About
Timothy Tosta is a 61-year-young Santa Cruz native, now residing in San Mateo, California. He also is one of California’s leading land use and environmental lawyers. At the age of 41, Tim was given a two-year survival prognosis as a consequence of a misdiagnosed melanoma, which had gone untreated for six years. Then the parent of three children under the age of nine, Tim was determined to find his life’s purpose and to live consciously and conscientiously in accordance with it. He studied psychology, philosophy, religion, neuroscience, human and organizational development; undertook the practices of yoga, meditation,and Qi Gong; and eventually found his way into public service as a hospice volunteer, trained by the Zen Hospice Project, at ward C-2 of San Francisco’s Laguna Honda Hospital.
Tim is a very amateur musician, playing a wide variety of stringed instruments. He delights in entertaining his hospice friends with his own poor renditions of Tin Pan Alley, country, bluegrass, and folk tunes.
In 2006, Tim began writing about his hospice experiences and lecturing to legal, business, and community groups about the changes to his life and legal practice wrought by the hospice work.
In 2007, Tim undertook training to become an Integral Coach through New Ventures West and received his certification in 2008. Tim coaches lawyers and business colleagues to live balanced, fulfilled lives.
Tim contributes regularly to the Daily Journal, California’s leading daily legal news publication, as well as to other magazines and journals. He is a frequent speaker before state and national conferences in the legal, real estate, and business communities.
Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God
Description
<p>“<em>We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”(</em>Teilhard de Chardin<em>)</em></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;"><em>Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God </em> is as layered as a French cassoulet, as diverting, satisfying and as rich. Each reader will spoon this book differently. On the surface it seems to be a simple and light-hearted poetic journey through the history of Western thought, dominantly scientific, but enriched with painting and music. Beneath that surface is the sauce of a new evolutionary idea, involution; the informing of all matter by consciousness, encoded and communicating throughout the natural world. A book about the cathedral of consciousness could have used any language to paint it, but science is perhaps most in need of new vision, and its chronology is already familiar.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">The author offers a bold alternative vision of both science and creation: she suggests that science has been incrementally the recovery of memory, the memory of evolution/involution</span><em style="line-height:1.6em;">.</em></p><p>“<em> Involution proposes that humans carry within them the history of the universe, which is (re)discovered by the individual genius when the time is ripe. All is stored within our DNA and awaits revelation. Such piecemeal revelations set our finite lives in an eternal chain of co-creation and these new leaps of discovery are compared to mystical experience</em>” (From a reviewer)</p><p>Each unique contributor served the collective and universal return to holism and unity. Thus the geniuses of the scientific journey, like the spiritual visionaries alongside, have threaded the rosary of science with the beads of inspiration, and through them returned Man to his spiritual nature and origin.</p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">The separation between experience and the rational intellect of science has, by modelling memory as theory, separated its understanding from the consciousness of all, and perceives mind and matter as separate, God and Man as distinct. This work is a dance towards their re-unification: Saints and scientists break the same bread.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">All of time and all the disciplines of science are needed for the evidence. Through swift (and sometimes sparring) Cantos of dialogue between Reason and Soul, Philippa Rees takes the reader on a monumental journey through the history of everything – with the evolution of man as one side of the coin and involution the other. The poetic narrative is augmented by learned and extensive footnotes offering background knowledge which in themselves are fascinating. In effect there are two books, offering a right and left brain approach. The twin spirals of a DNA shaped book intertwine external and internal and find, between them, one journey, Man’s recovery of Himself., and (hopefully) the Creation’s recovery of a nobler Man.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">From the same review “</span><em style="line-height:1.6em;">The reader who finishes the book will not be the same as the one who began it. New ideas will expand the mind but more profoundly, the deep, moving power of the verse will affect the heart.</em></p><p><em>(Marianne Rankin: Director of Communications, Alister Hardy Trust)</em></p><p> </p>
Story Behind The Book
Timothy Tosta is an innovative, insightful and evocative speaker and lecturer. He also is a cancer survivor, a seasoned hospice volunteer, an insightful executive coach and an amateur musician. Moreover, he is recognized as one of California’s leading land use and environmental attorneys.
It is how Tim brings all of this together that hooks you. Few people in their early forties are confronted with a personal crisis that demands they take a hard look at themselves and restructure their lives to give it meaning. Fewer still have the insight, having faced a terminal cancer prognosis, to seek out, as community service, volunteer hospice work at an urban public hospital, attending to the dying from all strata of society – homeless, cognitively impaired, elderly or newly arrived immigrants. Tim has taken what he has learned from his own experiences facing death and from his work with the dying, to a broader audience, through his highly acclaimed lecture series on “Lessons for the Living” and his emotionally evocative hospice writings, Putting Things in Perspective – Stories from a Hospice Volunteer.
Now, Tim has authored #DEATHtweet - A Well Lived Life through 140 Perspectives on Death and its Teachings, published by HappyAbout Press, to rave reviews.
Reviews
<em>"In this beautiful book, the lessons are entirely about living--how to create happier, richer lives. Each tweet is lovely in itself and part of a fabric that moves me and makes me think differently about my own life."<br /></em><strong>Rick Foster, CoAuthor of 'How We Choose to Be Happy' and 'Choosing Brilliant Health'</strong>
<p><em>"Like snowflakes, each tweet is unique, perfect. With death as a backdrop, the effect of their cascading one upon the other is breathtaking!"</em><br /><strong>Megory Anderson, Author of 'Sacred Dying'</strong>
</p><p><em>"'#DEATHtweet Book01' powerfully and beautifully captures the complexities of what it means to be human: to love, to ache, to live and yes, to die."</em><br /><strong>Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow, Pastor, Mission Bay Community Church</strong>
</p><p><em>"'#Deathtweet Book01' is a thought-provoking, and ultimately inspiring, meditation on living well."</em><br /><strong>Karen Janowski, Partner, Ecostrategy Group</strong> </p>
