For my second post in this Category, I’d like to recommend two titles to you. By and large, they both address Spiritually relevant themes and as such, employ the same vocabulary and nomenclature which you will find common on this Blog. I have found them to be “self-revealing” as each, in its own “voice,” has made me look at some interesting and less than wholly appealing aspects of myself. I am very grateful for having come across them. I shall be taking several of their excellent observations and applying their varied slices of wisdom, in the gentle correctives they suggest, through which I hope to enhance my own connection to Spirit and to live, therefore, accordingly.
The first of these works is Transcendence of the Western Mind: Physics, Metaphysics and Life in Earth by Samuel Avery (Copmpari, 2003).
Avery, who bills himself as an activist, author, builder, farmer and philosopher, makes a convincing case that life transcends matter. To embrace Avery’s line of thought demands nothing more than a transcendence of the Western understanding of reality. In his view, we should not begin with a world and then try to figure out how life evolved within it. Rather he would have us understand that a better approach to reality begins with life and then, based upon that premise, try to figure where the world comes from. In other words, he suggests that the world arises from within us. It’s a common Spiritual perspective, but deliciously and engagingly told.
Avery has two other titles that I’m also interested in, but have yet to read: The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness (1995), and The Buddha and the Quantum: Hearing the Voice of Every Cell (2011). “Transcendence” is also available on an excellent audio at Audible.com.
The second recommendation is by John Izzo, Ph.D., The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die. Based on a highly acclaimed public television series, Izzo has gleaned a formula for living a more purposeful life from interviews he conducted with some 230 people, ages 60-106, who had been identified by friends and acquaintances as “the one person they knew who had found happiness and meaning” in their lives. Don’t be put off by the somewhat odd sounding title. The anecdotes he relates provide some very effective guidelines for living what I have suggested is an “Ascended Life” of fulfillment, filled with wisdom, grace and deep happiness. “Five Secrets” is also available on audio from Audible.
I hope you might get a chance to check out one or both of them.