Michael Goddart's Blog: More Bliss

Just received—Publishers Weekly BookLife Prize Critic's Report for The Contentment Dividend. The report is wonderful and affirming. Prize winner to be announced in 2025.

Assessment: A profound guide to unlocking spiritual potential.

Plot/Idea: This intriguing exploration of the spiritual self and daily existence encourages readers to unlock their unlimited spiritual potential through exploring 49 easy-to-digest meditations that Goddart articulately presents.

Prose: Goddart's text is powerful and enlightening, a clear and concise spiritual guidebook written in open, understandable terms. The meditations are varied and thought provoking, enabling a powerfully contemplative reading experience.

Originality: The Contentment Dividend is a potent spiritual resource that will spur readers into thinking differently about how they approach life's challenges. Ideal for those keen on improving their outlook through meditation and spiritual enlightenment, Goddart's writing is deeply satisfying and empowers readers to live more purposefully in the moment.

Character/Execution: Goddart is an inspiring and thoughtful guide who propels readers to pursue truth and spiritual meaning in their lives, rather than allowing the present moment to fruitlessly pass them by. His thoughts and reflections empower readers to address their true motivations and analyze their potential for self-transformation.
The Contentment Dividend: Meditations for Realizing Your True Self

The Contentment Dividend: Meditations for Realizing Your True Self has been named a Finalist of the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Feeling grateful and hopeful.

The Contentment Dividend: Meditations for Realizing Your True Self has been named a Winner of the LIVING NOW BOOK AWARD. Feeling Grateful.The Contentment Dividend: Meditations for Realizing Your True Self

The Contentment Dividend: Meditations for Realizing Your True Self has been named a Winner of the AMERICAN BOOK FEST BEST BOOK AWARD.

“Great for fans of: Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now." —BookLife/Publishers Weekly

Winner of six book awards and seven honors, including the Nautilus Book Award and the National Indie Excellence Award.*

You have an untapped reservoir of awareness that you can learn to access to become wiser, achieve a state of equilibrium, and develop a clearer and stronger sense of your purpose for each day and this lifetime. A New Now: Your Guide to Mastering Wisdom Daily, Achieving Equilibrium, and Empowering Your Nobler Self is your chance to step into an omnipresent reality, a new now in which you can readily navigate your life successfully, happily, easily.

Working with this guide, you can become a new you so that situations, people, thoughts, and desires are more easily negotiated moment to moment. Here are some of the many benefits awaiting you:
– Centering and Focusing of Your Energy
– Clarity of Mind
– Choice and Enrichment of Relationships
– Enhanced Creativity and Productivity
– Enlightened Direction of Health and Healing
– Being Present
– Development of Intuition
– Happiness Each Day
– Grooming of Your Destiny

You have been given the most precious gift—your human life. Why not make best use of it? Take this opportunity to learn to travel through your days as fully conscious as possible, so that you begin to experience a new now. This is moving toward being truly alive.

*Winner of the Nautilus Book Award, the Living Now Book Award, the Indie Reader Discovery Award, the National Indie Excellence Award, the Independent Publisher Book Award, and the American Book Fest Best Book Award. Honoree of the Eric Hoffer Book Award and Finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, the Foreword Indies of the Year Award, and four more.

Thank you, John Heinz of IndieReader for this lovely review!
At the core of THE CONTENTMENT DIVIDEND lies a spiritual path centered on overcoming the egoistic mind to realize one’s higher potential. Through a series of brief yet potent meditations, Goddart elucidates how attachment to desire and resistance to adversity obscure the soul’s luminous essence. With insight and care, he counsels letting go of reactionary patterns to align with divine will and life’s hidden purpose.

While avoiding explicit religious terminology, the author draws from eastern traditions of karma, reincarnation, and the guru-disciple relationship. He frequently personifies the divine as an all-loving mystical Teacher that initiates a seeker into transcendent states of freedom. However universalist the framing aims to be, THE CONTENTMENT DIVIDEND clearly emerges from the author’s decades-long dedication to a specific spiritual master.

If at times too insular in metaphysical assumptions, the author shines in addressing existential quandaries of purpose, resistance, and self-transformation: “The struggles we face provide opportunities to grow in qualities like wisdom, discernment, patience, courage and faith. Without adversity, these spiritual “muscles” would not develop. So difficulties are seen as gifts, however unwelcome.” The central theme, hinted at in the title, is that outer success provides no lasting happiness; true joy blossoms from surrendering egoic demands to reorient towards service, wisdom, and our shared divine essence. Though the meditations advocate effortful engagement with life’s “curriculum,” the overall ethos stresses grace.

The book expresses its lessons in short, wise sayings that get straight to the point. This sparse style may leave some people wanting more elaboration, and doesn’t produce the most original ideas. But it also gives readers space to reflect on how these concepts apply to their own situation. THE CONTENTMENT DIVIDEND serves as a catalyst for self-inquiry, hinting at vistas for committed seekers to explore. For spiritual voyagers fatigued by surface living, this real-world monk offers welcome perspective and wings.

A sympathetic voice emerges amid the spiritual musings. Without self-pity, Goddart reveals he faced struggles and adversity that amplified his questioning. Yet he shares vulnerably not to elicit sympathy but to counsel fellow sojourners. His grounded humanity permeates the meditations, whether consoling a doubting grandniece or elucidating everyday lapses of awareness. A quiet humor leavens the density at times. While later passages tilt metaphysical, with past-life memories and mystic sounds discussed, the author’s anchored sensibility remains. Ultimately this field guide to the soul pushes readers to manifest their highest potentials with empathy for the rocky roads traveled.
~John Heinz for IndieReader
https://indiereader.com/.../the-conte...

To commemorate the 25th Anniversary of BLISS: 33 Simple Ways to Awaken Your Spiritual Self I am delighted to share that an audiobook has been produced.

If you would like to listen to it for free and feel that you could write and post a positive review on Amazon and/or Goodreads, please email or FB message me to receive a US or UK promo code for audible.com or audible.co.uk. Please specify which.

To learn more about BLISS, visit www.goddart.com

“Can there be anything more important than experiencing the blissful state of the Presence of God in our lives? Michael Goddart's book gives spiritual nuggets to help us all reach that state of Bliss.”—Gerald G. Jampolsky, M.D., Love Is Letting Go of Fear

“Here is a practical, heartfelt, and brightly crafted guide to dynamic personal and spiritual well-being! Michael Goddart has garnered rich wisdom and lofty vision for a manual that will change your life if you apply these important principles. Bravo and enjoy!”—Alan Cohen, A Deep Breath of Life

“Bliss: 33 Simple Ways to Awaken Your Spiritual Self is a rich companion to our journey of transformation.”—Caroline Myss, Ph.D., Anatomy of the Spirit

I am grateful to share the NIEA’s recent appreciation of A NEW NOW:

“CONGRATULATIONS!
It is our great pleasure to inform you that you are a Winner in the 16th Annual National Indie Excellence® Awards. Your book embodies the standards of excellence that this award was created to celebrate. We salute your talents and our jurors truly respect each of the final works that are honored this year. “
A New Now: Your Guide to Mastering Wisdom Daily, Achieving Equilibrium, and Empowering Your Nobler Self

I thoroughly enjoyed my Independence Day nighttime conversation with George Noory on Coast to Coast AM on the show “Past Lives Wisdom,” featuring A NEW NOW.

Here are links to the first and second parts.
https://soundcloud.com/michael-goddar...

https://soundcloud.com/michael-goddar...

Amazon is currently selling the A NEW NOW paperback at $13.74.
https://smile.amazon.com/New-Now-Mast...