I’m having trouble rating this one. So much beautiful food for thought, but I think I lack a basic understanding of Buddhism that would have made the book more accessible to me.

The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors by Lama Rod Owens is a "guidebook for becoming an effective agent of justice, peace, and change." I highlighted a lot of thought-provoking passages. Here's one of my favorites: "Everything is being constructed through our minds. This means that everything is constantly shifting because it's being created in the moment. We can learn to shift reality by thinking differently, which allows us to experience hope. Hope is a belief in change. By training our powers of hope, we train our capacity to change our minds." I definitely recommend this book. Thanks to NetGalley for the free digital review copy. All opinions are my own.

A clear book with practical advice and guidance on how to improve yourself and the world around you while focusing on the important areas of Justice in the world.

<3 The Artistry is what made me interested in picking this up. The content seamlessly resonated with my ongoing learning and practicing of these holistic self-care tools that has been around for decades. It being mainstream only came (IMO) about due to the pandemic, political and racial unrest all erupting and corrupting simultaneously. This alignment of all these evils seem to bring these Spiritual and Self-Care practices front and center. He is practicing 3 of my daily practices along with a whole lot more that I can not even begin to wrap my head around. Hearing of his 3 years in Spiritual Training sounds exactly what I been seriously contemplating. I am ready to just leave this apartment and this area all together... It was informative and left me more curious about all these practices that are what I think is an advanced level of Spiritual Gangster Status.

It may be a trendy thing or the thing to be practicing... but for me they all has served as self-preservation, past and ongoing trauma, physical and emotional healing--some tools that I went looking for when one practice was no longer effective on its own... TM did wonders for the purpose of #RageTaming, Equanimity Strengthening and #chokeOutPrevention purposes.--until it didn't.

My #TBR LISTS just got longer. This is well worth the read to learn of the old traditional indigenous practices or to strengthen anyone's Spiritual Practices. #Meditation #BreathWork #CommunityHealing #Rituals #Ceremonies #GenerationalTrauma #ReAwakening #Reparenting #InnerChildCare #NetGalley <3

What is a new saint? A new Saint is an ordinary person who care about. Themselves and the others around and who have figured much of the work that needs to be done to experience the freedom to be there. Looks at new saints from various spiritual and religious traditions and describes their characteristics. Cover working with ancestors, prayer, the body and forgiveness.