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WORK TITLE: Ordinary Goodness
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://edblogword.blogspot.com/
CITY: Santa Rosa
STATE: CA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.cslsr.org/education/education-ministry-teachers/159-edward-viljoen * https://www.amazon.com/Edward-Viljoen/e/B00E7HB04W?tag=vglnkc4391-20 * http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/232407/edward-viljoen * http://newspiritjournalonline.com/ordinary-goodness/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2005064637
Descriptive conventions:
rda
Personal name heading:
Viljoen, Edward
Found in: Seeing good at work, c2004: t.p. (Rev. Dr. Edward Viljoen)
p. 116 (sr. minister at the Santa Rosa Church of
Religious Science)
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PERSONAL
Born in South Africa.
EDUCATION:Centers for Spiritual Living, doctor of divinity.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, minister. Center for Spiritual Living, Santa Rosa, CA, Senior Minister, 1995–.
AVOCATIONS:Writing, kindness, essential oils, traveling, reading.
AWARDS:Ernest Holmes Award, United Centers for Spiritual Living; Nautilus Award, 2014, for The Power of Meditation: An Ancient Technique to Access your Inner Power.
RELIGION: Centers for Spiritual LivingWRITINGS
Also author of the e-book pamphlets, Science of Mind and Spirit for Beginners: Four Chapters in Simplified Prose, Newt List (New York, NY(, 2012), and The Bhagavad Gita For Beginners: The Song Of God In Simplified Prose, Newt List (New York, NY), 2013.
SIDELIGHTS
South African by birth, Edward Viljoen is the senior minister at the Center for Spiritual Living in Santa Rosa, CA. As a religious denomination, the Center for Spiritual Living has hundreds of local centers around the globe which promote the practice of Religious Science, the belief in the power of the mind for both healing and a sense of fulfillment in life. Religious Science, in turn, was founded by Ernest Holmes in 1949 and is based largely on Holmes’s book, The Science of Mind. According to the Center for Spiritual Living Website, Viljoen was inspired to the ministry after reading a book about the science of mind on a flight from South Africa to the United States. Viljoen has written a number of books on spiritual and mindfulness topics, including Seeing Good at Work: 52 Weekly Steps to Transform Your Workplace Experience, The Power of Meditation: An Ancient Technique to Access your Inner Power, and his 2017 work, Ordinary Goodness: The Surprisingly Effortless Path to Creating a Life of Meaning and Beauty.
Seeing Good at Work and The Power of Meditation
Originally published in 2004, Seeing Good at Work is a collaborative effort between Viljoen and Joy Duffala. The book is a how-to guide to transforming life at the workplace. The authors offer fifty-two weekly steps to accomplish this, all with the underlying assumption that if one looks for good, one will find it. The exercises thus focus on searching for good in oneself, in others, and in the world around you. These lessons help people avoid depression and possible crises at work.
The Power of Meditation is a guide to mindfulness practices, sitting practices, and creative practices, all with the goal of creating a peaceful, calm, and enlightened lifestyle.
Ordinary Goodness
In Ordinary Goodness, Viljoen contends that people can create a life of happiness and goodness by simply performing everyday acts of kindness and compassion. The author provides personal stories from his own life as well as tips and exercises. He divides the work into five parts: “Ordinary Goodness,” “Ordinary Kindness,” “Ordinary Compassion,” “Ordinary Faith,” and “Finding Faith.” According to Viljoen, goodness is something that is already in each of us, just waiting for the right situation to fully show itself. But if stifled, the goodness in us can take worrying forms.
Reviewing Ordinary Goodness in Booklist, Christine Engel noted that it “genuinely seeks to encourage a mind-set of caring, an effort to see the basic goodness of the world and spread that goodness to others.” A Publishers Weekly contributor also had praise, noting: “The student following this path will be neither social activist nor cloistered religious, but an everyday person making daily conscious small choices to live from goodness.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, December 1, 2016, Christine Engel, review of Ordinary Goodness: The Surprisingly Effortless Path to Creating A Life of Meaning and Beauty, p. 4.
Publishers Weekly, November 14, 2016, review of Ordinary Goodness, p. 49.
ONLINE
Center for Spiritual Living Website, http://www.cslsr.org/ (July 24, 2017), “Edward Viljoen.”
Penguin Random House Website, http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ (July 24, 2017), “Edward Viljoen.”
Read Brightly, http://www.readbrightly.com/ (July 24, 2017), “Edward Viljoen.”*
Dr. Edward graduated as a Sonoma County Law Enforcement Chaplain in April 1999, received a Doctorate of Divinity from Centers for Spiritual Living and was awarded the much-respected Ernest Holmes Award for exemplary demonstration of the teachings of Dr. Ernest Holmes.
Among his passions as a minister is helping other ministers and has served the Ongoing Ministers Education Conference for 10 years. Other passions include music, cats, essential oils, science fiction and leading people on tours to places in the world to experience new cultures and new ways of understanding the Divine.
Edward Viljoen is the author of Ordinary Goodness and the Senior Minister at the Center for Spiritual Living in Santa Rosa, CA.
Edward Viljoen (pronounced full-YOON) is the Senior Minister at Center for Spiritual Living in Santa Rosa, CA. He is the author of the Kindle books The Bhagavad-Gita for Beginners, The Science of Mind and Spirit for Beginners, and co-author (with Chris Michaels) of Spirit is Calling, and Practice the Presence, and co-author (with Joyce Duffala) of Seeing Good At Work. He lives in California.
Rev. Dr. Edward Viljoen discovered Science of Mind while reading a book on a flight from his native South Africa to the United States. Upon arriving, he searched for the nearest Religious Science Church and immediately enrolled in the available classes.
During his training as a Practitioner and then minister, he served in the World Ministry of Prayer and trained volunteers to staff the prayer lines. He was the author of the Ernest Holmes Study Guide in the Science of Mind magazine for many years. He was ordained in May 1996 and graduated as a Sonoma County Law Enforcement Chaplain in April 1999. In 2003, he was awarded an honorary Doctoral Degree in Divinity from Holmes Institute. He served as chairperson of the team responsible for guiding the Religious Science movement through its organizational restructuring. He has been senior minister of the Center for Spiritual Living, Santa Rosa since 1995.
About
Suggest Edits
FIND US
2075 Occidental Rd
Santa Rosa, California
Call (707) 546-4543 Ext 102
INTERESTS
Favorite Books
Dune, Loving What Is, Bhagavad-Gita, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Hinduism, Revelation Space
Personal Interests
Writing, Kindness, Essential Oils, Traveling, Reading
ADDITIONAL CONTACT INFO
edward@cslsr.org
http://www.edblogword.blogspot.com
edwardviljoen
MORE INFO
Affiliation
Sonoma County Law Enforcement Chaplaincy, Centers For Spiritual Living
About
Author of The Power of Meditation: An Ancient Technique to Access your Inner Power & the Bhagavad-Gita for Beginners: The Song of God in Simplified Prose
Biography
Rev. Dr. Edward Viljoen discovered Science of Mind while reading a book on a flight from his native South Africa to the United States. Upon arriving, he searche... See More
Awards
Doctor of Divinity, Holmes Institute
Ernest Holmes Award, United Centers for Spiritual Living
Gender
Male
Personal Information
Capricorn
categories
Professional Service · Personal Coach
STORY
On January 3, 2017, the day before my birthday, my new book is coming out, Ordinary Goodness, which is about the Goodness, Kindness, and Compassion my grandmother taught me, and how that brought me to an experience of faith in humanity.
~ Ordinary Goodness, The Surprisingly Effortless Path to Creating a Life of Meaning and Beauty
***
In the Bhagavad-Gita, one of the most beautiful spiritual texts ever written, the central figure asks God about issues as compelling today as they were thousands of years ago. In “Bhagavad Gita for Beginners: The Song of God in Simplified Prose,” author Edward Viljoen uses contemporary, simplified language to bring this inspiring work to life.
That which seems to be forcing people to act in selfish--even evil--ways is really the accumulation of desires coming together in a strong, irresistible appetite for self-satisfaction. These desires are rooted in the senses, and sense information can be misleading. More powerful than the senses, though, is the mind. And more powerful than the mind is the will (or intellect), and that which is above it all,--the Real Self, that part of us not deluded by the information of the sense world.
The Bhagavad Gita For Beginners: The Song Of God In Simplified Prose will inspire uninitiated readers of the Bhagavad-Gita to delve into the original text, as well as bring a newly-found clarity and perspective to those already familiar with it.
QUOTE:
book genuinely seeks to encourage a mind-set of caring, an effort to see the basic goodness of the world and spread that goodness to others
Ordinary Goodness: The Surprisingly Effortless Path to Creating A Life of Meaning and Beauty
Christine Engel
113.7 (Dec. 1, 2016): p4.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Ordinary Goodness: The Surprisingly Effortless Path to Creating A Life of Meaning and Beauty. By Edward Viljoen. Jan. 2017. 240p. TarcherPerigee, paper, $16 (9780399183911). 204.
In a world full of badness, how can human beings strip away the noise to live a life of simple goodness? That's the question the author asks in this exploration of kindness and goodness. Stories of his experience meeting goodness and its opposite--the listening skills of his grandmother, a moment of unkindness toward a stranger--pepper this wide-ranging contemplation of how to find, and practice, basic goodness in a complicated world. The author draws on a number of faith traditions, seeking to mine what is most effective at cultivating kindness. Each chapter also includes suggestions for practicing ways of showing more kindness, such as meditation or even taking the time to articulate what the reader believes. Though not effortless, as the subtitle claims, the book genuinely seeks to encourage a mind-set of caring, an effort to see the basic goodness of the world and spread that goodness to others. --Christine Engel
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Engel, Christine. "Ordinary Goodness: The Surprisingly Effortless Path to Creating A Life of Meaning and Beauty." Booklist, 1 Dec. 2016, p. 4. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA474715437&it=r&asid=a8571aab47d1629e995b9ee833c1fb07. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A474715437
QUOTE:
The student following this path will be neither social activist nor cloistered religious, but an everyday person making daily conscious small choices to live from goodness.
Ordinary Goodness: The Surprisingly Effortless Path to Creating a Life of Meaning and Beauty
263.46 (Nov. 14, 2016): p49.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
* Ordinary Goodness: The Surprisingly Effortless Path to Creating a Life of Meaning and Beauty
Edward Viljoen. TarcherPerigee, $16 trade paper (240p) ISBN 978-0-399-18391-1
Nondenominational minister Viljoen (The Power of Meditation) brings an appealing, thoughtful calm to his exploration of the idea that Meister Eckhart expresses as "the light in the soul." Viljoen advocates for "ordinary goodness," something basic and natural that exists in all of us and is always accessible to us. He invites the reader to slow down, observe, and exercise practices of kindness, mindfulness, compassion, integrity, patience, and faith until they become "a welcome guest in us." Viljoen's phrasings of this centuries-old idea, supported by a mix of personal stories of his South African childhood and quotations broadly chosen from ancient and modern religious and non-religious texts, resonate in a way that feels modern but not trendy. Not so much a program as a collection of love-affirming reminders, Viljoen's approach celebrates being fully present in the world, complete with its pain and grief, maintaining a belief in the essential goodness of humanity without glibly looking for a "disguised blessing." The student following this path will be neither social activist nor cloistered religious, but an everyday person making daily conscious small choices to live from goodness. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Ordinary Goodness: The Surprisingly Effortless Path to Creating a Life of Meaning and Beauty." Publishers Weekly, 14 Nov. 2016, p. 49. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA473459038&it=r&asid=66367cc4102ad366ad2fc0227e34efd2. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A473459038