Robert Jacobs has written an intriguing series about his spiritual path, Path to the Awakened Heart. His first book, Journey to the Awakened Heart, follows him as a young seeker in the 1970s, determined to discover more to life than the materialism he found in American culture. He moves to Paris and then begins to explore the world, traveling to West Africa, Morocco, Central Asia and finally to India, where he slowly finds answers to his spiritual search. Ultimately, he meets an illumined spiritual teacher from India and spends most of the next 18 years living in yoga and meditation ashrams in India and the United States, engaging himself fully in cultivating what he comes to understand is an awakened consciousness. His memoir provides an intimate picture of what it was like for a Westerner to live a traditional monastic life in an Indian ashram. More importantly, it shows how living with an enlightened spiritual master transformed the author's life from being merely mentally spiritual to enabling spirituality to permeate his life. Finally, the book follows the author in his transition to a more normal worldly life as husband and father, applying the lessons he learned from his ashram days to the many challenges of modern life. Together the author's two books offer a profound picture of how Eastern spirituality has developed and transformed in the past 70 years within a Western context.
Vorwort
Journey to the Awakened Heart is the story of a young man who abandons what the world expects of him to travel the world trying to answer pressing questions.
Autorentext
Robert Jacobs is an immigration lawyer who, before his law career, spent over 15 years living and studying in yoga ashrams in the United States and India. He has also studied Buddhist Vipassana meditation for the past 10 years. He now teaches yoga philosophy and meditation through Awakened Heart Yoga LLC (awakenedheartyoga-meditation.com), in Gainesville, FL, and through the Deep Spring Center (deepspring.org), Ann Arbor, MI. He is the author of the spiritual memoir Journey to the Awakened Heart, published in 2018, and Path to the Awakened Heart: the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, published in 2024.
Zusammenfassung
Journey to the Awakened Heart follows Robert Jacobs' travels through Europe, Africa, and Asia in the 1970s as he evolves from a free-spirited, hippie wanderer into a sincere spiritual seeker. Fueled by his desire to become a monk, Jacobs spends fifteen years living in yoga and meditation ashrams under the guidance of his spiritual teachers. While in high school, he began questioning whether God existed and wondered what the purpose of his life was. Later in college, he experienced an emptiness at the core of his being that made his life seem meaningless. Little did he know that this emptiness was close to a deeper inner spaciousness that would leave him feeling profoundly fulfilled.In this detailed and far-reaching memoir, Jacobs shares how his extensive journey eventually brings him on a path he never imagined. He grapples with the forces of fear and of faith and sees, again and again, his experiences reflected back to him as abundance and grace. Ultimately, Jacobs' seeking brings him to the understanding that God, guru, and self are one and that his true calling has always been to simply love and serve.