakening the witness
Part Four: The spontaneous wisdom of he body
13 Riding the wave of greath
14 Listening to the voice of the body
15 Meditation in motion
Part Five: The royal road home
16 The rose in the fire
17 The triumph of the real
Appendix: Yoga metaphysics with a light touch
Notes
Acknwledgments
Permissions
Index show less

Published in the mid 1990s after spending over a decade as a yogi at the Kripalu Center in Massachusettes, Cope sets out to write an ambitious text about his journey. I found his own story the most interesting, but unfortunately, there's too much other stuff going on to call this a true memoir. There' a lot here for serious students of yoga, of the Kripalu Center, of yoga's history both in the East and in the West, of it's relationship with Jung, let's say. But, ultimately, left this yogi waiting to exhale.

Half as long would be more than twice as good.

Yoga, Spiritual