title: The Experience of No-Self: A Contemplative Journey, Revised Edition
author:  Bernadette Roberts 
description: One of the most significant spiritual books of our day. One of the best books on this subject since St. John of the Cross. An amazing book, it clarifies the higher regions of the spiritual path.  Father Thomas Keating<br /><br />Within the traditional framework, the Christian notion of loss-of-self is generally regarded as the transformation or loss of the ego (lower self) as it attains to the higher or true self in its union with God. Thus, because self at its deepest center is a run-on with the divine, I had never found any true self apart from God, for to find the One is to find the other.<br /><br />Because this was the limit of my expectations, I was all the more surprised and bewildered when many years later I came upon a permanent state in which there was no self, no higher self, true self, or anything that could be called a self. Clearly, I had fallen outside my own, as well as the traditional frame of reference, when I came upon a path that seemed to begin where the writers on the contemplative life had left off. But with the clear certitude of the selfs disappearance, there automatically arose the question of what had fallen awaywhat was the self? What, exactly, had it been? Then too, there was the all-important question: what remained in its absence? This journey was the gradual revelation of the answers to these questions, answers that had to be derived solely from personal experience since no outside explanation was forthcoming.<br /><br />I must re-emphasize that the following experiences do not belong to the first contemplative movement or the souls establishment in a state of union with God. I have written elsewhere of this first journey and feel that enough has been said of it already, since this movement is inevitably the exclusive concern of contemplative writers. Thus it is only where these writers leave off that I propose to begin. Here now, begins the journey beyond union, beyond self and God, a journey into the silent and still regions of the Unknown.  Bernadette Roberts, from the Introduction
zlib_text: “Drawing on psychological research and clinical experience, Kate 
  Gustin offers a profound understanding of our truest identity under-
  neath the mind’s story, helping us connect with the peaceful, inter-
  connected consciousness at our core. The No-Self Help Book is a 
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  —Marci Shimoff, #1 New York Times bestselling  
  author of Happy for No Reason
  “Kate Gustin’s The No-Self Help Book is a new approach to emo-
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  authentic being within each of us who is capable of relaxed joy and 
  awareness.”
  —Anne Lamott, author of Almost Everything
  “If you were to try to define yourself, how would yo