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Indigenous Wisdom
Traditions
Western
Philosophy
Christianity,
Well-Reasoned, Well-Felt
Eastern Wisdom
Traditions
Meditation,
the Heart, and the Mind
Intuition and
Dreams
Indigenous Wisdom
Traditions
The
Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph
Campbell. And anything else by Campbell.
The videos from the beloved PBS series, "The Power of
Myth" are perhaps the most accessible.
Entering
the Circle: Ancient Secrets of Siberian Wisdom
Discovered by a Russian Psychiatrist by Olga
Kharitidi.
Black
Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of
the Oglala Sioux by John G.
Neihardt. One of the classics of Native
American shamanistic wisdom.
Western Philosophy
To
Have or To Be by Erich Fromm. Read
that title again. It's the fundamental question,
isn't it? Do we want to have or to
be? Having knowledge versus knowing.
Having things versus being a person. Having
pleasure versus being in joy -- Fromm dissects history,
psychology, language, and, of course, the Faustian
bargain of capitalism to convey a worldview that had a
big impact on me, oh, eighteen or so years ago.
More to
be added . . .
Christianity,
Well-Reasoned, Well-Felt
Most of us who have had the
teachings of Christ translated and interpreted for us by
people other than Christ himself believe in what
Paramahansa Yogananda once called "churchianity."
If you believe Jesus ever said he was the only "son" of
God or the only way to Him; if you believe the
translations are not only accurate but never actively
misleading; if you believe there are only four Gospels
and they were selected by God rather than by an early
church as something akin to a political platform in the
war over who would inherit Christ's teachings; if you
believe a major emphasis of Jesus was guilt and sin and
you suffer from a lack of self-compassion; then it is
likely that your belief has not been tested, in the
marketplace of ideas, by exposure to other ideas, many
of them with stronger historical, philosophical, and
linguistic support.
The
Gospel According to Jesus by Stephen
Mitchell. Translator and poet, Mitchell brings us
a gospel composed solely of the words of Jesus as
post-King James scholarship suggests he might have
uttered and meant them. A lovely, hopeful
book.
The Complete Jesus by
Ricky Alan Mayotte. All the sayings of
Jesus gathered from ancient sources and compiled into a
single volume, the dust jacket claims, "for the first
time."
The
Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels.
One of the Bible's foremost scholars turns her attention
to the Gnostic Gospels discovered in Egypt in 1945, why
they may have lost out in the debate over who would
possess Christianity, and how they illuminate Jesus in
ways most of us have never seen. Whose version of
Christianity came down to us and why did it
prevail?
Beyond
Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas by Elaine
Pagels. Pagels examines the most arresting and
provocative of the newly discovered "heretical" writings
about Jesus.
The
Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ
Within You by P. Yogananda (Vols. I &
II). The great yogi elucidates "the original
Christianity as taught by Jesus Christ," and how those
teachings are in perfect accord with the major wisdom
traditions of the world such as "the science of yoga" as
taught by Bhagavan Krishna. Revelatory. A
more in-depth complement to his Autobiography
of a Yogi.
Eastern Wisdom
Traditions
Autobiography
of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda,
If you
approach this book on any given day in a churlish mood,
you could be forgiven for feeling stymied by the
author's unceasing generosity toward everyone.
Yogananda, an enlightened master who brought yoga
(including the powerful Kriya Yoga) to the West and
founded the Self-Realization Fellowship in California,
is a delightful guide in this true and fantastical story
of how a master gets to be a master. An instant
classic when published, it's required reading in many
college religion courses. A great introduction to
yoga, Hinduism, and, not least, what the eastern masters
believe Christ was saying.
Meditation,
the Heart, and the Mind
Mark
Epstein, Ph.D., Thoughts
Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy From a Buddhist
Perspective, Going
to Pieces Without Falling Apart, and Going
on Being
These
three jewels, written by a Harvard-trained psychologist
who began meditating in college, brilliantly illuminate
the why and how of meditation practice by using a
language all Westerners inevitably speak --
psychotherapy -- and end up explaining even the process
and rationales of psychotherapy, and its limitations,
better than most books dedicated to the subject. I
recommend these three books to my friends and clients
constantly.
Open
to Desire: Embracing a Lust for Life, Insights
from Buddhism and Psychotherapy
by Mark
Epstein, Ph.D. His fourth book just came
out. I haven't read it yet, but heard him speak on
it in person, and it is the next book I will read.
If you like any of his first three, just know there are
now four.
Shambhala:
The Sacred Path of the Warrior by Chogyam
Trungpa. Trungpa, founder of both the Naropa
Institute in Boulder, Colorado and the worldwide
Shambhala Centers, predicted in the early 1970s that
Buddhism would come to the West "as psychology."
How right he was. The author's voice, in his
non-native English, is as authentic and fearless as the
real warrior's life he exhorts us to. The book
should be read, as I read it, after a major life event,
while sitting outdoors on a high butte overlooking the
dessert.
A
Path With Heart by Jack Kornfield.
One of the most respected and prolific American
practitioners explains the why and the how in moving
fashion.
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
by Eckhart Tolle. The international best-seller,
in clear and simple language.
The Flowering of Human Consciousness(VHS)
by Eckhart Tolle. This 3.5-hour video tape was my
first introduction to the wisdom and childlike presence
of Tolle. In a world of market-hype, his
understatement may surprise you at first, but stick with
him. His explanations are utterly lucid, and you
can see that he inhabits the "spaciousness" and joy that
he often talks about. More expensive than a book,
but worth it.
Zen
Keys by Thich Nhat Hanh. The
Vietnamese master once nominated by Martin Luther King
Jr. for a Nobel Peace Prize, on Zen.
The
Meditative Mind: Varieties of Meditative
Experience by
Daniel Goleman. Not so much a how-to
as a survey of all the meditative traditions, East to
West, Christian to Hindu, and the amazing, documented
benefits.
Intuition and
Dreams
Awakening
Intuition: Using Your Mind-Body Network for Insight and
Healing by Mona Lisa Schulz, M.D.,
Ph.D. It shouldn't be possible anymore to refuse
to accept, with all the supporting science and thousands
of years of wisdom from Asia and our own aboriginal
cultures, that our thoughts and feelings have real
effects in our body, and in fact, are inseparable from
our body. Schulz, a medical intuitive,
neurologist, and psychologist, explains the possible
relevance to our lives of each of our health issues, and
vice versa.
Anatomy
of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and
Healing by Caroline Myss. Your
biology is your biography, and vice versa. Your
body is what you have lived, and can give clues to what
you have lived when your conscious mind isn't sure or is
in denial. Myss, who works in ways similar to Dr.
Schulz, is one of the brightest lights in her field, and
has written several bestsellers on the topic of what she
sees behind her eyes.
The
Holographic Universe by Michael
Talbot. Implications of the new physics,
quantum physics, on the nature of reality itself.
Packed with summaries of scientific theories and
research. I cannot be held liable for this book
completely blowing your mind. It should interest
anyone who got this far down the page, period.
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