Today's Thought (Kurt Bruder, PhD Hay House Author)

Kurt Bruder PhD: Following Sound Into Silence

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Hay House Publishing shares about Kurt's book:
"In Following Sound into Silence, Kailash (Kurt A. Bruder, Ph.D., M.Ed.) urges us to take up chanting as an authentic and effective spiritual practice. Although this is an ancient spiritual tool, it's well suited to our contemporary lifestyle. No generation before us has had to contend with the onslaught of voices clamoring for our attention, the chaos of distractions vying for our imagination and allegiance, or the flood of information that is our daily lot. Kailash shows how chanting-both alone and with others-can quiet and stabilize our mind, expand our heart, elevate our emotion, and reduce our self-centeredness . . . yielding a direct, sustained experience of the Divine.

"Accompanied by a CD featuring Kailash's extraordinary chanting, this work demonstrates the potency of this practice in a presentation that's as profoundly moving as it is eminently practical. You'll understand why people across the centuries and around the world have employed chanting as their principal resource for cultivating well-being, personal transformation, and spiritual evolution."

About Kurt:
Kailash worked in higher education for many years (as Dr. Kurt A. Bruder; Ph.D, The University of Texas at Austin, Communication, 1994; M.Ed, Texas Tech University, Counselor Education, 1998), but is now devoting all of his energies to leading chant and spiritual teaching.

In his scholarly work, Kailash investigated a variety of topics dealing with the subject of the human sense of self, one's response to the question, "Who am I?" This issue has always been a central concern across the world's Wisdom Traditions, which recognize that the concept of our separation from one another, and all things, fuels our suffering. Finding a practical solution to human egotism is the perennial preoccupation of spiritual communities throughout history.

For many years, Kailash has explored the communication, beliefs, practices, and experiences of people in a wide variety of religious traditions. He integrates these insights into his personal life, spiritual path, musical performance, and ongoing research, in the hope of offering valuable means of moving beyond our obsessive self-concern into a stable, integrated condition of happiness and well being.

Kailash lives with his beloved wife, Jaishree, and their sons, Bodhi Shankara (b. June, 2006) and Maitreya Aumkara (ETA: March, 2008), in Fletcher, North Carolina (just south of Asheville).

Some proposed questions for Kailash:

 

1. Could you begin by sharing your academic background including your professional work background relative to how it all comes together, in the way all comes together?

2. What sparked and maintained your interest in these areas of study as you delved deeper academically?

3. I really appreciate social intercourse with those who make serious and fun business mindful living, and consequently the quality of social intercourse is dynamically enhanced when those involved take time sort out what is meaningful. During your life when did you understand the importance of paying attention to your response to life circumstances and then begin the process by, perhaps, asking a question?

3. What are the important questions and observation you use to delve deeper into your own experience? Were you successful in correlating your educational pursuit with your spiritual pursuit in the moment of now or were your experiences of enlightened occurring in tandem to discovering unique perspectives?

4. Were you always spiritual in the way you express and as a perspective in learning and creating?  What nuances from earth-culture will people enjoy as a dynamic in your creativity? Do you play any instruments in accompaniment and if so, what are they?

5. What is chant technically and what does it do? For the sake of unfolding this topic, how did this practice originate and also how have various cultures used similar expressions even in religious practices that we know of today?

6. In your site you declare that throughout time the human experience we share is unique to our contemporary world due to information and media vying competitively with our inner dialogue. Why do our human institutions compete so severely with our inner dialogue that is to say, is there is conspiracy to usurp and redirect and steal my cosmic ergs? Why do you introduce the idea of chant in context to information overload and mental distraction?

7. I enjoy spiritual practices, through which I create opportunities to honor life. Does chanting facilitate that objective and if so, how?

8. There are rich and meaningful activities we hold in reverence. If historically we spontaneously access the divine and frequently so, we call them traditions and sometimes sacraments and then there are ceremonies we construct when we understand how these activities impact our physical world in real terms in order to establish intent and honor its original purpose. I have an off topic question that I feel I should ask: What is a sacrament and why do we use them? What kind of perspective does chant offer, so that we put experience and spiritual perspective in practical context to the other?

9. You have a book entitled Following Sound Into Silence...chanting your way beyond ego into bliss. In the literal sense, if I may suggest, Why follow sound into silence, and are you suggesting the ego is necessary to experience bliss?

10. In retrospect how does your academic and career background make enhance your objective to facilitate chant and spiritual teaching? How do spiritual teaching and chant work hand-in-hand?

11. How long have you been affiliated the with the publishing House called Hay House and how did you cross paths with this energy field?

12. Do you have a daily practice for honoring your life experience from the divine perspective?

13. Are you fulfilling your higher purpose?

14. Please share words of wisdom helpful in finding your path, becoming the path and benefiting the world....

About Kailash's Book, Following Sound into Silence:

In Following Sound into Silence: Chanting Your Way Beyond Ego into Bliss (Hay House Publishers, January, 2008), Kailash urges readers to take up chanting as an authentic and effective spiritual practice... Read More

Stay tuned to share a rapport over the sacred power of chant and sound to empower the temple of your own familiar!

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