Winifred Gallagher

El poder de la concentración "Todo conspira cada vez más para distraernos, para aturdirnos, para dejarnos sordos con una incesante cacofonía de reclamos. (...) Winifred Gallagher descubrió a causa de la enfermedad el misterio de la atencion al presente, la facultad fabulosa de la mente humana para concentrarse plenamente en algo, iluminarlo, percibirlo como una revelacion, como un tesoro a la vez solido y fugaz". -Antonio Muñoz Molina, Babelia (El Pais) La calidad de la vida no depende de la fortuna, la inteligencia o la belleza; ni siquiera de las cosas que nos pasan. La experiencia vital esta definida por aquello a lo que elegimos estar atentos. Apoyandose en los ultimos descubrimientos en neurociencia, la escritora Winifred Gallagher realiza una investigacion apasionante sobre el papel de la atencion a la hora de definir la conducta, la experiencia y la identidad humanas. Al elegir los objetos materiales y sujetos mentales a los que atendemos, afirma la autora, no solo sublimamos nuestro presente; estamos creando nuestro futuro. Pagina a pagina, ofrece las herramientas necesarias para convertir una atencion involuntaria e inconsciente en otra consciente y enfocada, capaz de crear el tipo de experiencias que querriamos tener y convertirnos en la persona que deseariamos ser. Atencion plena, que ha merecido c...

El poder de la concentración "Todo conspira cada vez más para distraernos, para aturdirnos, para dejarnos sordos con una incesante cacofonía de reclamos. (...) Winifred Gallagher descubrió a causa de la enfermedad el misterio de la atencion al presente, la facultad fabulosa de la mente humana para concentrarse plenamente en algo, iluminarlo, percibirlo como una revelacion, como un tesoro a la vez solido y fugaz". -Antonio Muñoz Molina, Babelia (El Pais) La calidad de la vida no depende de la fortuna, la inteligencia o la belleza; ni siquiera de las cosas que nos pasan. La experiencia vital esta definida por aquello a lo que elegimos estar atentos. Apoyandose en los ultimos descubrimientos en neurociencia, la escritora Winifred Gallagher realiza una investigacion apasionante sobre el papel de la atencion a la hora de definir la conducta, la experiencia y la identidad humanas. Al elegir los objetos materiales y sujetos mentales a los que atendemos, afirma la autora, no solo sublimamos nuestro presente; estamos creando nuestro futuro. Pagina a pagina, ofrece las herramientas necesarias para convertir una atencion involuntaria e inconsciente en otra consciente y enfocada, capaz de crear el tipo de experiencias que querriamos tener y convertirnos en la persona que deseariamos ser. Atencion plena, que ha merecido c...

El poder de la concentración "Todo conspira cada vez más para distraernos, para aturdirnos, para dejarnos sordos con una incesante cacofonía de reclamos. (...) Winifred Gallagher descubrió a causa de la enfermedad el misterio de la atencion al presente, la facultad fabulosa de la mente humana para concentrarse plenamente en algo, iluminarlo, percibirlo como una revelacion, como un tesoro a la vez solido y fugaz". -Antonio Muñoz Molina, Babelia (El Pais) La calidad de la vida no depende de la fortuna, la inteligencia o la belleza; ni siquiera de las cosas que nos pasan. La experiencia vital esta definida por aquello a lo que elegimos estar atentos. Apoyandose en los ultimos descubrimientos en neurociencia, la escritora Winifred Gallagher realiza una investigacion apasionante sobre el papel de la atencion a la hora de definir la conducta, la experiencia y la identidad humanas. Al elegir los objetos materiales y sujetos mentales a los que atendemos, afirma la autora, no solo sublimamos nuestro presente; estamos creando nuestro futuro. Pagina a pagina, ofrece las herramientas necesarias para convertir una atencion involuntaria e inconsciente en otra consciente y enfocada, capaz de crear el tipo de experiencias que querriamos tener y convertirnos en la persona que deseariamos ser. Atencion plena, que ha merecido criticas elogiosas en nuestro pais incluso antes de su aparicion, merece toda nuestra atencion, por muchas distracciones que nos salgan al paso.

