“I” ON LIFE
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Having mistaken my journey for the purpose at many times of my life, I imagined resting and spending that life in the comfortable embrace of my lovers at those moments, building a home life together and growing old together. That was not to be. My schooling required an accelerated path of love and loss and love reclaimed. And in truth, the challenges of those moments of lost love did in hindsight reveal their riches. It enabled my growth in awareness and spirit. It deepened my understanding and my compassion. It brought me love of self. I began to strive in new ways to become all that I am. One of the greatest difficulties in spiritual growth and awareness is accepting the manifest diversity and variety in human behavior, an experience that also includes the most base of human depravities and inhuman degradations. Man's inhumanity to his fellow man is legendary and ongoing. The evil that we see perpetuated is fodder in some form or other for almost every daily newspaper headline from across the globe. Atrocities may be individual and local, or state sponsored and genocidal. They can be committed by your neighbor just as easily as by some foreign dictator. A man living in Cleveland, Ohio kidnapped three women over a two year period, imprisoning and torturing them for roughly a decade. Charged with kidnapping, rape, assault, attempted murder, and aggravated murder, he was sentenced to life in prison plus one-thousand years with no chance of parole. Contemporaneous with the news of this local atrocity were reports from Syria of genocidal massacres of villages, rape of detainees, and torture by the dictatorial al-Assad regime. When, where, or should we, as individuals or democratic states intervene in the affairs of others? If all is held in the embrace of the eternal love of All-That-Is, then do we just give it up to God? If someone or something cries out for justice, at what point do we answer the call? The simple answer is that each follows his heart. If the heart says you must enter the fray, you enter. If the heart says "no", then you don’t. To the extent that one may lead a state, then usually the machinery of state will follow the leader’s decision. To this toxic mixture of sociopathic neighbors and genocidal world leaders, add the personal travails of illness, death of loved ones, and other personal tragedy. Life, then, can seem incomprehensibly chaotic, dangerous, and quite godless. A life of seeming struggles, cloaked by its apparent confusions, obscures true purpose and hides true meaning, Moreover, any of these events can occur in the blink of an eye. Happiness can be upended in an instant. Being fired from a job or abandoned by a lover can be instantaneous and potent personal challenges. A sudden stroke in the midst of perfect health can strike like a bolt of lightning. The unexpected suicide of a loved one can blindside a family. A lone gunman in a school wreaks havoc in a city. A cataclysmic terrorist attack alters the life of a nation. Any of these events can impose the sudden onslaught of herculean upheaval to one's life or way of life.
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About the Book
(New York, NY) Dr. Howard Scheiner invites you to share his "I" ON LIFE, as he continues his highly personal journey of life and spirit. He offers his readers a distinctive, and even greater, understanding of universal truth as he enlarges his vision for happiness and a joy-filled life. Moving further than his last book, REAWEKENING, he adds new perspective and perceptions to self-awareness. Filled with enlightenment and wisdom, it is offered from the same point of intersection of science and spirituality called "belief". Through examples of his own life, readers are again given understanding and insight into their own personal journeys. A successful Manhattan physician, Scheiner awakes each day happy to be alive, feeling blessed with the joys and sorrows of his life, joyfully connected to All-That-Is and thoroughly savoring his singular journey. "How can the heart soar in the midst of personal struggles and a world in crisis? How can one savor blissful delight when emotional or physical pain takes hold? The answer is easy to state: when one recognizes that the struggles are only illusory and that apparent crisis is a perfect backdrop that offers opportunities for learning and growth; pain is a teaching, and we designed the course... The seemingly impossible task is to take the answer and believe it to be true." While most everyone has dissatisfactions, not everyone questions, nor recognizes that there must be a better way. He invites investment in a spiritual toolbox and offers his tools to do just this. He again bares his soul with a highly personal and sometimes humorous and often shocking "I" ON LIFE, enlarging his interpretation regarding the concept of "God/Universe".
About the Author
Howard Lawrence Scheiner was born to modest beginnings and raised with love in New York City. A graduate of The Mount Sinai School of Medicine, he feels privileged to practice medicine. He shares a busy practice in Manhattan with his medical partner of thirty-plus years, specializing in Internal Medicine and HIV Medicine. Through a close association as a major donor to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, he has had the opportunity to appear on stage in many Broadway and Off-Broadway shows. His own Off-Broadway play, '"And the stars were shining…",' which he wrote, directed, and produced was performed at the Jose Quintero theater, in 2002. A life-long love of music and a bit of inexplicable inspiration can be found in his "Genesis Sonata" for piano which had its public debut in 2009. (He happily shares it on youtube.com) Since then, many other piano compositions have followed. Combining many loves, he founded "The Brent Varner Project, Inc.," a charity that provides free HIV services to those in need through The Actors Fund of America. He remains bound to the city of his birth, residing in Manhattan with Coco the Toy Poodle, Nero the Maltese, Roman, father of Nero, as well as Bobby and Michael, his roommates. Of note, he awakes each day happy to be alive, feeling blessed with all the joys and sorrows of his life, joyfully connected to All-That-Is and thoroughly savoring his singular journey.