New American Spirituality: A Seekers Guide

Although she expertly performs the role of memoirist and observer, Lesser has stretched this book into a useful tool for all seekers. She offers numerous suggestions, such as how to listen to your body, increase your spiritual bank account, "live the questions" rather than "seek the answers," and create a supportive community. This is a moving workbook for anyone who's hoping to find, claim, or simply maintain their spiritual truths. --Gail Hudson

Product Description
"Elizabeth Lesser offers up a rich cornucopia of lessons for the soul in The New American Spirituality, a warm and fascinating account of a modern pilgrimage."
--Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., author of Emotional Intelligence

In the crowded field of books dealing with spirituality, psychology, and religion, what has been missing is a comprehensive, authoritative guide to the many choices facing spiritual seekers today. The New American Spirituality fills that need. This encouraging, empowering "user's manual" for the soul teaches you how to chart a unique and personal path through the diverse landscapes of the American spiritual quest.

In 1977, Lesser cofounded the Omega Institute, now America's largest adult-education center focusing on wellness and spirituality. Working with many of the eminent thinkers and practitioners of our times in the fields of religion, psychology, mysticism, science, and healing, Lesser found that the hunger for a spiritual life can be satisfied by a rich blend of the world's wisdom traditions. In The New American Spirituality she synthesizes the lessons she has learned from different belief systems, and intertwines them with illuminating stories from her life as a seeker, teacher, daughter, wife, and mother. She answers pertinent questions--how do you determine what is right for you from the many strains of the modern spiritual search? how do you assess a teacher or practice? how can you gauge your progress?--while warning of the tendency to miss out on real growth by merely dabbling in the latest fads. Recounting her own trials and errors and offering meditative exercises as well as references to some of the world's great spiritual teachers, Lesser provides directions through the four landscapes of the spiritual journey:

the mind: developing awareness, learning meditation, easing stress and anxiety

the heart: finding what one really loves, dealing with grief and loss, becoming fully alive

the body: returning the body to the spiritual fold, healing, coping with aging and the fear of death

the soul: naming God for ourselves, exploring other realms of consciousness, trusting the mysterious nature of the universe, developing compassion and forgiveness

Warm, accessible, and wise, The New American Spirituality is a cross-disciplinary sourcebook for the millions of Americans who, whether or not they participate in an organized religion, wish to incorporate a more meaningful, joyful, and individualized spirituality into their daily lives.

Book Description
Shares guidelines & practices to help listeners make choices amid the many spiritual paths open to them today. Includes a complete session of useful exercises & meditations

I also really liked her own story, because it made me see how much we are all seekers on a path. The way she talks about her ups and downs makes the rest of what she says seem even more real. You can tell that she has a great feeling for anyone who is out there trying to figure things out in their own way. It was encouraging. She wrote one part about a poem she and her husband return to whenever they have to make a dificult decision because it has a message that they learn from again and again. I was really struck by the simplicity of doing that and I thought, "wow, I could do that!" There were a bunch of those stories -she talked about things she did to keep herself on track that were simple, but took some thought, and reading them inspired me.

I guess that is really the bottom line. If anyone is on a path or thinking about learning more about different ways of exploring spirituality and self growth, this book is a real inspiration. It is also packed with a lot of information, as she quotes so many other teachers and writes about a lot of different traditions. I was impressed by how much she packed into it.

She also writes about the Omega, which I had never heard of. It sounds like a fasinating place so I was glad to find out about it.

Bottom line is, I recommend it - especially if you are one of those people who is yearning for some kind of spiritual connection or a more peaceful place inside yourself and you just don't know where to get started. It was really good.

I noticed I was the only one in the review area - anybody else out there read it?


