• How to Find One's Own Spirituality in Today's Fast-Moving World. Dr. Stephen Ruppenthal discusses four life changing ways to access and maintain a deep and joyful sense of one's spirituality in a world filled with obligations. Read Detailed Description
  
  
• Seven Elements for Aging Gracefully. For most people in modern society, getting older is a painful, almost traumatizing process. Physical signs are not the worst of it. Often, when kids move out we feel rootless. It is as if we have a great darkness inside, not knowing any more how to love or be loved. Read Detailed Description
  
  
• Addiction. As we lose more and more of our own self respect, our world of choices and alternatives seems less and less, and we become prone to addictions. Now there's a new way to lift ourselves out of this inner poverty and rediscover our true selves. Read Detailed Description
  
  
• Breaking Through Darkness and Finding the Light. No matter how hopeless we may feel, every event that happens to us offers a teaching and a gateway through it leading to greater joy and personal freedom. Read Detailed Description
  
  
• Accessing Greater Energy and Peace. There is a source of supreme energy and power at work in our lives and in the world around us. Whether you call it God, Nature, or the great spirit, plugging ourselves into that power is what life is all about. Read Detailed Description
  

For the past 25 years Dr. Ruppenthal has led workshops in the art of passage meditation and courses for those looking for end of life spiritual care and for the spiritual step component of twelve step programs. He has a Ph.D. in Chinese and Sanskrit literature from the University of California at Berkeley and has taught meditation and courses on Han Shan at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University.

To schedule an interview with Stephen Ruppenthal or to receive a review copy of Direct Awakings call Anne Leedom with Net Connect Publicity at 916-939-8246 or email Dr. Ruppenthal directly at s_ruppenthal@comcast.net.

1. Reflection
   We carry within our body memories left by experience. Reflection is the process of locating this information and bringing each bit into conscious awareness, for psychological wholeness and spiritual health. Dr. Ruppenthal discusses strategies for reflection, such as planning each day when you get up and reviewing and "redoing" key parts of it before going to bed; journaling feelings, dreams, and important insights; and going back to pivotal events earlier in life. These and other practices will help you sharpen awareness during the day and lift yourself out of old patterns. With patience and repeated effort, you can claim your whole person and full life as your own.
   
   
2. Caring for self
   Until we journey into the second half of life, the time when our career is established and the kids leave the nest, it is necessary to put our own needs on hold and live for someone else. When we love ourselves, the shy, inner layers wounded by past hurt and pain feel more free to come out. However, in the tumult of youth, and the preoccupation of raising a family and caring for others, there are few opportunities to allow these feelings to come out.. Dr. Ruppenthal can discuss how to enhance your self-image and unlock your creative powers. Through the use of behavioral change, affirmations, mantrams, and meditation, you can shift your perception of who you are and make caring for yourself part of your daily routine. He will discuss how we can stop pushing down our feelings, doubting and judging ourselves harshly, and continually failing to follow through on cherished activities, tasks, and goals. He will discuss proven strategies to find a path through these obstacles and begin the work of self care and self healing.
   
   
3. Empathy and Listening
   What we feel for others mirrors what we feel about ourselves inside. If we can feel deeply for them in their joys and pains, parts of ourselves that were hidden and sealed off have the courage to come fully into consciousness. With others as mirrors, we can clearly see what qualities in ourselves need work and changing. Dr. Ruppenthal discusses specific ways we can learn to listen and empathize. He teaches us the skill of how to turn down the volume of our own thoughts so that we can tune into the needs and wishes of others. He also shows just how to recognize key factors that show we have truly listened and that the empathy is effective. These include a deep feeling for the other person in one's own heart, a marked increase in their trust of and confidence in us, and a positive change in many other relationships we have. Listening skills and the empathy they promote can thus remove our own obstacles to personal growth and show us it is within our power how we react emotionally to every event every single minute of our lives.
   
   
4. Right Nutrition and Exercise
   The greatest doctors will tell us that food is medicine. Eat a well balanced, whole foods diet, without junk calories, and your body will thank you for it with a lasting state of health and well being. This can be preserved and heightened by a vigorous program of exercise for the heart, the muscles, and the elasticity of the entire physical system. Good nutrition and exercise can keep us young throughout the years most people call old age. Dr. Ruppenthal discusses nutritional and physical trends that will have the greatest positive impact on your health as you age. He will discuss how to determine what the best methods are for your own level of health and personal goals.
   
