Handbook for the Heart: Original Writings on Love
"Love has become the Holy Grail of our time," writes John Gray in the foreword to this anthology of original essays about love. Collected by therapists Carlson and Shield (collaborators on Handbook for the Soul), the various jottings come from 31 contributors?including Deepak Chopra, Rabbi Harold Kushner, Betty Eadie, James Redfield and Andrew Weil?who together comprise a who's who of popular contemporary figures in spirituality and healing. The editors divide the pieces into six groups: "The Power of the Heart"; "Heart and Soul"; "Giving and Receiving"; and so on. There are contradictions in approach ("The happiest people I know are people who don't even think about being happy," writes Kushner, while others boldly advise us to make self-love and happiness a conscious starting point), but each offering agrees on the paradoxical need for self-love as a prerequisite to loving others. Only then, the authors concur, can we become capable of forgetting ourselves and opening up to the world outside. Intended to be practical, and based on everyday life, this flip-through guide to a profound subject is repetitive and too simple at times, but it definitely has its heart in the right place.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.