Newsletter December 17, 2019

Some Gratifying 2019 Achievements and My Recommendation If You Want to Give Someone an Exciting New Book

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We have stayed in contact because of a shared enthusiasm for the mix of philosophical, spiritual, scientific and clinical questions around unselfish love and flourishing.

Just a quick update: I recently helped plan and participated in a research project at NYU Langone on positive emotions and spiritual transformation in patients in the U.S. and U.K. after resuscitation, with a follow-up event at the New York Academy of Sciences; I am helping with in the world's first major initiative on the epidemiology of compassion and love involving researchers from Harvard, the University of Virginia, The World Health Organization, Emory, and the like; and I am participating in a national project on approaches to caring for "live alone" individuals with dementia, including national meetings in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and Atlanta under the leadership of Mike Splaine (Splaine Consulting), the country's most important caregiver advocate for over four decades.

I was able to publish an estimated 20 articles in peer-review journals, including a high-profile analysis of adolescent substance abuse and its prevention/treatment based on a community dialogue we convened at the Children's Hospital of Cincinnati several years ago; and an assessment of the effects of kindness on the risk of coronary heart disease in healthy aging women based on data from the Women's Health Initiative. Matt Lee has continued his research on human flourishing and kindness. He serves as Director of Empirical Research in an interdisciplinary program at Harvard University. He is currently wrapping up work as lead editor of an important new book on the interdisciplinary measurement of well-being for Oxford University Press, while also teaching undergraduates at Harvard about integrating the deep wisdom of the humanities and rigorous social science research.

I was able to appear on the cover of Om Times, as well as in O Magazine, and was interviewed in an estimated 20 major national radio venues, including Coast to Coast. The Institute was featured in the April 2019 TIME MAGAZINE Special Edition: The Science of Good & Evil, in the central article "Good Deeds, Good Health, Good Life," which drew on studies that we have sponsored over the years. I was featured for "Family Kindness Day," Cleveland Jewish News 15 March 2019, after a program at the Jewish Community Center as sponsored by the renowned pediatrician Dr. Shelly Sanders. These items can all be found at our website, StephenGPost.com

We were able to launch a new website for highs school juniors and seniors allowing them to compete annually for $1200 national essay prizes on the benefits they have experienced through living by the Golden Rule and love of neighbor. The website and details can be viewed at LoveAllMeansAll.org. Thanks for helping!

Really nice news is that I will be finishing up a new book on caregiving and dementia with the Johns Hopkins University Press.

And in September I was able to publish a non-medical book on my own time with Mango Publications. This book, which is about synchronicity, has been heralded at the Number 1 new release on mysticism with Amazon. It bears the title God and Love on Route 80: The Hidden Mystery of Human Connectedness. This is a topic I have been writing about since my boyhood at St. Paul's School in New Hampshire, and even spoke about for a class on adolescent spirituality at Yale University Divinity School at age 16. It has a nice "foreword" by Dr. Larry Dossey, and a great endorsement from Dr. Deepak Chopra. So if you are looking for a holiday gift that tells the story of a boy who hitched across the United States on Route 80 at a very young age and saved a suicidal teenager about to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, this is your book. It is also how I got started in life.

God and Love on Route 80 weaves together thirteen episodes of synchronicity from Post's journey to demonstrate the power of human connectedness and the value in being open and hopeful to surprises. It's a book that fits in the long tradition of successful metaphysical titles like The Teachings of Don Juan, Be Here Now, The Secret, The Power of Now, and Loving What Is, but by a highly regarded researcher whose work has been praised by his peers and popular readers alike.

Endorsements for God and Love on Route 80

"Sometimes things happen that reveal an apparent pattern, plan, and meaning to the workings of the world. When this revelation occurs, it's as if the Universe winks at us as if to say, 'Now you're in on the secret!' The 'secret' is the realization that an infinite, unitary intelligence pervades everything-- what author Stephen G. Post calls IM for Infinite Mind. And that's why God and Love on Route 80 is a poke in the eye of materialism, the numbing ideology that all happenings conform to the so-called blind, meaningless laws of nature. Post's "journey west" is a coming-of-age metaphor for the discovery of ancient truths: that Consciousness is primary, that Mind was "here first," and that love is a kind of metaphysical glue that holds things together and provides a delightful fizz to the whole show. God and Love on Rt. 80 is more than an enchanting, beautiful book; it indicates the kind of awareness that is required if we are to survive the challenges we face as a species-- the awareness of our connectivity and unity with all else, the knowledge that our world is sacred, holy, and worth saving. Thank you, Stephen, for reminding us of this essential truth."

-- Larry Dossey, M.D., author of One Mind: How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters

"Stephen G. Post in this highly readable and deeply profound book shares his journey to that which is whole, holy, and healed in all of us. Beyond the secret passages, the dark alleys and ghost filled attics of our individual conditioned and separate minds there is a single infinite boundless awareness that differentiates into all observers, all modes of observation and all objects observed. We can call it Ein Sof, Brahman, Nonlocal mind, God, Allah or the Self. Transcendence to this domain is the experience of absolute love and spontaneous creativity, intuition, insight, and higher vision."

-- Deepak Chopra, M.D., author of You Are the Universe: Discovering Your Cosmic Self and Why It Matters and Synchrodestiny: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence to Create Miracles

"You must be ready when you open this book. It's a microburst of searching faith in a God of Love (be alert for the "blue angel") and a spiritual and intellectual stance that everything in the universe-- you, me, crickets, galaxies, microbes, stars, life, death-- is connected. For the author who shares his awakening with us, the "blue angel" offers him not only comfort but the bracing challenge to love others with a generous heart way beyond self-aggrandizement. Or, simply put, as God loves. It takes a large and open heart to take in the invitation to faith of this vocation story. I'm more alive and alert now for having read it."

-- Sister Helen Prejean, Author of Dead Man Walking and a soon-to-be-published memoir, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey (Random House August 13, 2019)

"I have known Stephen Post since he was 15, and I was his house mother at boarding school in at St. Paul's in New Hampshire. At that time he was taking courses with my then husband, Rev. Rod Welles, and talking about a dream, synchronicity, infinite Mind, and things Emersonian. Even then he clearly marched to another drummer, and had a mirthful wisdom beyond his years. It never surprised me that he went west on Rt. 80. I always learn something from his books, and I am reminded of how we are meant to live in faith. God and Love on Route 80 is the book he sometimes spoke about writing when the time was right. To open this you have to be open to surprises."

-- Julia Norman, Stephen's house mother at St. Paul's School, from Vineyard Haven, MA

"In this fascinating and moving spiritual adventure story, which I was honored to help edit, a boy follows a dream...and it leads him on a journey of amazing encounters that reveal deep truths about the nature of the universe and the power of unlimited love. It also opens a path to a life of extraordinary creativity and achievement. Rarely has a book so vividly captured the ways in which the human mind is connected with the divine, and how through synchronicity we can be guided and supported by a presence in the universe that is greater than ourselves. Here is inspiration for anyone seeking the courage to live their dream-- 'because,' as Post reminds us, 'if you don't you will always wonder what you might have discovered if you had.'"

-- Ann Kathleen Bradley, Writer and Alumna, Harvard Divinity School and Union Theological Seminary

Stephen G. Post, PhD

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