Quiet Your Mind: An Easy-to-Use Guide to Ending Chronic Worry and Negative Thoughts and Living a Calmer Life - Softcover

Selby, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1930722311 ISBN 13: 9781930722316

Publisher: New World Library, 2004

Synopsis

Never before has the psychological whistle been blown so clearly on the detrimental effects of chronic worrying, anxious problem-solving, and the general non-stop mental chatter of our thinking minds. John Selby, researcher, therapist, and educator, points out that we are indeed a nation of unwitting thinkaholics. In his essential new book, Quiet Your Mind, he offers us an easy-to-follow mind-management process through which we can learn to let go of fear-based mental habits and enter a more heart-centered, intuitively-clear, and spiritually-peaceful engagement with everyday life.

With solid scientific grounding, yet written in a heart-to-heart tone, Selby offers a precise exposé of how anxious thoughts focused on mental judgments, beliefs, and attitudes generate emotions such as irritation, worry, guilt, anger, and despair – leaving little room in our lives for positive spontaneous engagement with the world. In this definitive guidebook, Selby teaches how we can transcend such fear-based ideas and attitudes that hold us back in life, through potent yet easily-mastered techniques to quiet over-busy thoughtflows and nurture more present-moment, love-based mindstates.

About this title

About the Author

John Selby has spent his professional life studying meditation. Growing up in California, he met, and became the student and friend of, Krishnamurti. He also studied with a number of other great living teachers and then turned to an academic exploration of the psychological foundations of spirituality at Princeton and UC Berkeley as well as carrying out mind research for various bodies including the National Institute of Mental Health. He did fieldwork on shamanistic practices with the Hopi Indians and tribes in highland Guatemala, also maintaining his therapy and training centres in California and Europe. He is the author of over two dozen highly successful books, including Seven Masters, One Path; Kundalini Awakening in Everyday Life; Conscious Healing and Immune System Activation. He lives in Kilauea, Hawaii.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

EXCERPT FROM INTRODUCTION:

For hundreds of years now, Western civilization has become more and more engulfed in the thinking mind’s grand assumption that its own mental chatter and nonstop flow of judgments and worries is the most important happening on planet Earth. Ever since Descartes made his intellectual’s assertion Cogito, ergo sum – "I think, therefore I am" – the talkative function generating our stream-of-consciousness commentary on everything happening around us has gained free reign to dominate almost every moment of our lives.

I would like to quietly yet forcefully challenge this ego assumption that we function best, and enjoy life to the fullest, when we’re habitually engaged in nonstop mental reflections, worries, plottings, and judgments. In exact contrast, this book will demonstrate that only through regularly quieting the entire flow of thoughts, images, memories, and reflections that fill our minds can we regain intimate and fulfilling contact with sensory, intuitive, and heart-felt experiences that emerge when we shift into direct encounter with the world around us.

Edition details

• Publisher: New World Library
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1930722311
• ISBN 13: 9781930722316
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 256