Spiritual Growth

Beyond Fear: A Toltec Guide to Freedom and Joy - The Teachings of Don Miguel Ruiz

by Mary Carroll Nelson

Average Rating:

"If you have the courage to face the fact that their are errors in your earily religious teachings, then you will get something out of this book . What you get is entirley up to you. If you make it through this book then try An Encounter With A Prophet."

Publisher: Council Oak Books | More reviews: amazon.com

The Power of Kabbalah: Technology for the Soul

by Yehuda Berg

Average Rating:

" I'll start with the good stuff. This book challenges you to look at life in a different way. To actually seek out challenges in life, not to avoid them. True spiritual growth comes from taking advantage of life's tribulations. I can totally agree with that. This book also encourages people to give up the "culture of victimhood" and leave it behind. An idea I adore. The book also tells people that if you have absolute faith in God, or a higher power, if you are certain that God will give you what you NEED, great things will happen. That's not a new idea, but it's certainly true.
Now on to the bad stuff. The author of this book is SHAMELESS in his manner of rewriting history. According to Yehuda Berg, anybody who was anybody in history was great because of the Kabbalah. Any great idea that ever came from those people we hear about came to them because they were Kabbalists. The Dark Ages came about because Kabbalists hid The Zohar, the Kabbalah holy text, in a cave which caused "civilization" to plummet into chaos without its "wisdom". The author clearly intends us to forget that ONLY EUROPE was affected by the Dark Ages, and that the Middle East was experiencing a time of great prosperity and intellectual achievement. The author states that both Buddhism and Hinduism owe their existence to Kabbalists moving to India to spread their philosophy. I mean, come on! The ideas in this book don't need to be legitimized in such a silly manner.
Do I suggest that you read this book? Possibly. It can be a positive experience. Just remember to read this book with a great amount of skepticism. "

Publisher: Kabbalah Publishing | More reviews: amazon.com

Sara, Book 3: A Talking Owl Is Worth a Thousand Words!

by Esther Hicks

Average Rating:

"I bought all 3 books and CD's of Sara for my 4-year old daughter. Sometimes I am not sure who loves them more... :-)
We listen to it together while driving places and sometimes she just puts on her Headphones and listens alone. We also read 1-2 chapters a night and she loves the stories!!!
Although she is just 4, she is getting it- always says "remember what Sara says?" and then she quotes Sara for a specific situation.
Amazing...I wish I'd hd this when I was growing up- life would have been less of a surprise! "

Publisher: Hay House | More reviews: amazon.com

The Second Half of Life: Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom

by Angeles Arrien

Average Rating:

"I have been listening to many of these Sounds True and similar audiocassettes recently, looking for good meditation material. Fortunately, since the exploration is pretty hit-or-miss for me, the Seattle library has a lot of them (including this one), so I am able to preview them. For my taste, The Second Half of Life is better in its intention than its execution. Overall, for my money, a more successful work (also available both at Amazon and the Seattle library) is A Woman's Spiritual Retreat: Teaching, Meditations, and Rituals to Celebrate Your Authentic Feminine Wisdom, by Joan Borysenko. Although it focuses primarily on women's wisdom and growth, as opposed to second-half-of-life wisdom and growth, it hits a lot of the same notes and also draws on myth and ritual. (Another, much shorter work in a similar vein that I also found more successful is the meditation CD, Celtic Spirit Meditations, by Mara Freeman--also available at Amazon and reviewed by me here.)

Certainly, the intention of The Second Half of Life is to help people do some positive growth in their later years, drawing on wisdom of many cultures, and as the positive reviews attest, it does accomplish this very well for some people. However, for me, Ms. Arrien picks some good myths, tales and themes for her foundation, but then doesn't do enough substantive and rigorous work with them. The basic pattern (except for the Preferential Shapes exercise, see below) is to tell a tale or introduce a character or concept, give her interpretation (which often seems either too simplistic and schematic or too arbitrary, as other reviewers have noted), and then to say, "So where am I with __________ in my life?" [Fill in the blank with the theme or symbol just discussed.] The psychologizing offered, although constructive, seems--well, mostly self-evident. To someone who grew up loving much of the original source material in its pure, story form, some of the interpretations actually diminish the stories' inherent symbolic meaning.

I did find both the description and the interpretation of the Nine Muses pretty good, and was pleased to come across a theme I'd been looking for but hadn't found elsewhere (except in Layne Redmond's wonderful music CD Invoking the Muse, also available on Amazon). The Pandora's Box story has an interesting comparison of this myth in different cultures (including what was left in the bottom of the box, according to the different cultures). The Preferential Shapes section gives you something specific to do, an exercise with your preferences for five universal shapes. I found this exercise to provide some helpful insights, albeit in a fortune-telling kind of way. The 12 Labors of Hercules got a retelling that was somehow both cursory and redundant, and the interpretations here felt especially arbitrary and forced to me. Like another reviewer, I found the Eight Gates rather suspect in how Ms. Arrien drew together elements supposedly from many sources to arrive at this particular interpretation (and I also could have done without the gnomes!), although there is some good material about initiation and transition here. Overall, there seems to be a lot of focus on schematic, numbered, arbitrary hierarchies.

