Meditations on Letting Go and Finding True Freedom
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"I think Mark Burrows and Jon Sweeney achieve something quite rare and wonderful here. They make Eckhart clear, concise, and very compelling!" --Richard Rohr, OFM, bestselling author of Falling Upward
An elegant rendering of the great mystic's thoughts on the mysteries of authentic life
This is a little book about soul freedom. It is a book about discovering the secret to all the things we most desire: contentment, meaning, peace of mind, and true freedom. This skillfully edited translation of selections from the writings of Meister Eckhart provides a roadmap to the spiritual life for contemporary seekers. Eckhart takes us on a journey of discovery; a journey in which we learn to let go, relinquish our need to know everything, and lose those things that we think are important for a life of worth. And in the end he shows us that the true secret is this: to find yourself, you must lose yourself.
Here is timeless wisdom from a medieval mystic who has influenced a wide range of spiritual teachers and mystics both inside and outside the Christian tradition. Erich Fromm, Arthur Schopenhauer, Dag Hammarskjöld, Eckhart Tolle, Richard Rohr, D. T. Suzuki, Rudolf Steiner, and Matthew Fox have all credited Eckhart as being an important influence on their thought. In addition, his work has influenced the development of 20th-century American Buddhism and the Theosophical tradition.
Divided into five sections--Seeking the Light, Facing Darkness, Risking Love, Knowing Nothing, and Embracing Everything--the book leads readers on the path to an authentic spiritual life.
Jon M. Sweeney is an independent scholar and award-winning author. His books have been translated into many languages. He's a popular interpreter of the life and work of Francis of Assisi, and author of more than 40 books including St. Francis of Assisi with a foreword by Richard Rohr, and The Complete Francis of Assisi used by Third Order Franciscans. HBO optioned the film rights to Sweeney's book on the medieval Pope Celestine V, The Pope Who Quit.
In 2023, Jon published Sit in the Sun: And Other Lessons in the Spiritual Wisdom of Cats, and Meister Eckhart's Book of Darkness and Light, coauthored with Mark S. Burrows. Jon has been interviewed on CBS News, WGN-TV, Fox News, and CBS Saturday Morning, and by publications online from CNN to Romper. He's a practicing Catholic who also prays regularly with his wife, a congregational rabbi. He loves the church, the synagogue, and other aspects of organized religion. He would never say he's "spiritual but not religious." He is the father of four and lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Sweeney is codirector of The Lux Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies at Sacred Heart Seminary; religion editor at Monkfish Book Publishing; editor of Living City magazine; and contributing editor for books at SpiritualityandPractice.com.
Mark S. Burrows is an award-winning translator, poet, and scholar. Known internationally for his academic and popular work on Rilke, he is the translator of a collection of his early poems, Prayers of a Young Poet, which includes many of Rilke's best-loved poems that later appeared in The Book of Hours. His forthcoming bilingual edition of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus (Monkfish, 2024) has been praised as "beautiful, daring translations that return to us the power and mystery of the original 'unknowing' qualities that drive Rilke's verse" (Ellen Hinsey). Winner of the Wytter Bynner Prize in Poetry, a collection of his recent poems, The Chance of Home, appeared in 2018. During the last decade he has also published a volume of poems-in-translation by the distinguished Iranian-German poet SAID, 99 Psalms (2013), the first English translation of poems by the celebrated German-Jewish poet Hilde Domin, The Wandering Radiance. Selected Poems of Hilde Domin (2023), and three volumes of poems, co-written with Jon M. Sweeney, inspired by the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart (most recently, Meister Eckhart's Book of Darkness and Light. Meditations on the Path of the Wayless Way; 2023). He lives and writes in Camden, ME. https: //soul-in-sight.org
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