healing

9 books that could deeply influence how you live (part 1 of 3)

I love books. Madly, passionately. I even love the bad ones because they help me sharpen my mind. But there are the very precious people-notions-theories that refined my thinking and softened my heart, and actually influenced how I did life...and work...and love.

This is part 1 in a 3 part series.
Upcoming this week: books for creating + entrepreneuring, and books for relating.

living

Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti, by Jaluddin Krishnamurti
"Discipline is a tool that numbs the mind." When I read this, I felt like there was a ray of light cracking through my living room. This singular thought changed the way I approached my entire life.

Unfolding Now: Realizing Your True Nature through the Practice of Presence, by A.H. Almaas
"We want to learn how we can be here in as real a way as possible: How can I be completely here and completely myself, or as completely as possible? How can my atoms, which are scattered, vibrating, and oscillating in some kind of frenzy, slow down, collect, and settle here as what I am?"

Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living, by Pema Chodron
"Whether it's connecting with the genuine heart of sadness and the messy are of our lives, or connecting with vision and expansion and openness, what's real is all included in in well-being; it's all included in joy. Joy is not about pleasure as opposed to pain or cheerfulness as opposed to sadness. Joy includes everything." I given away ta least twenty copies of this book.

The Wisdom of No Escape And The Path of Loving-Kindness, by Pema Chodron
"Our life's work is to use what we've been given to wake up."

The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, by James Hillman
"To change how we see things takes falling in love. Then the same becomes altogether different. Like love, a shift of sight can be redemptive--not in the religious sense of saving the soul from heaven, but in a more pragmatic sense. As at a redemption center, you get something back for what you had misperceived as merely worthless. The noisome symptoms of every day can be revalued and their usefulness reclaimed."

A Brief History of Everything, by Ken Wilber. I after I read the theory of Holons, I was so aroused that I was determined to marry Ken.

"A holon is a system (or phenomenon) which is an evolving self-organizing dissipative structure, composed of other holons, whose structures exist at a balance point between chaos and order. It is maintained by the throughput of matter-energy and information-entropy connected to other holons and is simultaneously a whole in and itself at the same time being nested within another holon and so is a part of something much larger than itself. ... On a non-physical level, words, ideas, sounds, emotions—everything that can be identified—is simultaneously part of something, and can be viewed as having parts of its own."

That's a fancy way of saying we are each part of the whole.

Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything, by Geneen Roth
"Freedom from obsession is not about something you do; it's about knowing who you are. It's about recognizing what sustains you and what exhausts you." BTW, you don't need to be a woman, or have food issues, or believe in God to be illuminated by this book.

Soul Without Shame: A Guide To Liberating Yourself From The Judge Within, by Byron Brown
"What is needed is to stop the self-attacks and simply be with the emptiness, allowing it to become the spaciousness of the soul's true nature and the openness in which all needed essential qualities can arise." Liberating yourself from the inner critic, based on A.H. Almaas' Diamond Approach.

Ask and It Is Given: Learning To Manifest Your Desires, by Abraham-Hicks
The Emotional Guidance Scale is my favourite kind of new agey brilliance. Cosmic logic.

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All of my most-recommended books on consciousness, business, and lifestyle can be found in my fancy Amazon store.

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VANCOUVER!

Dr. Christiane Northrup will be in Vancouver this November 3rd at The Queen Elizabeth. "Flourishing in the Female Body" I'll be there, listening raptly.
I've been a big fan of Christiane's since her now-classic Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom (and I have an article that appears in the new edition!) But she really won me over when I heard her on Oprah talking about how women need to get to know their own clitorises more. Uh huh.

BUY your Dr. Christiane Northrup Tickets here.
Perks...When you purchase tix through Ticket Master save 10% by entering this discount code: Wisdom

 

7 tiny big life shifters

This summer was about deeper healing for me. Bod', psyche, bank account, relationships...relating...creating. Change can be radical but the steps to healing are usually small >> sequential >> interconnected.

This is how some of it came together for me. I:

1. Let go of my "check-my-email-in-the-morning-guilt." Screw it. I LIKE to check my email first thing in the morning. It doesn't mean that I'm a distracted workaholic, it means I'm an excited Creative who loves her friends and new friends and what she does with her day...life >> this actually led to LESS email checking throughout the day >> more creative space >> deeper meditation >> clearer ideas.

2. Got a mean blender machine. This led to smoothies >> more complex smoothies with bee pollen and greens and ginger >> less wasted food (cause you can just throw it in the blender!) >> healthier lunches >> feeling great(er) in the evening >> great enough to get my smoothie ass to evening yoga class.

3. Bought a two month pass at local yoga studio. The psychological grip of wanting to get my money's worth led to doing yoga at least 3x/week >> riding my bike more on the days I couldn't make it to yoga because I wanted to stretch >> feeling so good about riding + getting my money's worth, that I committed to an 18-month yoga pass.

4. Committed to doing 100,000 Heart Sutra mantras. I got this, like, "assignment" from a Buddhist Lama who's been good enough to humor my big Q's about consciousness. "Do 100,000 Prajnaparamitas and get back to me," he said. "Is that all ya got for me, Chief?!" Well, only 96,000 to go! Realistically, it will take me a few years to accomplish this, (unless I drop out of society and chant days on end for months.)

It's RADICAL for me to commit to something and NOT drive for velocity and accomplishment, but rather, devote myself to the journey itself. This has led to a deeper surrender to my creative impulses >> which in turn led to me giving myself permission to write a whole new book two years sooner than I had planned...but not in a rush >> which inspired me to take a lot of the summer off.

5. Started consciously smiling, gently, mostly internally, during meditation and on walks. This is probably the slightest but most effectual lil' thing I've done recently. Smiling effects brain chemistry. It's a reminder of your true nature. It let's the light in. It's shifting me.

Try it. Close your eyes. Feel a smile behind your face. (IMPORTANT: There is no need to bust out in a cheesy, forced grin. That's bad news.) Just let the corners of your mouth curl gently upwards. On the phone, falling asleep, right now...feel a smile.

6. I read Geneen Roth's Women Food & God. >> which led to the blender (see #1) >> which led to all sorts of delicious awareness. Roth has written a book of monumental importance in terms of our wellness. Want to convert years and pounds of toxic thinking and self-criticism into freedom-fuel? Read it and set yourself free. It is, as the subtitle puts it, an unexpected path to almost everything.

7. I read Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer >> which made me consider the more abstract and magical ways to tell happy-painful-true-imagined stories >> which inspired me to recapitulate all of the great stories and 'isms that my little boy and I have >> in to sitting down and writing our very stories together >> deeper love.

>> healing.

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