Seeker's Guide is Tour de Force   January 27, 2001
 46 out of 50 found this review helpful

Institutions of religion and learning take note: Elizabeth Lesser's "Seeker's Guide" is proof positive that personal experience is equal to tradition and scholarship as a pathway to truth. Elizabeth's life of seeking, organizing, promoting and teaching spirituality is disclosed beautifully in this multifaceted work. She shows by her own story, by her inspiring writing, and by her practical guidelines for meditation how ordinary mortals can create the sacred space for spiritual fulfillment in their own lives. Readers will find scripts for specific spiritual objectives, pearls of wisdom for the refrigerator, models for parenting, friendship, and marriage, holistic prescriptions for mental and physical health, deep prayers, profound wisdom, and the best bumper-sticker slogans in the universe. Her use of resources is erudite without pedantry or scholasticism. The book is at once a spiritual autobiography, a systematic theology of spiritual formation, and a useful handbook for spiritual practice. Personalities of some of our greatest spiritual leaders come to life as real people in the mix. If Elizabeth had only shared with us what she has learned from her years at Omega Institute, that would have been plenty, but she has also added her own powerful voice to the rising chorus of teachers and leaders of the New American Spirituality. Seekers who pick up her book will turn every page to the end and say, give us more, Elizabeth!


The Most Balanced and Objective Read on Spirituality   December 2, 1999
 31 out of 33 found this review helpful

If you are looking for a book that explores spirituality in an objective and healthy fashion, you will be hard-pressed to find a better book. This book is not about Religion or any specific doctrine, it is about spirituality - current Religions are briefly mentioned within a proper context.

If you are a seeker, you will find this book particularly valueable. If you are looking for a book that will tell you the 'Best' religion and why that's so, this is not the book for you.

This is a healthy and heartfelt book written by an author with lots of personal experience to share. To an open mind, this book is a breath of fresh air. Enjoy.


A Map of the New American Spiritual World   May 22, 2000
 26 out of 27 found this review helpful

Eliabeth Lesser's book, The New American Spirituality, is a highly readable, thoroughly informative, and deeply felt dispatch from the frontier of America's ever-evolving spiritual journey. As a cofounder of Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, Lesser has been in the thick of it for almost 30 years, organizing workshops and conferences nationwide, meeting and nurturing extended relationships with the leaders in the field--from Maya Angelou to Ram Dass--and helping put together the nation's largest and most successful learning center that seeks to explore and weave together many of the emerging threads of a country in the throes of perhaps the most extraordinary spiritual rebirth since the nineteenth-century Great Awakening. So much more than an academic treatment of the subject, this book is also part memoir and part guidebook. It is perhaps no accident that Omega Institute began in a small, white clapboard settlement that had belonged to the Shakers, who even in their heyday were considered a fringe movement. But much of what was once marginal about Omega is now moving into the mainstream. After defining spirituality and its context in American life, a good part of the book is then devoted to grounding the often ethereal world of spirituality in four different "landscapes"--the landscape of the mind, the landscape of the heart, the landscape of the body, and the landscape of the soul--which provide a kind of map to guide us through this exciting, rich, though often strange new world. Although she's a member of the cast and applauds a world she helped create, she does not suffer fools or pander to the excesses that this so-called "new age" movement throws up and expects us to admire. She makes us laugh, and laughs with us. This is a big book and, if you like, can be read in sections that happen to appeal to you at a particular time. But you'll want to read the whole thing and come back to it like you would a spiritual practice. The repeated visits are sure to nourish you.


The right book at the right time   July 16, 1999
 20 out of 20 found this review helpful

Cross cultural awareness, an appreciation of the common truths underpinning various religious traditions practiced in America today, and an integrative grasp of the relationship between human psychology and spirituality -- all are present in Lesser's inspirational work. She combines practical spiritual advise, with wisdom, gained while meeting the challenges of her own personal spiritual journey. Her insights, into the withering effects of a predominately patriarchal work environment on the souls of working women, are particularly enlightening and validating. "The New American Spirituality" is definitely a keeper -- a "must read" for the modern American spiritual seeker.