Dear friends of the Blossoming,
Ah, sweet to savour some summer succulence at last. I’m drooling raspberries and my blood’s dancing with sun-infused garden greens these days. The lilies are exuding their fragrant heat in the sunset glow. And that lovely sunshine! Hope you too are getting to recharge your solar batteries…
In this month’s e-news, we particularly want to welcome all the new readers who have been on our mailing list for Branches of Light, who are now also receiving this e-letter. We’ve assumed you’d want to hear from us in this way once a month (humming with highlights of new events, books, music etc. at Banyen), but if you’d rather not receive Blossoming in the future, just click to unsubscribe at the top or bottom of this email.
Did you know Banyen offers the richest selection of “Earth and Spirit” materials in Canada? The latest and the classics in healing arts, spiritual traditions, metaphysics, and conscious evolution—the spectrum from Acupressure, Auras and Green Architecture to Shamanism, Sufism, Taoism, Yoga, and Zen. Over 25,000 titles are in the store and listed on our website, with over 6,000 reviews online. If you’re curious, click here to see a list of the highlights of new August publications—just a few of the many that are arriving every month...
We also host an eager tribe of houseplants sprouting their tendrils all over the store—among the crystals, altar cloths, aromatherapies, sound healing tools, natural fibre apparel, and yoga tools… all smiling into the light, growing in their own unique rhythms… much like you and me. (I think they sing together at night, in their own language, after we’ve gone home.)
Here’s a little treat for you: check out “KEEP GOING, SAY WHAT YOU KNOW,” Tami Simon's 7-minute video, where she reveals the three most important lessons she’s learned (and un-learned) over Sounds True’s 25 years of exploring spiritual frontiers.
May all of us kind humans join our growing tips in a big, glowing virtual summer hug!... Maybe we can love just a little bit more, a little bit further than we’ve gone before… and hope to see you in the store—or at banyen.com.
In dark chocolate and nectarine gratitude for the creative mystery that dances through each of us, for Life!
Cheers,
|
Special Upcoming Event...
Mark Your Calendars!
• Sunday, September 12 •
• • •
 Tuesdays, August 10 & 24
6:00-8:30
Gayle
– part of our Readings Series
TAROT READINGS WITH GAYLE
 Sunday, August 15
11:-5:00
Jane Gottschlag
Aura/Chakra Analyst - Biopulsar
– part of our Readings Series
HEALING THROUGH COLOUR
 Thursday, August 19
6:30-8:00
Radhanath Swami
- in-store talk & booksigning
THE JOURNEY HOME
 Tuesday, August 31
7:30-9:30 pm
Robert Moss
TAPPING THE POWER OF DREAMS
 Tuesday, September 7
6:30-8:00 pm
Jane Meredith
- in-store talk & booksigning
APHRODITE'S MAGIC
 Thursday, September 9
7:00 pm
SARK
SUCCULENT WILD WISDOM
|
|
(We receive many new titles every week.
These are just a few of the latest gems.)
How Meditation Can Transform You and the World
 edited by Ed & Deb Shapiro
332 pages, hardcover, Sterling
Ed & Deb Shapiro website
Be the Change is a treasury of wisdom and heartfelt advice from many of the great luminaries of our time. Featured contributors include: HH the Dalai Lama, Marianne Williamson, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ram Dass, Byron Katie, Dan Millman, Joan Borysenko, Jane Fonda, Jack Kornfield, Krishna Das, Dean Ornish, Jean Houston, Gregg Braden, Joan Halifax, Thomas Keating, Gangaji, Gabrielle Roth, Rabbi Zalman Schachter, Cyndi Lee, Wavy Gravy, Tim Freke, and many more. Read more…
• • • • • • • • •
LIVING WELL WITH PAIN AND ILLNESS:
A Mindful Way to Free Yourself from Suffering
 by Vimala Burch
266 pages, paperback, Sounds True
Rich with seasoned tips and “try this” stories, Living Well with Pain and Illness is at once an inspirational memoir and practical guidebook for using mindfulness to reframe your relationship with physical and emotional suffering.
