The Gift of Apocalypse: 12 Myths for Courage in Times of Crisis
About this ebook
In an era of dumpster fires and doomscrolling, is there any such thing as a healthy relationship with our stress response? While we can’t avoid crisis, we can learn to move more gracefully through cycles of collapse and renewal. We can find the sustainability we seek in learning how to tend the very forces we once feared.
When the Los Angeles forest fires threatened their family home, Daniel Rechtschaffen—a therapist, celebrated mindfulness teacher, and toddler dad—officially went into panic mode. This near-miss prompted him to embark on a five-year study of ancient apocalyptic narratives to learn how we are shaped by the stories we tell about the end of the world, and what gives us the hope we need to keep going.
The Gift of Apocalypse offers a powerful antidote to modern anxiety, revealing how to find hope and resilience not by turning away from chaos, but by turning toward it with ancient wisdom as your guide. Greek mythology’s Persephone, Indigenous folklore’s Coyote, the Hebrew prophets, and the resurrected Jesus all offer themselves as archetypes of survival revealing:
- How to relax your nervous system even in the face of uncertainty
- Practices for waking up to the preciousness of life
- What resilience means for you today
- How to resist denial and despair and source honest hope
- What you can do to break out of the doom loop and start writing the story of the future
Consider this book your care package in times of crisis, and your map out of the woods into a future of our own making.
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About the author
Daniel Rechtschaffen is an author, psychotherapist, poet, and mindfulness educator whose work weaves together contemplative practice, depth psychology, and earth-based wisdom. He founded the Mindful Education Institute and Transformative Educational Leadership, and authored four books, including The Way of Mindful Education and Alphabreaths. Daniel integrates his education in ancient literature, psychology, ecology, and spirituality to understand how we can meet the challenges of our times with perennial wisdom. He lives in the San Geronimo Valley of Northern California with his wife, son, and extended community of human and more-than-human kind.
