I love books! I wrote my first book as a science project at age 11. As a writer, books are my passion. Specifically, I have been interested in the nature of consciousness and healing since I was 12 years old. I started reading everything I could get my hands on at that time and continued voraciously until I completed my Ph.D. around the age of 30. Many themes in transformation and spirituality I read almost exhaustively – Indigenous studies, cross-cultural healing, the nature of mind, and the nature of the soul. I have always needed to keep books around me just to feel at home.
I wrote
The Seven Gateways of Spiritual Experience: Awakening to a Deeper Knowledge of Love, Life Balance, and God
This was the absolute best book I have ever read that explains the spiritual path.
I love that this book is so balanced and whole. Jack Kornfield helped me understand spiritual growth early in my journey through simple but sophisticated psychology and deep nondual philosophy and experience.
He covers everything clearly, with amazing stories and a fantastic writing style that I found inspiring, challenging, and comforting all at once.
Jack Kornfield's A Path with Heart has been acclaimed as the most significant book yet about American Buddhism-a definitive guide to the practice of traditional mindfulness in America today.
On this audio edition, Kornfield teaches the key principles of Buddhism's cherished vipassana (insight) tradition, and puts them into direct service, with the unique needs of the contemporary seeker in mind.
This specific translation by Stephen Mitchell changed my life. I love its poetic style, his contemporary but timeless references, and the way he captures the essence of the mystical worldview.
It’s as close to a perfect spiritual text as I can imagine. If I were allowed only one book for the rest of my life, this would likely be it. If I could suggest one book for every twelfth-grade student to read, study, and discuss, it might be this one!
The bestselling, widely acclaimed translation from Stephen Mitchell
"Mitchell's rendition of the Tao Te Ching comes as close to being definitive for our time as any I can imagine. It embodies the virtues its translator credits to the Chinese original: a gemlike lucidity that is radiant with humor, grace, largeheartedness, and deep wisdom." — Huston Smith, author of The Religions of Man
In eighty-one brief chapters, Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, provides advice that imparts balance and perspective, a serene and generous spirit, and teaches us how to work for the good with the effortless skill…
This book connected me with the concept of the soul and spirit so vividly and personally.
Written as a story, I found every page was a pleasure to read and an extraordinary discovery of life after death, life between life, and the possibility of Spirit Guides. I read this when these things were new to me, and Dr. Weiss’s writing was so simple, clear, and easy to envision.
It felt like a spiritual experience to me when I read this book. I never looked at relationships or myself the same after this book.
From author and psychotherapist Dr. Brian Weiss comes the classic New York Times bestseller on the true case of the past-life therapy that changed the lives of both the prominent psychiatrist and young patient involved-now featuring a new afterword by the author.
As a traditional psychotherapist, Dr. Brian Weiss was astonished and skeptical when one of his patients began recalling past-life traumas that seemed to hold the key to her recurring nightmares and anxiety attacks. His skepticism was eroded, however, when she began to channel messages from the "space between lives," which contained remarkable revelations about Dr. Weiss' family and…
This book opened my mind to the possibility of spiritual superpowers and the wealth of wisdom that lives in the ancient spiritual traditions of the world.
A little on the dense side, this amazing book blew my mind as I felt like I was transported in time to study at the feet of great masters. I was amazed by stories of miracles and incredible gifts of consciousness that had otherwise seemed only the stuff of movies and fiction.
The images were so compelling to me that I could not stop reading it. It felt like a course in deep metaphysics. And it was all a way of sharing the life story of a master teacher I truly admire and want to know everything about.
I have to say, on top of all this, it felt familiar, easy, and like a beautiful world to immerse in.
Autobiography of a Yogi is at once a beautifully written account of an exceptional life and a profound introduction to the ancient science of Yoga and its time-honored tradition of meditation. Profoundly inspiring, it is at the same time vastly entertaining, warmly humorous and filled with extraordinary personages.
Self-Realization Fellowship's editions, and none others, include extensive material added by the author after the first edition was published, including a final chapter on the closing years of his life.
Selected as "One of the 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Twentieth Century", Autobiography of a Yogi has been translated into more…
I loved the absolutely unique blend of history, culture, deep spirituality, practical philosophy, politics, humor, and memoir. I have read few books that ever became as personally meaningful as this one.
It was difficult not to recommend Black Elk Speaks or Fools Crow, two similar books, but Lame Deer was more provocative, and the direct introduction to Indigenous ritual, healing, and worldview was simple yet profound.
I loved the way Lame Deer shared stories that transported me into his world, his experience, and ceremonies and knowledge that are rare to learn about. It’s not exactly written in politically correct language, but it remains an important book to read.
Storyteller, rebel, medicine man, Lame Deer was born almost a century ago on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. A full-blooded Sioux, he was many things in the white man's world - rodeo clown, painter, prisoner. But, above all, he was a holy man of the Lakota tribe. The story he tells is one of harsh youth and reckless manhood, shotgun marriage and divorce, history and folklore as rich today as ever - and of his fierce struggle to keep pride alive, though living as a stranger in his own ancestral land.
People are born to seek wholeness and an experience of something more than the ordinary. From yoga and meditation to modern psychedelic seekers and the founders of our world’s religions and spiritual philosophies, spiritual experience is the force behind it all. I believe my book is an absolutely unique, inside out, guide to spiritual experience that helps readers to know what the seven most universal and significant experiences are like, to understand better what they mean, and to see the connections between spiritual experience and a better life – a better world.
In this practical, healing, and inspiring guide, Jonathan Ellerby helps you recognize the common ways people encounter breakthrough moments and elevated states through richly written true stories and experiences from around the world.
I’ve always been fascinated by group dynamics, large and small. Why things functioned well, why they didn’t. It’s possible my ability to empathize and use humor as a consensus-builder is the reason I was elected president of a homeowners association, a music production association, and even an agricultural group. Books were not particularly involved in this fascination! But in recent years, experiencing the breakdown of civility and trust in our political and cultural discourse, I’ve taken a more analytical view of the dynamics. These books, in their very different ways, have taught me lessons about life, understanding those with different beliefs, and finding ways to connect and move forward.
We’ve all experienced the overwhelming level of political and social divisiveness in our country. This invisible “virus” of negativity is, in part, the result of the name-calling and heated rhetoric that has become commonplace among commentators and elected leaders alike.
My book provides a clear perspective on the historical and modern-day causes of our nation's divisive state. It then proposes easy-to-understand solutions—an action plan for our elected leaders and citizens as well. Rather than a scholarly treatment of a complex topic, the book challenges us to take the obvious steps required of those living in a free democracy. And it…
Uniting the States of America: A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation
Lyle Greenfield's "Uniting the States of America―A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation" is a work of nonfiction and opinion. Incorporating the lessons of history and the ideas and wisdom of many, it is intended as both an educational resource and a call-to-action for citizens concerned about the politically and culturally divided state of our Union. A situation that has raised alarm for the very future of our democracy.
First, the book clearly identifies the causes of what has become a national crisis of belief in and love for our country. How the divisiveness and hostility rampant in our political…
