Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

In the more than twenty-five years since she co-founded Omega Institute - now the world's largest center for spiritual retreat and personal growth -Elizabeth Lesser has been an intimate witness to the ways in which people weather change and transition. In a beautifully crafted blend of moving stories, humorous insights, practical guidance, and personal memoir, she offers tools to help us make the choice we all face in times of challenge: Will we be broken down and defeated, or broken open and transformed? Lesser shares tales of ordinary people who have risen from the ashes of illness, divorce, loss of a job or a loved one - stronger, wiser, and more in touch with their purpose and passion. And she draws on the world's great spiritual and psychological traditions to support us as we too learn to break open and blossom into who we were meant to be.

If we can stay awake when our lives are changing, secrets will be revealed to us secrets about ourselves, about the nature of life, and about the eternal source of happiness and peace that is always available, always renewable, already within us.
ELIZABETH LESSER

During times of transition, amid everyday stress, and even when we face seemingly insurmountable adversity, life offers us a choice: to turn away from change or to embrace it; to shut down or to be broken open and transformed. In the more than twenty-five years since she cofounded the Omega Institute now the world s largest personal-growth and spiritual retreat center Elizabeth Lesser has been an intimate witness to the ways in which human beings deal with change, loss, and difficulty. She herself has struggled to submit to what she calls the Phoenix Process allowing herself to be broken open in order to rise like the mythical bird from the...

Library Journal

Cofounder of the Omega Institute, a retreat and workshop center dedicated to spirituality and health, Lesser (New American Spirituality) combines stories from her own life with those of retreat participants and friends. The focus is on what she terms the phoenix process. This involves learning from losses and difficulties and letting go of old habits and modes of thought. Reminiscent of Rachel Naomi Remen's books (e.g., Kitchen Table Wisdom), the book is gentle in tone without falling into sentimentality and clear without being dogmatic or simplistic. Lesser gives the book more depth by wisely choosing varied examples of loss-divorce, death, career changes, and illnesses-and varied responses. In the end, this is not just another tract on handling grief but an explanation of how to recognize and respond to the losses, big and small, that occur throughout a person's life. Appendixes provide insightful reflections and guides to meditation, psychotherapy, and prayer. Appropriate for public libraries and collections related to spirituality and health.-Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll., NC Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

ELIZABETH LESSER is the co-founder of Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, which offers conferences and workshops attended by twenty thousand people a year. Formerly a midwife, she attended Barnard College and San Francisco State University. The mother of three grown sons, she lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband.