Overview

"Takara delivers an inspiring parapsychological philosophy readers will want to share with others. We all struggle to overcome life's inevitable sufferings. Answering that challenge, Takara paves creative paths to transformational self-actualization. Flying across time and space, swimming through instructive deserts and gratefully quenching our souls at oases, we can unite with one another and with every entity in our beloved universe. In Footprints Wings Phantasms, Takara shares her understanding that profound wisdom arises from experiencing transformative journeys along an elemental path to awakening. This book is a response to a deeply philosophical collection of poems, The Desert Swimmer, by Peter Dong Feng, PhD, a poet and professor at the University of Qingdao in China, where Takara gave lectures for seven summers. Feng's metaphors inspired her to create these reflective poems. Everyone celebrates their high points and successes, but those in the process of awakening can also appreciate the right questions, efforts, and even failures, by stepping back, observing, accepting, and learning to fly. Due to hereditary and environmental tendencies--and the force of change--we have the capacity for whole creativity, but we live in a waking sleep amid shifting dimensions of confusion. A new era is emerging. We have begun to recognize the potential of awakening. We are learning how individuals unite with the collective consciousness of energy exchanges. Surpassing both the self-centered ""I love you"" and the simply united yet inert ""I am you,"" through process philosophy, we can envision possibilities: traveling via paranormal non-locality; becoming others; and discovering infinity, the universal song of balance. Taking a leap of faith up into the often unobserved skies of subjectivity-plus-objectivity, Takara seeks to present to people of all ages possibilities inherent in awakening. Each person must discover and develop constructive intentions. She affirms the creative balance among the forces of yin passivity, yang activity, and the transcendent third force. Recognizing phantasms, her poems explore metaphors like carefully walking, fearlessly flying, and falling into experiences. In Takara's youth, experiences of Jim Crow racism infused her with fear, dread, and courage. Through core teachings from her family, and gifts of strength and faith, she rebounded, seeking truth, justice, and goodness. Gaining insights while traveling internationally, she came to understand that life is always a transformative journey, a process enhanced by knowledge, by being present, and by the vital life force, qi. Footprints Wings Phantasms challenges readers to be attentive to experiences. Transformation requires learning the value of ""knowing thyself."" Ever yearning to understand the great mysteries, Takara works to attain greater awareness of self and community. She aims to facilitate peaceful relations, by exploring the process of juggling the natural forces of naked freedom. Awareness and detachment open possibilities for new ways of being. Through suffering, we can know the true joy of healing. As described by the mystic San Juan de la Cruz, in ""the dark night,"" the soul travels through the influence of grace and undergoes purification of senses and spirit, before ascending the ladder of transformation. As we climb, knowledge and humility move us closer to enlightenment. This collection tests traditional poetic boundaries by emphasizing a type of lyricism with hidden narratives about practice and process. The individual learns how to observe, direct, and accept change. Standing still does not result in growth. Readers are invited to fearlessly take flight--exploring organic life, self's shortcomings, and Nature's magical dance."

