Promise of the Soul: Identifying and Healing Your Spiritual Agreements - Hardcover

Dennis Kenny

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471418331 ISBN 13: 9780471418337

Publisher: Trade Paper Press, 2002

Synopsis

"Promise of the Soul is a spiritual workbook. Through simple, accessible exercises and reflections, Kenny offers us practical and proven methods that have enabled thousands of his counseling clients to relinquish their separation from God s love and live from the heart.... Step by step, Kenny s approach shows us how we can release ourselves from self-imposed limitations and lifelong feelings of inadequacy to live a more soul-infused life. It is impossible to read this book without finding yourself somewhere in its pages and setting yourself free. It is a real opportunity." --From the Foreword by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., author of Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather s Blessings
"An excellent resource for creating a new covenant that will enable you to expand your belief system and your life." --Bernie Siegel, M.D., author of Love, Medicine and Miracles and Prescriptions for Living
"This book, like the topic itself, is beautiful and enchanting. This spiritual light is steeped in the great traditions, yet its presentation is original, creative, and brilliant. An essential key to making peace with God is identifying and healing your spiritual covenant and realizing the promise of your soul." --Harold Bloomfield, M.D., author of Making Peace with God
"Promise of the Soul is an exceptional guide to examining the spiritual promises or covenants we make with the sacred. Whether we are Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or of any other faith, this book transcends all paths and beliefs to help each of us identify which sacred promises are limiting and which are beneficial to our spiritual unfolding and inherent well-being." --Angeles Arrien, Ph.D., author of The Four-Fold Way and Signs of Life
"By bringing to light our basic beliefs about how life works, Dennis Kenny gives us room to breathe, to change, to be liberated from prisons of our own making. As a skilled chaplain and teacher, he shows us simple ways to become larger, happier people all that God really wants us to be. This book might just set you free." --Wayne Muller, author of Sabbath and How, Then, Shall We Live?

About this title

About the Author

Rev. DENNIS KENNY is a psychologist, theologian, and spiritual caregiver who has been a translator of ideas throughout his twenty-five-year career. He is the founding Director of the prestigious Institute for Health and Healing of the California Pacific Medical Center, chosen by Natural Health magazine as the leading holistic hospital in the United States, and Director of the Center's Spiritual Care Department. The Institute for Health and Healing is a national leader in integrative medicine, and Reverend Kenny has played a crucial role in its innovation, organization, and growth. His initial article on personal covenants has become a staple of spirituality curricula in training programs in many parts of the world.

From the Back Cover

"Promise of the Soul is a spiritual workbook. Through simple, accessible exercises and reflections, Kenny offers us practical and proven methods that have enabled thousands of his counseling clients to relinquish their separation from God's love and live from the heart.... Step by step, Kenny's approach shows us how we can release ourselves from self-imposed limitations and lifelong feelings of inadequacy to live a more soul-infused life. It is impossible to read this book without finding yourself somewhere in its pages and setting yourself free. It is a real opportunity." --From the Foreword by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., author of "Kitchen Table Wisdom" and "My Grandfather's Blessings"

"An excellent resource for creating a new covenant that will enable you to expand your belief system and your life." --Bernie Siegel, M.D., author of "Love, Medicine and Miracles" and "Prescriptions for Living"

"This book, like the topic itself, is beautiful and enchanting. This spiritual light is steeped in the great traditions, yet its presentation is original, creative, and brilliant. An essential key to making peace with God is identifying and healing your spiritual covenant and realizing the promise of your soul." --Harold Bloomfield, M.D., author of "Making Peace with God"

"Promise of the Soul is an exceptional guide to examining the spiritual promises or covenants we make with the sacred. Whether we are Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or of any other faith, this book transcends all paths and beliefs to help each of us identify which sacred promises are limiting and which are beneficial to our spiritual unfolding and inherent well-being." --Angeles Arrien, Ph.D., author of "The Four-Fold Way and Signs of Life"

"By bringing to light our basic beliefs about how life works, Dennis Kenny gives us room to breathe, to change, to be liberated from prisons of our own making. As a skilled chaplain and teacher, he shows us simple ways to become larger, happier people?all that God really wants us to be. This book might just set you free." --Wayne Muller, author of "Sabbath and How, Then, Shall We Live?"

From the Inside Flap

"Dennis Kenny offers compassionate, gentle advice on how to integrate spirituality into your life, how to make prayer a part of your existence, and how to realize prayer's benefits.Whether you are a beginning seeker or a spiritual veteran, this book will be a valuable assist on your journey. "
-Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Healing Beyond the Body and Healing Words

This is a landmark book on spiritual self-exploration and inner change as the way to spiritual growth.

In Promise of the Soul, Dennis Kenny, a leading expert on the mind-body-spirit connection, shows that each of us has a secret deal with God-your unconscious promise (or covenant) that you made with your Higher Power, usually early in life. Your promise determines your deepest assumptions about yourself, your life, your relationships, your self-image, and your health. Your promise might sound something like this: "I will give everything I have to my family" or "I will get everything I want" or "I will find everything I am searching for." Although your unconscious covenant may be made in the best of faith, it usually creates stress and imbalance as you try to live up to its impossible standards. Both keeping and failing to keep your covenant can cause emotional pain, spiritual imbalance, and even physical illness.

The good news is that you can examine, change, and heal your covenant -you can turn your source of fear and anguish into a wellspring of strength and joy. Through questionnaires and exercises, Dennis Kenny shows you step by step how to determine what your spiritual promise is. Then he shows you how to determine what your spiritual personality style is-whether you are primarily a Giver, a Wanter, or a Searcher. Finally he shows you, armed with this knowledge, how to abandon unhealthy covenants and transform them into positive ways to promote happiness, balance, and health in mind, body, and spirit.

Filled with dramatic personal stories and practical advice, this book is a treasury of soul-enriching information you can put to use starting today. If you are yearning for change, Promise of the Soul delivers the freedom to recreate your deepest beliefs and to draw closer to the spiritual truths that can heal.

Reviews

Kenny's book is based on an unarguable premise and illustrated by case studies drawn from his clinical psychology practice: people have self-limiting beliefs rooted in childhood experience. From there the hospital chaplain and founding director of the California Pacific Medical Center's Institute for Health and Healing builds a system of three personality types, each of which bases choices and actions on an implicit and conditional bargain ("covenant") with God, a bargain that may not fit an adult as well as it does the child who first makes it. The novice author provides exercises to help the psychologically curious identify their "covenant style" in an effort to make that style conscious and then to change it by adding other characteristics and behaviors. None of this is really new. "Covenant" is reminiscent of the "agreement" popularized in Don Miguel Ruiz's successful book The Four Agreements, which offers another system for behavior guidance and change. And typology is certainly as old as the enneagram or ayurveda, the ancient Indian system of human-constitutional types. The material that is new recent studies yielding interesting evidence for mind-body connections and implications for health is cursorily treated in one chapter. At best, Kenny's work can be helpful in reframing information for self-analysis; at worst, it's one good idea drawn out to make a book.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

The director of the California Pacific Medical Center's Institute for Health & Healing in San Francisco, Kenny calls the "promise of the soul" that potential we all have to live in the fullest and most satisfying way possible. He holds that, consciously or unconsciously, we have made spiritual agreements (or "covenants") with a higher power, or with life itself, which reflect our assumptions about our lives. He suggests that new covenants can help people promote their own happiness and overall health. Kenny shares firsthand accounts from his 25 years of experience as a caregiver of patients who were spiritually and physically healed, often through a renewed sense of community. His approach shows readers how to release themselves from self-imposed limitations and lifelong feelings of inadequacy through simple, accessible exercises and reflections. The ease of these exercises, plus the quality and support of the approach, makes this work highly recommended for all public library self-help collections. It is also recommended for academic libraries and medical professionals seeking to advance healing in the body-mind-spirit connection. Leroy Hommerding, Fort Myers Beach P.L. Dist., FL
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Trade Paper Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0471418331
• ISBN 13: 9780471418337
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272