   
5. Slowing down and calming the thinking process
   All methods of meditation have one goal only, to still the feverish pace of thought and overcome our addiction to unwanted patterns of thought, emotion, and action. Even if we do not realize it, everyone in the modern world is fascinated by, even addicted to the quick pace of thinking. Dr. Ruppenthal discusses specific strategies to gain access to the powerful tool of passage meditation, building the muscles of the mind and enabling us to overcome old patterns. He shows us how to change the ways in which we think and feel, and to respond rather than react. Gaining even a little skill with this very powerful meditational tool, we will find the momentum of thoughts no longer decides our direction in life. We do.
   
   
6. Planting spiritual seeds
   In teaching meditation, Dr. Ruppenthal will show us how there is the right passage for each individual temperament and need. There are also shortcuts for how to memorize and use them in meditation, even for those who have had problems in the past. He will teach us how to put the brakes on out-of-control feelings and thoughts which assail us and prevent us from giving our best in our family or at our job. We will see that by memorizing and continually repeating the words of each passage in the mind, the meditator can gradually absorb deep spiritual experience. Eventually, when passage meditation slows and even stills the mind, the seeds of these spiritual passages can grow, flower, and fill the personality with love and brightness. Dr. Ruppenthal shows us, point by point, how to translate the very desirable qualities and spirit in deeply meaningful passages into how we act in our daily lives.
   
   
7. Facing and overcoming fears
   As most of us age, fear can propel us into intense midlife crisis, leaving us vulnerable to poor decisions and to destructive psychological events. When we construct a support net by using spiritual passages, affirmations, and a mantram, we put fear on notice. In so many of our deepest problems and worst habits, fear is at the root, telling us we are very small and cannot face life without it. But through these new practices and skills, fear can be flushed out of all its hiding places. By elevating our self image and experimenting with new responses to people and events based on the way we want to be, rather than on outmoded messages of who we are, we can shake fears down to size and show them they will never rule us again.
   

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Addiction

Addiction to substances, emotional states, and negative patterns of behavior in our relationships makes life appear very bleak. As we lose more and more of our own self respect, our world of choices and alternatives seems less and less, and we become prone to addictions. Dr. Stephen Ruppenthal shows us a new way to lift ourselves out of this inner poverty and rediscover our true selves. Dr. Ruppenthal's regimen of self reflection, affirmations, choice and use of a mantram, along with passage meditation will help you mine your hidden inner wealth. You will see the path toward positive change. He will also share resources for setting yourself up with a spiritual and self-help support system with others also trying to do this very hard and courageous work.
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Breaking Through Darkness and Finding the Light

No matter how hopeless we may feel, every event that happens to us offers a teaching and a gateway through it leading to greater joy and personal freedom. When we make a bad decision, in the end the painful consequences do not have hurt us. If we use them as feedback to help us decide better next time, we pass through a gateway toward greater wisdom. When misfortune comes down on us, whether a breakup of a relationship, loss of a job, or a severe injury, we can learn to interpret this as an opportunity. Through the practices of personal reflection, passage meditation, and the use of a mantram and of affirmations, Dr. Ruppenthal will help us find the courage to pass through the gateway to more joy, love, and personal achievement than we ever thought we could achieve. Take the hero's journey that only those who have known darkness, hopelessness, and nearly given themselves up for dead can travel.

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Accessing Greater Energy and Peace

There is a source of supreme energy and power at work in our lives and in the world around us. Whether you call it God, Nature, or the great spirit, plugging ourselves into that power is what life is all about. When you feel that life could not be sweeter or fuller of joy, it's because you have connected to this power, as we all do from time to time. When you do, it fills your heart and life with love, energy, and meaning. Fail to link up, and you feel run down, depleted, or played out. Dr. Ruppenthal speaks of five ways to gain access to this greater power and energy:

1. Communing with it in nature
   
2. Finding the right rhythm in work
   
3. Achieving empathy with others
   
4. Rhythmic movement in exercise and the outdoors
   
5. Absorbing through meditation the peace of those who have attained harmony