Gina Lake

Radical Happiness: A Guide to Awakening provides the keys to experiencing the happiness that is always present and not dependent on circumstances. This happiness doesn't come from getting what we want, but from wanting what is here now. It comes from realizing that who we think we are, that is, who our thoughts tell us that we are is not who we really are. This is a radical perspective! True happiness comes from experiencing our true nature by being present in each moment. Radical Happiness describes the nature of the egoic state of consciousness, how the ego interferes with happiness, how to detach from the ego, what awakening and enlightenment are, and how to live in this world following awakening. Exercises are included to help you apply the information and transform your experience of life--and become happier! From Radical Happiness: "When we are identified with the mind, we believe that we are who we think we are: our self-images and the labels that we have for ourselves. But is that who you are? If that is who you are, then who is it that is able to think about this question? What is it that is aware of the ideas that make up your self-image? What is it that is aware of the coming and going of thoughts?"

Anatomy of Desire won't help you get what you want, but it will help you want what you get. It will help you understand desire and its purpose in your life. It will help you discriminate between true desires and false ones, and it will help you relate to your desires in a way that reduces suffering and increases joy. Most importantly, it will help you know your Heart's desire and to follow it. Anatomy of Desire is essentially a book about how to be happy regardless of your desires. It points out many of the myths about desire, which keep us tied to our desires and the suffering they cause. So, it is also about spiritual freedom, or liberation, which comes from letting the Heart guide us instead of the ego. It is ultimately about becoming a lover of life rather than a desirer because these two things--love and desire--are at odds, and we must choose between them. What do you really want? Do you want what you want or do you want love? "When you see that the "I" is the ego and not who you really are, it puts wanting in perspective. Wanting is forever coming out of the ego. If you give your attention to it, you will be chasing one desire after another. Once you can separate yourself from this "I" and see how undiscriminating, random, and constant the ego's wanting is, you gain some distance from your desires, and there is freedom in that. Your desires no longer seem like they belong to you, and that makes them less compelling. What makes the "I want" so compelling is that it is happening inside you, so you identify with it and believe you do want and need that to be happy."

This is a spiritually based program for recognizing, finding, and sustaining meaningful relationships. Gina Lake offers an approach to relationships that encourage readers to move beyond ego and conditioning and to tap into the essential Oneness of all that is. She offers profound insights and practical advice about: How to recognize, find, and sustain a meaningful relationship How to understand the factors that are most important to compatibility How the ego interferes with love and happiness. How to move beyond romantic illusions. How to resolve conflicts. How to handle addictive and abusive behavior. How to overcome judgments, demands, criticism, and resentment. How to see the Divine in another. Lake’s work will be eagerly embraced by all those looking for a new paradigm of being in a relationship; a practical path for moving beyond duality into Oneness.

Severin Unck's father is a famous director of Gothic romances in an alternate 1986 in which talking movies are still a daring innovation due to the patent-hoarding Edison family. Rebelling against her father's films of passion, intrigue, and spirits from beyond, Severin starts making documentaries, traveling through space and investigating the levitator cults of Neptune and the lawless saloons of Mars. For this is not our solar system, but one drawn from classic science fiction in which all the planets are inhabited and we travel through space on beautiful rockets. Severin is a realist in a fantastic universe. But her latest film, which investigates the disappearance of a diving colony on a watery Venus populated by island-sized alien creatures, will be her last. Though her crew limps home to earth and her story is preserved by the colony's last survivor, Severin will never return.

The now--this moment--is the true source of happiness and peace and the key to living a fulfilled and meaningful life. Embracing the Now by Gina Lake is a collection of short essays about the now that can serve as daily reminders of the deepest truths. Full of clear insight and wisdom, it explains how the mind keeps us from being in the now, how to move into the now and stay there, and what living from the now is like. It also explains how to overcome stumbling blocks to being in the now, such as fears, doubts, judgments, misunderstandings, distrust of life, desires, and other conditioned ideas that are behind human suffering. "By becoming aware of what else is showing up in life in this moment besides thoughts, we can begin to really live in this moment and respond to it naturally, uncluttered by our mental commentary. We are in the moment, but without the ego's influence on it. Spiritual freedom is when the voice of the ego no longer dominates and colors the landscape of life. Rather, this voice is one small aspect of the landscape, one other thing that comes and goes in this landscape. This voice becomes impersonal, something that has no more personal relevance than the bird's song or the temperature of the room. It's experienced, but not experienced as "you." Then it's possible to experience the Experiencer, the true self that is behind all life and behind our life. This Experiencer is in love with life, and when we let it live us, we are in love with life, and our actions and words express that. Freedom from the ego brings a relaxation into the true self and the possibility of being that in the world instead of the ego."