FEATURED AUTHOR: MARK JOHNSON

ABOUT THE BOOK

Life As Play chronicles author Mark Johnson's 50-year spiritual odyssey with some of the most fascinating spiritual teachers of the last half-century. His travels take him from the mountains of Pennsylvania to exotic temples in China and Tibet and eventually to the wild and dangerous hills of Malibu, California.
 
Mark chronicles his ten years training in an Advaita Vedanta center in Florida, then a year of visiting Suzuki Roshi in California. Then the Play began, with an intense 28-year apprenticeship to the powerful Daoist wizard he meets in Taiwan and convinces to come to the US.
 
Mark learned many valuable self-healing techniques in their Malibu clinic: how to heal oneself with high-frequency energies available to everyone; how to utilize deep breathing techniques for clearing and integrating our subconscious; the power of love, compassion, spontaneity, intuition, and inner stillness; how to recognize an Avatar if you are lucky enough to meet one; and how to activate your acupuncture meridians and auric energies. There are chapters on Feng Shui, Daoist sexual practices, the nine secrets to a life of Play, and much more.
 
The central message is that if an ordinary boy from central Pennsylvania can learn to live in an abiding state of Play, then surely you can too.

Book Details

Title: Life As Play: Live compassionately, intuitively, spontaneously, and miracles will happen!
Author: Mark Johnson

Genre: self-help; spirituality

Published: Dao Publishing (December 2020)
Print length: 236 pages

STUPID QUESTIONS WITH MARK JOHNSON

A few of your favorite things: when I am not on call, I sit quietly and let my intuition and spontaneity flow through me.
Things you need to throw out: I give things away or I try to integrate them with the rest of the stuff I have.


Things you need in order to write: quiet time.
Things that hamper your writing: noise, unexpected interruptions.

Things you love about writing: the fact I let it flow through me effortlessly.
Things you hate about writing:  I don’t hate anything about writing.


Things you love about where you live: I love the 50-mile view from my lofty penthouse.
Things that make you want to move: nothing.


Words that describe you: funny, compassionate, spontaneous etc. ad nauseam!
Words that describe you, but you wish they didn’t: impatient when asked to answer stupid questions.

Favorite foods: anything I can create in 3 to 5 minutes at most.
Things that make you want to throw up:  answering stupid questions.

Favorite song: “My Way” by Frank Sinatra.
Music that makes your ears bleed: almost everything I hear these days.

Something you like to do: whatever the divine wants me to do.
Something you wish you’d never done: I learn through experiences so I try to learn from everything I do.


Things you’d walk a mile for: getting the exercise that my body needs at the moment.
Things that make you want to run screaming from the room: when the room is on fire.

Things you always put in your books: guidance for everyone to realize their innate divinity.

Things you never put in your books: trivia—unless it is humorous.

Favorite places you’ve been: I have been damn near everywhere on this planet.
Places you never want to go to again: They all were interesting in their own way.

Favorite things to do: help people realize their innate divinity.
Things you’d run through a fire wearing gasoline pants to get out of doing: answering stupid questions.

Most embarrassing moment: I can’t remember people’s names after a nasty plane crash 10 years ago.
Proudest moment: when I remember their names.

Best thing you’ve ever done: at age 16 I made a clay dinosaur movie that involved  30,000 still shots that involved a fight between 2 T Rexes then a fly in Pterodactyl. Then a T Rex sinks into a tar pit and dies.
Biggest mistake: I misplaced the dinosaur DVD and have never found it. 

Most daring thing you’ve ever done: I flew with a new flying buddy who turned out to be an idiot and smashed us into a warehouse at 120 mph and smashed my frontal lobe off -hence no people’s names.
Something you chickened out from doing: getting married again.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Mark Johnson is a semi-retired Tai Ji and Chi Gung instructor and healer. He continues to judge Tai Ji tournaments regularly, serves on the Advisory Council to the National Qigong Association, and leads Daoist retreats to China and Tibet yearly. He sells his Tai Chi for Seniors video and other instructional DVDs through his online company. Mark has studied and practiced Eastern Philosophy for over forty-five years and has apprenticed with some of the most prominent Vedanta, Zen and Daoist teachers in the world. He has been a member and research subject at the Institute of Noetic Sciences for nearly fifteen years.

Connect with Mark:
Website  |  Facebook 


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