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9780986075582

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Reviews

Thanks for sharing your delicious poetry with me. I feel like I am traveling through your life with you from Mama's lap to the sensuality of nature and on to distant lands and the many voices that flow through your passionate self! -Marya Foley, MA, MFT, Spiritual Psychologist Dr. Kathryn Takara offers us a glimpse of the possibilities of awakening the human spirit in her pocket poetry collection of Footprints Wings and Phantasms. In what appears as contradictory imagery, the reader is able to leave the page and wrestle with deeper feelings. In a small moment of time, one can glance at her writings and be moved toward a deep contemplative state wherein it becomes possible to untangle complex thoughts and emotions, or at least marvel at the complexity of conflicts. This book is an amazing effort to transport the reader into those places that are beyond words. This is a wonderful gift to us. -Joan Koff, PhD, LTA, MFT, Licensed Psychologist, Diplomate In Clinical Psychology, AACP In Footprints Wings Phantasms Kathryn Waddell Takara challenges readers to depart the familiar times, places and spaces that define their daily lives and engage the many challenges of personal transformation. In doing so she invents multiple bridges for the reader to traverse her/his comfortable resting places of consciousness and travel into and onto new moments and spaces of self-understanding and the infinite meanings available to 'the other'. In giving us a variety of new sets of 'eyes' and 'I's' to view the world, she provides us the gift of re-viewing the self in fundamental and yet creative ways. -Deane E. Neubauer, PhD Professor Emeritus of Pol. Sc, University of Hawai`i at Manoa I read your manuscript and it was lovely. I enjoyed it immensely. -Jan Cardys, Black Hawk Literary Agency Dr. Kathryn Waddell Takara reflects on life in her new book of poetry where 'writers expose forgotten footprints'. Her lyrical musings and poetry are a delight and flow like the 'moonlight to light the path.' -Daphne Barbee-Wooten, JD, author, community activist. Kathryn Waddell Takara is a prolific poet, who notably has written about her experiences in China. However, for her new book Footprints Wings Phantasms she has drawn inspiration from many cultures, from other lives both past and present, and from not only book reading but also direct observation. She poses such hard questions as: 'Is there a dignified exit/From the labyrinth of life?' And she modestly offers some insights: 'Observe the migrating birds..alighting on shared branches.' -Wing Tek Lum, Award winning Poet In Footprints, Wings, Phantasms, Kathryn Waddell Takara hearkens the esotericism of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky with transcendent lyricism. In taking the reader on an interior journey prompted by global experience over time and space, Kathryn reminds us that in addition to retracing our steps and searching the horizon, our souls need to soar in order to understand where we are truly meant to be. -Tina Nader, writer, educator, development consultant Takara invites us to tear away the curtain of illusion and wake up to the world that is. Fertile images and a rich intellect offer a sweet meditation on each page as she soars with Truth on her wings. -Susan Killeen, Writer

"""Thanks for sharing your delicious poetry with me. I feel like I am traveling through your life with you from Mama's lap to the sensuality of nature and on to distant lands and the many voices that flow through your passionate self!"" -Marya Foley, MA, MFT, Spiritual Psychologist ""Dr. Kathryn Takara offers us a glimpse of the possibilities of awakening the human spirit in her pocket poetry collection of Footprints Wings and Phantasms. In what appears as contradictory imagery, the reader is able to leave the page and wrestle with deeper feelings. In a small moment of time, one can glance at her writings and be moved toward a deep contemplative state wherein it becomes possible to untangle complex thoughts and emotions, or at least marvel at the complexity of conflicts. This book is an amazing effort to transport the reader into those places that are beyond words. This is a wonderful gift to us."" -Joan Koff, PhD, LTA, MFT, Licensed Psychologist, Diplomate In Clinical Psychology, AACP ""In Footprints Wings Phantasms Kathryn Waddell Takara challenges readers to depart the familiar times, places and spaces that define their daily lives and engage the many challenges of personal transformation. In doing so she invents multiple bridges for the reader to traverse her/his comfortable resting places of consciousness and travel into and onto new moments and spaces of self-understanding and the infinite meanings available to 'the other'. In giving us a variety of new sets of 'eyes' and 'I's' to view the world, she provides us the gift of re-viewing the self in fundamental and yet creative ways."" -Deane E. Neubauer, PhD Professor Emeritus of Pol. Sc, University of Hawai`i at Manoa I read your manuscript and it was lovely. I enjoyed it immensely. -Jan Cardys, Black Hawk Literary Agency ""Dr. Kathryn Waddell Takara reflects on life in her new book of poetry where 'writers expose forgotten footprints'. Her lyrical musings and poetry are a delight and flow like the 'moonlight to light the path.'"" -Daphne Barbee-Wooten, JD, author, community activist. ""Kathryn Waddell Takara is a prolific poet, who notably has written about her experiences in China. However, for her new book Footprints Wings Phantasms she has drawn inspiration from many cultures, from other lives both past and present, and from not only book reading but also direct observation. She poses such hard questions as: 'Is there a dignified exit/From the labyrinth of life?' And she modestly offers some insights: 'Observe the migrating birds..alighting on shared branches.'"" -Wing Tek Lum, Award winning Poet ""In Footprints, Wings, Phantasms, Kathryn Waddell Takara hearkens the esotericism of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky with transcendent lyricism. In taking the reader on an interior journey prompted by global experience over time and space, Kathryn reminds us that in addition to retracing our steps and searching the horizon, our souls need to soar in order to understand where we are truly meant to be."" -Tina Nader, writer, educator, development consultant ""Takara invites us to tear away the curtain of illusion and wake up to the world that is. Fertile images and a rich intellect offer a sweet meditation on each page as she soars with Truth on her wings."" -Susan Killeen, Writer"

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