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By Vip Short
A masterwork written in the voice of your most loving, supportive, trusted friend. I have always been wary of those who, claiming to have surveyed the landscape of worldly existence, then insist that they are the one who should be listened to regarding What It's All For. Joel, on the other hand, consistently throws the proposition of the spiritual search back into the lap of the seeker: "But don't take my word for it!" (And he means: anyone's word.) "You go find out!" No guarantees are given other than that if you commit to looking for yourself, long and hard enough in the directions Joel points, you will ultimately know directly and by your own unique route... More > that ineffable Truth which inspires this work.
No less an authority than scholar Huston Smith has termed Joel's book a "spiritual treasure." We are lucky beyond measure to have such clarity and compassion available.
Written in a very accessible vernacular, this book demystifies all but (as Joel says) the "mystery part of mysticism." Readers are taken time and again to their own jumping-off points, and then the work is up to us.
It is extremely good news: lasting happiness, a life beyond any suffering, is possible. It's nothing like you think, but it is attainable. You won't find a better do-it-yourself guide. < Less

"What the World Needs Now"
Is a spiritual teacher who can mix plain speak with comprehensive scholarship. Joel Morwood has said this is the book he wished he had on his search, a search that culminated in a seemingly spontaneous, joyful awakening sometime in 1983 in northwest Washington state, as far as imaginable from his native NYC.

Since then, Joel has been teaching and practicing, sometimes in California and most recently in Oregon. His focus is on the mystics of all the great traditions and their unified field concept of what it is to awaken, to be awakened, to become Buddha mind, to lose the delusion that seems to separate us from our true home.

In his... More > title, The Way of Selflessness, if I understand him, he refers not only to what we might call unselfishness but also to the ultimate fact that there is no self at all and what we've done by making a reality of our local consciousness is to lose our belonging with the absolute reality, that only conscousness itself exists, that only conscousness is real and all forms are part of the dream of seeming.

The book begins at the beginning and takes a comprehensive tour of the awakening process, traveling along in plain speak with quotes from every tradition's mystics, quotations that are triggering of various key and liberating realizations.

I highly recommend the book. Joel vetted his manuscript with practitioners at the Center for Sacred Sciences in Eugene, Oregon for more than a year before letting his manuscript be printed. Those members worked through the manuscript chapter by chapter and after that year, gave suggestions and feedback to their teacher. In turn, he applied their feedback and the book became available to the public.

It's a unique work and a treasure -- even if you don't want to use the practices --because the teachers he quotes are many of history's beloved saints and sages.

He includes mystics and spiritual teachers even from shamanic traditions, Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism along with the ecstatic poets such as Rumi and Kabir.

In this manual for seekers, you will find lessons on meditation and precepts that may be seen as ethical practices as well as techniques for mindfulness to help us gain an objective perception of what it is we think our self is or we are. You will find an understanding of the various approaches to the sacred.

The book is comprehensive and it's beautiful. < Less

"Desert Island Book" This is a great book. If you had only one spiritual how-to-do-it (become wiser, more compassionate, happier, and--if you persist--Enlightened) book you could take to a desert island, you could do no better than to take The Way of Selflessness.

Not only does it contain detailed instructions on how to walk a spiritual path with grace and style, it shows the reader that at the core of all of the world's major religious traditions (and even many of the smaller ones--Native American, e.g.) there exists one core capital T Truth. There's simply no other book I know of that demonstrates this fact so comprehensively.

Written with warmth and personality, this book is imminently accessible and entertaining as well. I can't recommend it enough.