Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained: Why There Is Suffering and How We Can Experience Sustainable Joy - Softcover

Life without illness, injury, and death is a universal human aspiration. According to the Hebrew Bible, this was the kind of life God had intended for us before our seemingly corrupt nature caused us to lose it. A never-ending struggle to regain this lost, paradisiacal existence has ensued ever since. Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained follows the evolution of the myths spun by our Hebrew ancestors in their unsuccessful efforts to reclaim the place of privilege they imagined once having in Eden. At the center of this failure is the terribly misguided explanation that humanity suffers because of its base, evil-inclined nature. By providing a new, celebratory version of the dawn of human consciousness, this book helps us understand suffering as normal, as well as helpful—a human experience that ultimately helps us learn to be more loving and caring to ourselves and others.

Jacob Zighelboim, MD, is a physician/scientist whose discovery of his own cancer led to a search for knowledge and a renewal of his own ideas about health, illness, suffering, and the healing process. A former professor of medicine and microbiology and immunology at the UCLA School of Medicine, he is a faculty member of the Academy for Jewish Religion California and the author of From Fear to Awe and To Health! The New Humanistic Oncology.