I also found the material overall to be too repetitive and slow-moving, and like another reviewer with the same problem, was irked by the verbal delivery (the uneven rhythm, the tone, and a tendency to do repetitions of phrases that did not feel naturally emphatic and became quite irritating). It would be nice if Amazon would provide not only the Search Inside This Book function for books on tape (sadly missing here), so that people can get an idea of the specific content and tone, but also audioclips for books on tape, as they do for music CDs. These audiocassettes are often quite pricey, and long, and one's personal reaction to the voice of the narrator is pretty important. The Sounds True website does have audio samples for many of their authors' items, including this one. "

Publisher: Sounds True, Incorporated | More reviews: amazon.com

Understanding Our Mind: 50 Verses on Buddhist Psychology

by Thich Nhat Hanh

Average Rating:

""Our mind is a field in which every kind of seed is sown--seeds of compassion, joy, and hope, seeds of sorrow, fear, and difficulties," Thich Nhat Hanh writes. "Every day our thoughts, words, and deeds plant new seeds in the field of our consciousness, and what these seeds generate becomes the substance of our life" (p. 21). This book is a compilation of dharma teachings given by Thich Nhat Hanh between 1989 and 1998 on Buddhist psychology. The teachings here are subtle, complex, and look deeply into the nature of consciousness. "One could spend an entire lifetime looking deeply into them," Thay writes in the book's Introduction. "Please do not be daunted by their complexity. Go slowly," he encourages us (p. 4). When put into practice, they point the way to transformation, bringing life into "sharp, clear focus" (p. 141).This book shows we can cultivate paradise or hell in our own minds (p. 54), turning our inner garbage into flowers (p. 218). Thay writes, "when we are able to touch our habit energies and transform the roots of violence, despair, fear, and anger in our store consciousness, transformation occurs. We begin by recognizing the internal knots and latent tendencies in order to transform them. We have to train ourselves in the way of looking with the insights of nonself and interbeing. Day and night we have to water the seeds of understanding in our store consciousness so that it will grow and help us to see the nature of interbeing in every thing we see and touch. We have to bring this understanding into our daily life" (pp. 224-5).Not an easy read, this insightful book is highly recommended for any reader interested in Buddhist transformational psychology or the interdependence of all things.G. Merritt"

Publisher: Parallax Press | More reviews: amazon.com

The Power of Joy: How the Deliberate Pursuit of Pleasure

by Christiane Northrup

Average Rating:

"A very enjoyable and encouraging book. Her advice and witty presentation is true Northrup."

Publisher: Hay House | More reviews: amazon.com

Instant Enlightenment: Fast, Deep, and Sexy

by David Deida

Average Rating:

"David Deida is best known for "bringing sexy back" to contemporary spirituality, and now in his latest offering he's bringing real life back. Instant Enlightenment contains a vast array of subjects that other `spiritual' teachings fear to touch - oral sex, swearing, car crashes, death, masturbation, to name a few. These taboo areas get the much-needed shot in the arm they deserve. Each chapter is poetically precise, humorous, and challenges the reader to bring their awareness to life experiences that would ordinarily make us contract and shut down. It is in these moments that our separation to what is gets easily forgotten. Can you remember to stay open and loving in the midst of extreme suffering - and banality? This is the core of Deida's teaching: feel open to what you resist, deny and recoil from. What could simply look like a throwaway, aphoristic pocket book, turns out to be a whole lot deeper. The way to read this book is by randomly dipping into any chapter, reading it slowly and contemplating its content. Deida's words and enlightenment will undo you - instantly."

Publisher: Sounds True, Incorporated | More reviews: amazon.com

Life's Missing Instruction Manual : The Guidebook You Should Have Been Given at Birth

by Joe Vitale

Average Rating:

"It's hard to resist the notion that Vitale conceived his latest best-seller by applying the following formula: Take the marketing hook of a book that already published to wild success (You: The Owner's Manual), add some of the pointed religiosity of two other recent bestsellers (Your Best Life Now and The Purpose-Driven Life), throw in some generic cosmic blather (inspired, perhaps, by Sylvia Browne or Marianne Williamson) and VOILA!--another perfect entry in the burgeoning self-help sub-category of "holistic/successful/spiritually enriched living."

