The Alchemy of Feelings: Reclaiming the Inner Life from Mental Cruelty

A simple decision to "live in the present moment" was not enough for the author, so plagued with regrets he'd barred the door to the past and no longer ventured there. Then he wondered why his meditation filled with noise! Why thoughts kept coming when he intended to be still. Some discoveries allowed access to that restricted space at last, for him to be "at cause" rather than "at effect," for the inner life to be joyous, calm, and functional. One discovery especially takes center place in the book: The way the "ego" may have actually received its start. A major reason for the avalanche of thinking, so perpetual. Has Nature played a cruel joke on us? What if a strategy was put in place during infancy for survival's sake, the success of which depends on feeling bad? An ill-considered policy that gave birth to the "Phantom Self" that causes so much mischief in our lives. A sub-entity was given control of the survival scheme, and it's still functioning today, no matter survival's needs are different. Nature's cruel joke indeed. One it's time to dismantle now. Join James Saint Cloud as he weaves his delightful stories in the style of the poet Rumi to provide a strategy to end mental cruelty in the context of Twelve Alchemies, drawn from his decades of experience providing Emotional First Aid and Inner Life Managment in California. With Rumi as main character the book has a light touch as it considers weighty matters. Consider this sample story: ........................... YOU IN HERE AND GOD OUT THERE? Rumi and his students strolled over to a nearby park. People there were giving speeches, standing on boxes to provide their points of view. "What if it's a myth, created long ago," said a man on a box, "the idea that you and God are separate? You in here, and God out there." The crowd had come to heckle but they were quiet, so the man went on. "Tell me, is it so? Is separation a confusion being spawned, meant to keep us broken, small, scattered, never to be whole?" No voice came to answer him. "Tell me! If it's some small self that lives in you, then where is God?" "God sent self away one day," one man said and laughed. "Now it's God that's living inside here," he thumped his chest, "and the self comes and goes as it's allowed!" All the others stared at him. "God? Right here? Well, well!" the man on the box proclaimed with glee, "There He is, folks, here and now. Do you have things to say to Him?" Rumi watched as people swarmed the man with every sort of need and want and whim and blame. Pleading, snarling, and with tears. It was loud. Rumi and his students turned to leave. "What if God were truly inside each of us, what then?" Rumi asked, "What would the implication be?" "Our any slightest thought would have great force," a student said. "Ha! Our any wish would be a prayer! Though with differing efficiency for each of us, depending on how much noise there is." "How so?" "A prayer has two parts. To make request with thoughts. And silence afterward for listening, a stillness deep enough for any boundaries to be loosed. You and the Infinite no longer separate, like a raindrop when it hits the sea." ................

About the Author :
James Saint Cloud is a pioneer in the field of natural health education in Northern California, a co-founder of the Wholistic Health and Nutrition Institute (W.H.N.). A native of North Carolina and graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, James has served as a hospital administrator and is licensed as a private pilot (though he prefers trains). His volunteer work includes five years in a county commission, the Health Council of Marin; and nine years as a director of the Man to Man Ministry visiting in the cell blocks of San Quentin State Prison. He is presently developing an Inner Life Management training to provide "emotional first aid" mentorship related to The Alchemy of Feelings.