“Vidyamala leads us through the many ways mindfulness and moment-to-moment awareness enable us to understand ourselves more deeply through our pain and to discover our true freedom..." Read more…
• • • • • • • • •
EAARTH: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
 by Bill McKibben
272 pages, hardcover, Random House
Bill McKibben website
Twenty years ago, Bill McKibben's The End of Nature offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. With his new book Eaarth, Mckibben insists that massive ecological change is now already underway. Our hope, Mckibben argues, depends on scaling back—on building the kind of societies and economies that can hunker down, concentrate on essentials, and create the type of community that will allow us to weather trouble on an unprecedented scale. Read more…
New Audio Teaching
 by Pema Chodron
5 hours, 5 CDs, Shambhala
Pema Chodron website
In Fearless Heart, Pema Chodron presents 5 aphorisms for developing fearlessness that were given to Machig Lapdronma, one of Tibetan Buddhism's greatest female teachers. Pema comments on these aphorisms, holds question-and-answer sessions, and leads guided meditations to help us: overcome shame and guilt, remain courageous in the face of pain, transform our relationships with difficult people, and increase our feelings of generosity and compassion. Read more…
VOCABULARIES
 by Bobby McFerrin & Roger Treece
63 minutes, CD, Decca
Bobby McFerrin Video
Ten-time Grammy Award winner/vocal innovator Bobby McFerrin surprises us yet again with VOCAbuLarieS, his first new release in eight years. VOCAbuLarieS is based on Bobby's experiments with multi-track recording and his ceaseless exploration of the potential of the human voice. VOCAbuLarieS features over fifty of the world's finest singers, recorded one at a time and in small groups to create a virtual choir made up of over 1,400 vocal tracks. VOCAbuLarieS is Bobby McFerrin's "music for the 21st century." Read more…
• • • • • • • • •
INTO LIGHT: Meditation Music
 by Deva Premal
57 minutes, CD, Sounds True
Deva Premal website
Into Light is a collection of illuminating chants and contemplative pieces for meditation and relaxation. Known for her genuine, heartfelt devotion, Deva offers a rich and expansive album that features some of her best-loved pieces including: “Illumina”, a song that draws on the four elements to help enlighten our lives, “Teyata” for healing, “The Moola Mantra” (invocation) which honors the divine light in everyone, and more. Read more…
• • • • • • • • •
WITH ONE VOICE: Awaken to the Reality that Unites Us All
 by Matthew Flickstein & Eric Temple
78 minute DVD + music soundtrack CD
With One Voice website
With One Voice weaves together interviews with many of the world's great contemporary mystics including:
Joan Halifax, Gangaji, Reb Zalman Schachter, Brother David Steindl-Rast, Sheikha Fariha al Jerrahi, Malidoma Patrice Some, Grandmother Lillian Pitawanakwat, and many more...
While diverse the range of spiritual traditions represented in the film, ultimately their many voices lead and exhort us to hear the One Voice within us all. Read more…
New Oracles
 by J0seph-Mark Cohen
78 colour cards, cloth bag
Joseph-Mark Cohen's website
Crop Circle Oracle Cards contain 78 of the most beautiful and significant Crop Circles spanning the time period from Harmonic Convergence in 1987 through 2009.
The flip side of the cards contain graphic logos of the circles along with Cohen's own mystical, mathematical, Pythagorean, poetic, shamanic & kabbalistic contribution to understanding the significance of the images. Read more...
• • • • • • • • •
|
|
hand-crafted glass balls: |
|
Kitras is a family run Canadian company specializing in beautiful hand-blown Glass Balls, Hummingbird Feeders & Oil Lamps - for the home or the garden. Styles: Tree of Enchantment, Fairy Orbs, Calico, Vanglow & Art Nouveau.
$20-44
• • •
|
In addition to the new books, audio, & music we've featured above, we have lots of other new titles arriving all the time. Come by to have a look or pick up a copy of Branches of Light - our free biannual publication of news & reviews - for more features. (We can also mail you a copy, just give us a call at 604-732-7912 or 1-800-663-8442)
|
 |
We carry over 26,000 titles in Books, CDs, and DVDs!
If we do not have what you are looking for, we can also help you search for it and order it in for you.
Open Mon. to Fri. 10 - 9, Saturday 10 - 8, Sunday 11 - 7
Give us a call:
Books, CDs & DVDs: 604-732-7912
Music, Gifts, Event Tickets: 604-737-8858
Outside Vancouver: 1-800-663-8442
Email: thefolks@banyen.com |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Seeds to Plant
Joy is not incidental to the spiritual experience. It is vital.
– Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810)
•••••••••••••••••••••
In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with the other moments in the past, which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing to other moments of the future.
•••••••••••••••••••••
Mindfulness is knowing what is happening in this moment and what is happening to me in response to it.
– Sylvia Boorstein
from Happiness is an Inside Job
•••••••••••••••••••••
In the view of the ancient Maya, the Tree of Life, or Heart of Heaven was the creator of everything….The fact that the universe seems to have had a Tree of Life structure from the outset is clearly consistent with the interpretation that our universe was designed by an intelligence. Although to mention this may mean breaking a taboo in science, there is nothing in the physics of the Big Bang theory that contradicts this.
– John Calleman
from The Purposeful Universe
|
A Practice to Try
Imagine that you have the power to relieve all the misery and suffering of all living beings by first breathing it like harmless black smoke or mist into yourself. Then imagine that from your store of merit and virtue, built up from the good things you have done and thought during your life, you send out peace and happiness to all living beings by infusing them with inexhaustible brilliant white light as you breathe out. Repeat this as many times as possible.
– from First Invite Love In by Tana Pesso
•••••••••••••••••••••
MOHAWK PRAYER OF GRATITUDE: TO OUR ELDEST BROTHER THE SUN
We now send greetings and thanks to our Eldest Brother, the Sun. Each day without fail, he travels the sky from east to west, bringing the light of a new day. He is the source of all the fires of life. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to our Brother, the Sun. Now our minds are one.
– from Pass it On
by Joanna Macy
•••••••••••••••••••••
Compassion belongs to the center of the contemplative life. When we become the other and so enter into the presence of God, then we are true contemplatives. True contemplatives, then, are not the ones who withdraw from the work to save their own soul but the ones who enter into the center of the world and pray to God from there.
– from The Essential Henri Nouwen by Henri Nouwen
|
|
Blessings or Poems to Share
May the Great Spirit
watch over you
as long as the grass grows
and the water flows
– Cherokee Song
•••••••••••••••••••••
CRANES IN AUGUST
They clutter the house,
Awkwardly folded, unable
To rise.
My daughter makes
And makes them,
having heard
The old story: what we create
May save us. I string
A long line of them over
The window. Outside
The grey doves bring
Their one vowel to the air,
The same sound
From many throats, repeated.
– Kim Addonizio
from Fire in the Soul by Dinyar Godrej
•••••••••••••••••••••
Are you jealous
of the ocean’s generosity?
Why would you refuse to give
This joy to anyone?
Fish don’t hold
the sacred liquid in cups!
They swim
the huge fluid freedom.
– Rumi
from Mala of the Heart
ed. by Nathwani & Vogt
•••••••••••••••••••••
The sounds, visions and motion
of the angelosphere
Are heard, seen and felt
in echoes of human creativity.
All the world's scriptures
are just these.
Keep looking until you see.
Keep listening until you hear.
Keep moving
until you embody the divine.
Our creations mirror our Souls,
The artist is a Soulbird
Singing an evolutionary song
Helping the flock
change direction
in mid-flight.
– Alex & Allyson Grey
•••••••••••••••••••••
THE SINGULAR
AND CHEERFUL LIFE
The singular and cheerful life
of any flower
in anyone's garden
or any still unowned field---
if there is any---
catches me
by the heart,
by its color,
by its obedience
to the holiest of laws:
be alive
until you are not...
What, in the earth world,
is there not to be amazed by
and to be steadied by
and to cherish?
Oh, my dear heart,
my own dear heart,
full of hesitations,
questions, choice of directions,
look at the world.
Behold the morning glory,
the meanest flower, the ragweed, the thistle.
Look at the grass.
– Mary Oliver
from Evidence
|
Astrological Highlights this Month
NEW MOON
Monday, August 9
8:08pm at 17º Leo
•••••••••••••••••••••
FULL MOON
 Tuesday, August 24
10:05am at 2º Pisces
•••••••••••••••••••••
NEW MOON
Wednesday, Sept. 8
3:30am at 16º Virgo
•••••••••••••••••••••
FULL MOON
Thursday, Sept. 24
2:17am at 0º Aries
|
|
Connecting to Facebook
