~ A Soulful, Meditative Memoir Full of Spiritual Insight ~

Year of Living Deeply

A Memoir of 1969

By award-winning author

Robert Atkinson

Year of Living Deeply: A Memoir of 1969 is the 50thanniversary edition of a memoir about awakening, love, and transformation in the context of the marker events of that year. Soon after the Moon Walk, Robert Atkinson leaves a Southampton summer camp, where he was a camp counselor, to re-connect with Pete Seeger on the Hudson River sloop Clearwater. He is invited to join the maiden voyage as crew member, and one adventure leads to another as his journey of self-discovery converges with the collective transformation going on around him.

Full of soulfulness, grace, and insights, Year of Living Deeply gently carries the reader into a magical realm of timelessness, from sailing on the Clearwater, to attending Woodstock, to living in a cabin in the woods, to meeting Joseph Campbell, who, with Pete Seeger, becomes a guide and mentor, to visiting Arlo Guthrie at his farm in the Berkshires with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, to living as a guest in a Franciscan monastery, all of which help to reveal the patterns connecting all things. He returns to Southampton College, where he had graduated 3 years earlier, to teach a course on folk-rock lyrics as poetry – what all his adventures had been preparing him for – and shares with his students the lessons of a life lived deeply.

 

For today, and every other day, Year of Living Deeply carries a message that is timely and timeless.

Set across the four seasons, here is a short excerpt from the first season, Summer:

I was filled with excitement when the inner voice I had not heard for years spoke:

Awaken and become conscious of that part of yourself that is part of everyone.

Allow yourself to pass beyond the gate of limits into a land of wonder where boundaries cease to exist.

Listen every day as if each sound was just for you to understand. Feel the life in each moment as it comes to you.

                        Immediately, I sensed that something more meaningful than I had known before was possible, even imminent.

 

 

This “profound” and “inspiring” book ~

  • Reminds us how critical the marker events of 1969 were in shaping the transformation of consciousness that is now in full swing,

  • Provides insights into how those events have changed our collective worldview, and

  • Illustrates how important it is in each of our lives to find our own call to adventure, to be open to our own search for truth, especially in an age of opposing views, and to allow ourselves to follow whatever it is that most deeply calls out to our heart and soul.

 

 

 

A few testimonials for Year of Living Deeply:

This book is a Rosetta Stone for anyone who wonders what the 60s were about… a talisman for those of us for whom 1969 will remain an incandescent moment for all our life.

            ~ Larry Dossey, author of One Mind: How Our Individual Mind is Part of a Greater Consciousness

 

… A real autobiography in that it is the story of a soul… I found it profound, friendly, inspiring, and nostalgic. In short, I loved it and hope others will discover it and take heart.

            ~ Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul

 

 Robert Atkinson’s insights are familiar to students of the Perennial Philosophy… You will find it full of wisdom and poetry – and an empowerment of your own myth journey.

            ~ Stephen Larsen, author of A Fire in the Mind: The Life of Joseph Campbell, and The Mythic Imagination