This book is all about stories. The stories that shape our identities and how those identities shape our destinies for better or worse, for good or evil, in humanizing or dehumanizing ways. Working from the Shakespearian metaphor, All the world s a stage and all the men and women merely players, Pellegrini argues that only by understanding how our storied selves develop can we acquire the tools to modify the roles they dictate for us to play on the stage in the theater of real life. The author deconstructs a wide variety of what he calls toxic, dehumanizing, death-oriented self-scripts as well as creative, humanizing, life-oriented narratives of groups as well as individuals. Following the Native American parable of two wolves engaged in mortal combat within us, one good the other evil, the fundamental premise here is that our identity determines which of our inner wolves we feed and thus, which of them will prevail. Pellegrini maintains that what s at stake in this battle between humanity s collective inner wolves, is not just the quality but the very survival of life on earth. From this perspective, as individual and group selves are humanizingly or dehumanizingly narratizedby the way we exercise our God-given free will in the choices we make, so shall life be impacted throughout the world. To advance the cause of detoxifying identities in our global society, the author presents a rationale and program for an international grass roots social movement aimed at achieving a universal sense of belongingness to a global life system. You can watch and listen to a video in which Dr. Bob Pellegrini talks about this book, and why he wrote it, by entering Identities for Life and Death in the search bar at youtube.com.]

Death affects all aspects of life, it touches our emotions and influences our identity. Presenting a kaleidoscope of informative views of death, dying and human response, this book reveals how different disciplines contribute to understanding the theme of death. Drawing together new and established scholars, this is the first book among the studies of emotion that focuses on issues surrounding death, and the first among death studies which focuses on the issue of emotion. Themes explored include: themes of grief in the ties that bind the living and the dead, funerals, public memorials and the art of consolation, obituaries and issues of war and death-row, use of the internet in dying and grieving, what people do with cremated remains, new rituals of spiritual care in medical contexts, themes bounded and expressed through music, and more.

Life after Death Row examines the post-incarceration struggles of individuals who have been wrongly convicted of capital crimes, sentenced to death, and subsequently exonerated. Saundra D. Westervelt and Kimberly J. Cook present eighteen exonerees’ stories, focusing on three central areas: the invisibility of the innocent after release, the complicity of the justice system in that invisibility, and personal trauma management. Contrary to popular belief, exonerees are not automatically compensated by the state or provided adequate assistance in the transition to post-prison life. With no time and little support, many struggle to find homes, financial security, and community. They have limited or obsolete employment skills and difficulty managing such daily tasks as grocery shopping or banking. They struggle to regain independence, self-sufficiency, and identity. Drawing upon research on trauma, recovery, coping, and stigma, the authors weave a nuanced fabric of grief, loss, resilience, hope, and meaning to provide the richest account to date of the struggles faced by people striving to reclaim their lives after years of wrongful incarceration.

Judgments of personal identity stand at the heart of our daily transactions. Family life, friendships, institutions of justice, and systems of compensation all rely on our ability to reidentify people. It is not as obvious as it might at first appear just how to express this relation between facts about personal identity and practical interests in a philosophical account of personal identity. A natural thought is that whatever relation is proposed as the one which constitutes the sameness of a person must be important to us in just the way identity is. This simple understanding of the connection between personal identity and practical concerns has serious difficulties, however. One is that the relations that underlie our practical judgments do not seem suited to providing a metaphysical account of the basic, literal continuation of an entity. Another is that the practical interests we associate with identity are many and varied and it seems impossible that a single relation could simultaneously capture what is necessary and sufficient for all of them. Staying Alive offers a new way of thinking about the relation between personal identity and practical interests which allows us to overcome these difficulties and to offer a view in which the most basic and literal facts about personal identity are inherently connected to practical concerns. This account, the 'Person Life View', sees persons as unified loci of practical interaction, and defines the identity of a person in terms of the unity of a characteristic kind of life made up of dynamic interactions among biological, psychological, and social attributes and functions mediated through social and cultural infrastructure.

A rare, intimate account of a world-renowned Buddhist monk’s near-death experience and the life-changing wisdom he gained from it “One of the most inspiring books I have ever read.”—Pema Chödrön, author of When Things Fall Apart “This book has the potential to change the reader’s life forever.”—George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo At thirty-six years old, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche was a rising star within his generation of Tibetan masters and the respected abbot of three monasteries. Then one night, telling no one, he slipped out of his monastery in India with the intention of spending the next four years on a wandering retreat, following the ancient practice of holy mendicants. His goal was to throw off his titles and roles in order to explore the deepest aspects of his being. He immediately discovered that a lifetime of Buddhist education and practice had not prepared him to deal with dirty fellow travelers or the screeching of a railway car. He found he was too attached to his identity as a monk to remove his robes right away or to sleep on the Varanasi station floor, and instead paid for a bed in a cheap hostel. But when he ran out of money, he began his life as an itinerant beggar in earnest. Soon he became deathly ill from food poisoning—and his journey took a startling turn. His meditation practice had prepared him to face death, and now he had the opportunity to test the strength of his training. In this powerful and unusually candid account of the inner life of a Buddhist master, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche offers us the invaluable lessons he learned from his near-death experience. By sharing with readers the meditation practices that sustain him, he shows us how we can transform our fear of dying into joyful living. Praise for In Love with the World “Vivid, compelling . . . This book is a rarity in spiritual literature: Reading the intimate story of this wise and devoted Buddhist monk directly infuses our own transformational journey with fresh meaning, luminosity, and life.”—Tara Brach, author of Radical Acceptance and True Refuge “In Love with the World is a magnificent story—moving and inspiring, profound and utterly human. It will certainly be a dharma classic.”—Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart “This book makes me think enlightenment is possible.”—Russell Brand

The authors challenge theories that put the body at the centre of identity, going 'beyond the body' to highlight the persistence of self-identity even when the body itself has been disposed of or is missing.