Peter Ralston has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.2★ across 7 ratings. The most-rated is The Book of Not Knowing.
The Book of Not Knowing
Summary
For fans of Eckhart Tolle - a guide to mastering self-awareness through direct experience, not old presumptions or harmful thought patterns. Through decades of martial arts and meditation practice, Peter Ralston discovered a curious and paradoxical fact: that true awareness arises from a state of not knowing. Even the most sincere investigation of self and spirit, he says, is often sabotaged by our tendency to grab too quickly for answers and ideas as we retreat to the safety of the known. This "Hitchhiker's Guide to Awareness" provides helpful guideposts along an experiential journey for those Western minds predisposed to wandering off to old habits, cherished presumptions, and a stubbornly solid sense of self. With ease and clarity, Ralston teaches listeners how to become aware of the background patterns that they are usually too busy, stressed, or distracted to notice. The Book of Not Knowing points out the ways people get stuck in their lives and offers listeners a way to make fresh choices about every aspect of their lives - from a place of awareness instead of autopilot.
©2010 Peter Ralston (P)2017 Random House Audio
Zen Body-Being
Summary
A program of "physical education" for martial arts practitioners and anyone interested in body improvement. Using simple, clear language to demystify the Zen mindset, he draws on more than three decades of experience teaching students and apprentices worldwide who have applied his body-being approach. More of a transformative guide than a specific list of exercises devoted to any particular physical approach, Zen Body-Being explains how to create a state of mental control, enhanced feeling-awareness, correct structural alignment, increased spatial acuity, and even a greater interactive presence. Exercises are simple, often involving feeling-imagery and meditative awareness, which have a profound and sometimes instant effect. Areas of exploration include: Beginner’s body-being Three aspects of body awareness Five principles for an effortlessly effective body Opening a door - five steps to transformation Fourteen points on structural alignment Where similar guides teach audiences what to do, this book teaches audiences how to be.
©2011 Peter Ralston and Laura Ralston (P)2019 North Atlantic Books
Reflections of Being
Summary
Personal, reflective, and gently investigative, these early essays have a raw, fresh quality which predates the more formal theory and practice of Peter Ralston's two popular books, The Book of Not Knowing and Pursuing Consciousness. Many of the questions we might struggle with in life - identity in relation to others, authenticity in the face of belief systems, the draw we have to pursue ineffective self-serving urges, and our tendency to conceptualize rather than experience things - are described here in simple, almost conversational language. Attempting to grasp what authentic knowledge is, Ralston's queries become a quest for how humans can develop a deeper sense of themselves as participants in the world.
©1991 Peter Ralston (P)2017 Wetware Media
The Genius of Being
Summary
Peter Ralston's exceptionally lucid trilogy on the nature of human consciousness culminates here in The Genius of Being, a book of deep contemplations on the unseen elements that create our world. The first volume, The Book of Not Knowing, garnered much praise as a comprehensive exploration of the depths of self and consciousness. The second volume, Pursuing Consciousness, clarifies the difference between enlightenment and self-transformation, and then pairs these two goals in a strikingly effective way. This third book is both shorter and more complex, taking us straight to the heart of the origins of our experience. In a progression of illuminating assertions, Ralston shows us how human consciousness carves out distinctions from whatever is absolutely true. This dynamic not only generates both self and reality from nothing, it imbues them with the quality of objective truth. From the time we first distinguish between self and not-self as infants, we begin making a sequence of existential assumptions that result in the illusion that a self is some ethereal "object" within. This universally accepted assumption persists despite the failure of exhaustive investigations to locate this inner self. This book is not for the faint of heart or the casual seeker, but contemplating the assertions here empowers you to personally and experientially grasp what is rarely even glimpsed: a profound consciousness of the genesis of human experience.
©2017 Peter Ralston (P)2017 Wetware Media