“The global village can be sold Coke and Nike, but absolute truth is a bit trickier. It is too easy to switch channels to some other absolute truth. Or the made-for-TV absolute truth.” –from the book
$14.95
207 pages
softcover
ISBN 1-59181-006-x
Sentient Publications
A penetrating and wide-ranging journey through contemporary spirituality, meditation technology and post-modern culture, Getting to Where You Are challenges the very basis of contemporary spirituality and the consumer society that created it.
Harrison’s book, Doing Nothing, which Utne Reader called “a caustic exploration of our psychospiritual obsessions” established him as one of the most insightful — and provocative — writers in the arena of spiritual inquiry. Yoga Journal characterized Harrison’s voice as “uncompromising honesty” and New Age Journal calls his writing “persuasive.”
Getting to Where You Are is a far reaching investigation of our ideas about life and our spirituality, in which Harrison challenges the notions of enlightenment as a way to happiness, zero-coupon bonds as the way to security and Stephen Hawking as the final arbiter of scientific reality.
What does all of this have to do with meditation? Everything. Because meditation is about everything. Harrison suggests that the only meditation which does not produce more mind clutter than it removes is the one which we are all doing already — the active exploration of life –as it is — free from the restraints of doctrine, religious belief, and technique-oriented practices…aAnd free from the embedded conceptual framework of our culture.
Getting To Where You Are explores what meditation actually is and, more important, what it is not and how it got that way. In a series of interlinked essays, filled with humor and insight, Harrison investigates the fabric of life as the very expression of our spirituality.
If CNN covers the breaking news live and no one is there to watch it, is it still news?
What if God spoke to us and directed us not to believe in God? What is awareness anyway, and why is it so hip?
If we are unhappy and create a feeling of love through our practice, are we what we feel or what we don’t feel?
What do enlightened beings do with their free time? What is actuality, actually?
This one-of-a-kind spirituality book invites us all along for the ride, the twist and turns and the final collision with life itself.
What others have to say about Getting to Where You Are
“Harrison is a truth teller.”
—Stephen Levine, author of Who Dies?
“Harrison shows us a radical approach to wholeness, daring us to try authentic living as our natural spirituality.”
—Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, professor, Naropa University
“A bold and challenging examination of spiritual assumptions that leaves the reader appreciating life itself as the only spiritual journey worthy of its name.”
—Catherine Ingram, author of Passionate Presence
“I love this book. It’s simple, direct, clear, and refreshingly honest. It goes right to the root, challenging us to leave all props behind, and to be here now, where we actually are. Steven Harrison is one of the deepest and most interesting people around in the spiritual (or post-spiritual) world today.”
—Joan Tollifson, author of Bare-Bones Meditation
“With undeniable clarity, Steven Harrison demonstrates that to be intimate with our limitations is to actualize the limitless in our everyday lives.”
—Paul Rezendes, author of The Wild Within
“Getting to Where You Are takes us on a challenging ride through the pitfalls of contemporary spiritual life. But that’s only half the tale. With humor, lively stories, and experiments we can all do, Steven Harrison leads us home. This is a book to be revisited frequently, and the last “meditation book” you’ll ever need.”
—David Kundtz, author of Stopping: How to Be Still When You Have to Keep Going
“Has the flowering of the postmodern cultures of meditation unwittingly come to serve the very lifeways of consumerism? This is what Steven Harrison tells us in his own inimitable style. Practicing the actuality of the moment is so obvious that many of us would do anything to avoid it. But having called our bluff, he relents and opens the way to that practice. A very unusual book!”
—Elise Boulding, author of Cultures of Peace: The Hidden Side of History
International Editions
- Dutch (Je bent al een meditatiemeester) – Servire. To order click here.
- German (Sei wo du bist) – Editions Spuren, Rudolfstrasse 13, CH-8400 Winterthur, Switzerland. To order from Amazon.de click here.
- India – To order the English edition published in India, visit New Age Books.
- Portuguese (Chegando aonde voce esta) – Editora Teosofica
- Russian – Sophia Publishing House, 160 Frunze str., 160, Kiev, Ukraine
- Swedish – Svenska Forlaget, Box 3313, 103 66, Stockholm, Sweden
- Turkish – Dharma Books