Why do I exist? Is this all there is? What is my true nature? What is most important in life? How should I live? These are humanitys oldest spiritual questions. At the year 2000, however, many who ask them are profoundly estranged from religion. To some, religion is belief in the unbelievable--incom-patible with intelligence and learning. To others, its just another bureaucratic institution--legalistic, hypo-critical, untrustworthy. Still others have been alienated by their birth traditions, while an increasing number lack any such grounding. What unites this diverse group of skeptical, ambivalent "neoagnostics" is a sense of something deep and vital that eludes the reach of their intellect and education and an inchoate desire for meaning. A half-century of the great secular experiment of Einstein, Marx, and Freud has proved that if religion--the record of our struggle to understand existence and behave accordingly--has grave flaws, so do the materialistic "faiths" that were intended to replace it. After looking for answers in some obvious places, from relationships and accomplishment to art and science, Winifred Gallagher realized that she had not seriously considered religion since childhoods version of Chris-tianity collided with a college education. Asking the question "What if religion could be about something else?" she decided to explore her own heritage, as well as Buddhism, Judaism, and the New Age. She discovered a vast, quiet, "millennial" spiritual revolution that is transforming religion into a process of moving toward--and struggling with--the sacred. Transcending denom-inational boundaries, this new sensibility embraces modern realities from physics to psychiatry, addresses existential questions, values personal experience over institutional authority, draws insights from multiple traditions, welcomes women as clergy and teachers, and expands morality beyond the personal to the systemic, from economics to ecology. A reporter of behavioral science, Winifred Gallagher began her investigation of postmodern religion with research and interviews, but watched it also become a very personal story of epektasis--straining toward mystery. Journalism and journey unfold over time spent in a Zen monastery and a cloistered convent, small-group discussions and healing rituals, a Conservative synagogue that shares a Christian church, and the birthplace of the New Age. Written with humor, empathy, and a rigorous curiosity, Working on God breaks new ground in depicting the broad-based spiritual move-ment that is transforming culture as well as religion.

In Spiritual Genius, journalist Winifred Gallagher, the acclaimed author of Working on God, asks Rabbi Lawrence Kushner to define holiness. "Standing in the presence of God," he says. "Everyone has it, but some people seem to have more of a knack for accessing it." Like holiness, the gift that Gallagher calls "spiritual genius"--which she defines as "the uniquely human ability to search for and find lifes meaning, then express it in our lives as only each of us can"--is one we all possess but dont necessarily recognize. Whether they are called saints, gurus, tzaddiks, or shamans, there have always been people who possess exceptional insight, altruism, and charisma. In this disarmingly inspirational book, Gallagher investigates what ordinary people trying to live decent, meaningful lives can learn from such extraordinary men and women, who are specially attuned to the deepest truths, and who exemplify-and radiate-spiritual genius. In a clear-eyed, ecumenical approach thats free of dogma and bias and suffused with profound respect, Winifred Gallagher highlights the common wisdom-and down-to-earth good humor-of these religious leaders, revels in their differences, and identifies the capacity for spiritual genius that all of us share with them. On an island in the Arabian Sea, Gallagher visits Mata Amritanandamayi, regarded by devotees as a Hindu goddess, who transmits divine love through hugs and charities. She travels through Americas inner cities with Tony Campolo, an Evangelical preacher who counsels national leaders and serves the poor. She learns how Riffat Hassan, a Pakistani theologian, uses the Quran to defend the rights of her Muslim sisters. She journeys to a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the Himalayas to understand how an exiled minority has enchanted the world with their deep, resilient spirituality. In these diverse lives, Gallagher argues, we can glimpse our own potential for spiritual genius writ large. Each story testifies to the profound good in the world, even during a troubled time, and to Gallaghers groundbreaking theory of a human capacity for finding lifes meaning that is nothing less than genius.

Why are we attuned to the latest headline, diet craze, smartphone, fashion statement? Why do we relish a change of scene, eye attractive strangers, develop new interests? How did Homo sapiens survive near-extinction during an environmental crisis 80,000 years ago, while close cousins very like us have died out? Why is your characteristic reaction to novelty and change the key to your whole personality? Why do we enjoy inexpensive pleasures, like fresh flowers or great chocolate, more than costly comforts, like cars or appliances? How can a species genetically geared to engage with novelty cope in a world that increasingly bombards us with it? Follow a crawling baby around and youll see that right from the beginning, nothing excites us more than something new and different. Our unique human brains are biologically primed to engage with and even generate novelty, from our ancestors first bow and arrow to the latest tablet computer. This neophilia has enabled us to thrive in a world of cataclysmic change, but now, we confront an unprecedented deluge of new things, from products to information, which has quadrupled in the past 30 years and shows no sign of slowing. To prevent our great strength from becoming a weakness in todays fast-paced world, we must re-connect with neophilias grand evolutionary purpose: to help us learn, create, and adapt to new things that have real value and dismiss the rest as distractions. In New: Understanding Our Need for Novelty and Change, Winifred Gallagher, acclaimed behavioral science writer and author of Rapt, takes us to the cutting-edge laboratories and ancient archeological sites where scientists explore our special affinity for novelty and change. Although no other species can rival our capacity to explore and experiment with the new, we individuals vary in how we balance the conflicting needs to avoid risk and approach rewards. Most of us are moderate neophiles, but some 15 per cent of us are die-hard neophiliacs, who have an innate passion for new experiences, and another 15 per cent are cautious neophobes, who try to steer clear of thema 1-5-1 ratio that benefits the groups well-being. Wherever you sit on the continuum, New shows you how to use this special human gift to navigate more skillfully through our rapidly changing world by focusing on the new things that really matter.