This approach is nothing new for Vitale, a master of so-called "stealth" or "viral" marketing who unashamedly admits to being president of a company called Hypnotic Marketing, Inc. His previous best-seller, The Attraction Factor (which owns the distinction of once having knocked a Harry Potter book out of Amazon's No. 1 slot) echoed several other books and/or programs that involved such concepts as "laws of attraction" or "rules of attraction." Here, Vitale proposes to offer "big wisdom and little-known secrets for living a better life." I'll give him this: The book is clever in some spots and pretty funny in others--but its ability to help you "overcome any obstacle" and "find fulfillment...wealth and happiness," as his publicity material promises, is highly debatable. Like so many of the gurus in this self-help category, Vitale subscribes to the Promise Readers Everything--Even Things That Clash--And Hope They Don't Notice school of motivational enlightenment. Examples: He vows to teach readers, simultaneously, how to "create their own blueprint for success" and to "work as a team." Granted, those two goals are not, strictly speaking, incompatible. But the degree of finesse required to embrace and, especially, implement both goals is not something you could hope to find in a book like Vitale's. Similarly, he says, readers will learn to "be themselves and like it" as well as "lead a good and moral life"--but for that matter, and for good measure, let's throw in two other objectives: "take chances that lead to success" and "accept their mistakes and move on." I defy anyone short of Socrates or Kant to resolve ALL FOUR of those stated benefits into the same action plan without endlessly qualifying, parsing language, or backtracking on something you said earlier.

I've said it a hundred times and I say it again here: If you're just looking for a quick jolt of formless inspiration that fades as fast as the winter sun, then what the heck, order the book. But if you actually expect life-transforming wisdom--come on, now. You know better than that already, don't you? The person most likely to profit off this "guidebook" is Vitale himself.

"

Publisher: Wiley | More reviews: amazon.com

The Gift of Change: Spiritual Guidance for Living Your Best Life

by Marianne Williamson

Average Rating:

"I'm going to be frank: If you are a Course fundamentalist, don't buy this book. Your ego may be tempted to use this book as a means to separate & attack, and none of us want you to hurt like that. Another alternative would be for "letter of the law" Course students to read this book and, if you feel an attack welling up -- merely see it as another illusion to forgive. This always works for me.

When I start feeling taliban-ish about the Course, I am reminded of Tony DeMello, who once said to an Atlanta audience: "Scripture, liturgy, rituals, prayer, mediation -- all are a finger pointing to the moon (God). The problem is that too many people end up sucking on the finger and miss the point." Let go & enjoy. Join. It's all good. We're all going to get There anyway ... well, actually, we're already There.

Everyone else? Read the reviews below. I cannot add anything else except to assure you that you can be a practicing Jew, Muslim, agnostic, Christian, etc., and still benefit from this book. Williamson's work seems to resonate with people from all walks of life.

Newcomers to Williamson? Don't be seduced by the mass media's marginalizing depiction of Williamson as a "New Age guru." I cannot begin to tell you the deceptive press I've read about Williamson. It was the first thing that taught me not to trust the media completely. (The second thing was Noam Chomsky.) I myself bought the media's party line about Williamson for years before I decided to think for myself. (What a concept.) I was so prejudiced toward Williamson that I didn't want to waste my money on her work, so I borrowed one of her tapes from the public library. It blew my mind.

I now own everything by the author. I do not agree with everything she writes (for example, 'playing small,") but I find it easy to take what I need and leave the rest. Williamson's work has helped create the space for radical peace-filled transformation in my life, and for that I will always be grateful. "

Publisher: HarperOne | More reviews: amazon.com

The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict

by The Arbinger Institute

Average Rating:

"I read this while taking a train to a meeting, and when I got back on the train, I re-read the entire book all over. I was absolutely blown away. The authors of the book, the Arbinger Institute, have discovered the secret to world peace--and to domestic tranquility in your marriage and family as well.

Coming as I do from a turbulent family, I recognized the push-pull issues that make people enemies who should love each other. And I recognized when in my life I decided to have peace in my heart and when I chose to be at war in my heart instead--and what the results were. Here is a system of engaging with everyone you meet in order to have peaceful relations.

The book starts with a story about a family taking their paroled drug-dealing son to a desert retreat and rehabilitation program run by an improbable pair of an Israeli and and Arab. The parents drop off the children and then spend a couple of days with the program therapists before leaving the kids behind. Suprise; the book is NOT about the desert survival experience of the kids; we only learn of this obliquely throughout the book. Instead, the parents learn how to deal with each other and their world with a peaceful heart. The system of teaching involves some parables, stories, charts and a pyramid starting at the top with "correction" but supported below with teaching, listening, and otherwise dealing lovingly with your fellow man.

The philosophy of Martin Buber is some of the basis for these important teachings. Buber stated that people either dealt with each other as I-YOU or as I-IT. When people deal with others as "it", we get everything from the person who is yapping on a cell phone while they carelessly careen through a parking lot to wholesale slaughter of people for being the wrong religion or race. From Buber's teaching, we learn how peace in our hearts is when we deal with I-YOU and when we turn our hearts to war, we've turned them to I-IT.

This is a most important book and I recommend that everyone get a copy of it and read it. And read it again. Your life will NOT be the same. It will be better."

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. | More reviews: amazon.com