Conscious Love: Insights From Mystical Christianity

"Whether he is talking about the heart or the duty embedded in one's deepest self, the complexities of male and female love, social justice, or love of family and kin, Richard Smoley has served up a literary banquet of the myriad ways love is made manifest in life, and in so doing he deepens our own capacity to love and be loved. Anyone seeking to follow the eternal thread of love down through the centuries needs to read this book."
--Michael A. Toms

cofounder, New Dimensions Media; author, A Time for Choices; and coauthor, True Work

"A wise, provocative, and deeply informed take on humanity's messiest emotion. Drawing from science, literature, and the esoteric Christian lore he articulates so well, Richard Smoley encourages us to put away childish things in order to clear the ground for a love both realistic and transcendent. Conscious Love is the sort of spiritual writing we need: grounded and unsentimental but evocative and spiky enough to wake us up."
--Erik Davis

author, The Visionary State: A Journey Through California's Spiritual Landscape

"Richard Smoley proves once again that he is one of the liveliest, most intrepid, and most gifted explorers of the spiritual landscape writing today. Like any book worthy of the topic, Conscious Love is by turns exciting, surprising, and sometimes even shocking. But Smoley's warmth, humor, and ever-present intelligence are such that he is a joy to read even when one is disagreeing with him."
--Ptolemy Tompkins

author, Paradise Fever; senior editor, Guideposts and Angels on Earth magazines

"In Conscious Love, Richard Smoley does a masterful job of distinguishing between the real dealwhen it comes to love and everything else. The result is as enjoyable as it is enlightening. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is ready to take the big step to spiritual adulthood."
--Gary Renard

author, The Disappearance of the Universe and Your Immortal Reality

Though love is a perennial topic for writers of all kinds, much of what is written aboutlove is simplistic and unsatisfying. In "Conscious Love," Richard Smoley--an expert on the esoteric traditions of mystical Christianity--incorporates insights and wisdom about love from noted thinkers in literature, art, philosophy, sociology, cultural criticism, and even neurology. This remarkable book offers a blueprint for infusing conscious love into human relationships.