Book excerpt: Thousands in the Western world have sought a brighter life through the practice of Eastern meditation. While many have experienced a deeper sense of calm, most have never experienced the enlightenment promised by these methods. Through witty, entertaining anecdotes, Hawk Rising shares the secret to understanding, observing, and then managing a calming approach that softens, but does not stifle the desire for achievement. John Cowan has spent his lifetime learning within the worlds of spirituality and motivational psychology and offers an innovative method derived from the Buddhist system that effectively reduces anxiety through meditation and visualization. Cowan teaches through exercises and personal stories that viewing the imagination as part of the here and now will end frustration and increase the ability to begin each day with renewed power and confidence. Anyone interested in remaining in the hustle and bustle of the world and still achieving a new level of inner-peace will benefit from his explorations of the sources of anxiety, its causes, and how to develop a method for being usefully anxious while living a free, active, and creative life.