SEEING INTO THE LIFE OF THINGS. BOOK LAUNCH

Rodger Kamenetz’s new book, Seeing Into the Life of Things: Imagination and the Sacred Encounter, addresses the problem of reactivity. These afflictive states of mind are at the root of our personal suffering: envy, resentment, rage, anxiety—difficult and unpleasant mind states that drive us crazy until we feel our own lives are not our own.

These afflictive states are deliberately encouraged by algorithms on our social media and they are also being heated up by a politics of insult and acrimony that is relentlessly present in our lives.

How do we get out of this predicament? How can we maintain our sanity and resilience when we are constantly encouraged to be reactive? Years ago, at the meeting recounted in The Jew in the Lotus, Rodger heard the Dalai Lama ask Jewish spiritual leaders a question: what are your practices for purifying afflictive states of mind?

This is the question at the root of this new book.

Seeing Into the Life of Things proposes that the answer comes from cultivating imagination—the poetic power in each of us—to slow down, to savor, to feel into images, whether in memory, in dreams, or in perception. This leads to greater connectivity—in fact the root of the word “empathy” is a translation of the German for “feeling into.” By feeling into images of both things and people, we become more connected and empathetic.

Kamenetz offers both a theoretical framework and basic practices. His work is rooted in contemplative practices from the world’s religions, and a natural path, as charted by the introspective psychologists and their poetic forerunner, William Wordsworth who devoted his autobiographical poem “The Prelude” to examining the growth of an imaginative mind.

The book gathers and fulfills the promise of all of Kamenetz’s work in poetry and prose,. But it also arises from twenty years of working with dreams in a process he calls Natural Dreamwork. He is essentially suggesting how we might learn to live a more poetic life by embracing the richness of our mental images.

Embedded in a rich poetic narrative, Seeing to the Life of Things offers down to earth practices from “count your blessings” to savoring perception, from dwelling on powerful memories to the sacred encounters in dreams. Kamenetz shows how giving birth to our images restores us to an imagination of the sacred.

Kamenetz’s work has been featured on NPR, on Oprah Winfrey’s XM Radio Soul Series, and in the New York Times. He is a winner of the National Jewish Book Award. Professor Emeritus of English and Religious Studies at LSU, he is the author of sixteen books of poetry and prose.

You can order a signed copy of the book in advance  here

Be sure to specify “SIGNED COPY” in the comments section of the order.