A revolutionary look at how what we pay attention to determines how we experience life Acclaimed behavioral science writer Winifred Gallaghers Rapt makes the radical argument that much of the quality of your life depends not on fame or fortune, beauty or brains, fate or coincidence, but on what you choose to pay attention to. Rapt introduces a diverse cast of characters, from researchers to artists to ranchers, to illustrate the art of living the interested life. As their stories show, by focusing on the most positive and productive elements of any situation, you can shape your inner experience and expand your world. By learning to focus, you can improve your concentration, broaden your inner horizons, and most important, feel what it means to be fully alive.

A riveting history of the American West told for the first time through the pioneering women who used the challenges of migration and settlement as opportunities to advocate for their rights, and transformed the country in the processBetween 1840 and 1910, hundreds of thousands of men and women traveled deep into the underdeveloped American West, lured by the prospect of adventure and opportunity, and galvanized by the spirit of Manifest Destiny. Alongside this rapid expansion of the United States, a second, overlapping social shift was taking place: survival in a settler society busy building itself from scratch required two equally hardworking partners, compelling women to compromise eastern sensibilities and take on some of the same responsibilities as their husbands. At a time when women had very few legal or economic--much less political--rights, these women soon proved they were just as essential as men to westward expansion. Their efforts to attain equality by acting as mens equals paid off, and well before the Nineteenth Amendment, they became the first American women to vote.During the mid-nineteenth century, the fight for womens suffrage was radical indeed. But as the traditional domestic model of womanhood shifted to one that included public service, the women of the West were becoming not only coproviders for their families but also town mothers who established schools, churches, and philanthropies. At a time of few economic opportunities elsewhere, they claimed their own homesteads and graduated from new, free coeducational colleges that provided career alternatives to marriage. In 1869, the men of the Wyoming Territory gave women the right to vote--partly to persuade more of them to move west--but with this victory in hand, western suffragists fought relentlessly until the rest of the region followed suit. By 1914 most western women could vote--a right still denied to women in every eastern state.In New Women in the Old West, Winifred Gallagher brings to life the riveting history of the little-known women--the White, Black, and Asian settlers, and the Native Americans and Hispanics they displaced--who played monumental roles in one of Americas most transformative periods. Like western history in general, the record of womens crucial place at the intersection of settlement and suffrage has long been overlooked. Drawing on an extraordinary collection of research, Gallagher weaves together the striking legacy of the persistent individuals who not only created homes on weather-wracked prairies and built communities in muddy mining camps, but also played a vital, unrecognized role in the womens rights movement and forever redefined the "American woman."

The history of its Post Office is nothing less than the story of America, Ms. Gallaghers opening sentence declares, and in this lively book she makes the case well.Wall Street JournalA masterful history of a long underappreciated institution, How the Post Office Created America examines the surprising role of the postal service in our nations political, social, economic, and physical development. The founders established the post office before they had even signed the Declaration of Independence, and for a very long time, it was the U.S. governments largest and most important endeavorindeed, it was the government for most citizens. This was no conventional mail network but the central nervous system of the new body politic, designed to bind thirteen quarrelsome colonies into the United States by delivering news about public affairs to every citizena radical idea that appalled Europes great powers. Americas uniquely democratic post powerfully shaped its lively, argumentative culture of uncensored ideas and opinions and made it the worlds information and communications superpower with astonishing speed. Winifred Gallagher presents the history of the post office as Americas own story, told from a fresh perspective over more than two centuries. The mandate to deliver the mailthen the mediaimposed the federal footprint on vast, often contested parts of the continent and transformed a wilderness into a social landscape of post roads and villages centered on post offices. The post was the catalyst of the nations transportation grid, from the stagecoach lines to the airlines, and the lifeline of the great migration from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It enabled America to shift from an agrarian to an industrial economy and to develop the publishing industry, the consumer culture, and the political party system. Still one of the countrys two major civilian employers, the post was the first to hire women, African Americans, and other minorities for positions in public life. Starved by two world wars and the Great Depression, confronted with the countrys increasingly anti-institutional mind-set, and struggling with its doubled mail volume, the post stumbled badly in the turbulent 1960s. Distracted by the ensuing modernization of its traditional services, however, it failed to transition from paper mail to email, which prescient observers saw as its logical next step. Now the post office is at a crossroads. Before deciding its future, Americans should understand what this grand yet overlooked institution has accomplished since 1775 and consider what it should and could contribute in the twenty-first century.Gallagher argues that now, more than ever before, the imperiled post office deserves this effort, because just as the founders anticipated, it created forward-looking, communication-oriented, idea-driven America.