Four Books That Changed My Life
Four books have affected me like no others — these books were magical for me. They changed my life.
THE ART OF TRUE HEALING by Israel Regardie.
I found it in my early 20s, when I was in terrible health from the stress of college and the consumption of way too much crystal methedrine.The first time I did the simple healing exercise Regardie calls “the Middle Pillar Meditation,” I got up from my chair after and felt completely different than I had felt when I started. I was far more relaxed. I felt lighter, somehow. I felt healed.
I have come to believe — not by making any leap of faith, but instead through my own experience — that the Middle Pillar healing meditation is one of the main reasons I have been so healthy all my life.
The book taught me to see and feel the tremendous healing power of our imagination and our thoughts.
AS YOU THINK by James Allen.
I was ready for this book somewhere in my late 20s — the opening poem sums it all up:
Mind is the master power that molds and makes
And we are mind, and evermore we take
The tool of thought, and shaping what we will
Bring forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills
We think in secret and it comes to pass
Our world is but our looking glass
The book is a crash course in manifestation. Our minds are the master power. And every one of us has a creative mind. It’s just a matter of focusing it in the right direction, and using it in ways that create a thousand joys rather than a thousand ills.
There is one other great poem in the book that summarizes it all as well. It’s by the brilliant Emma Wheeler Wilcox:
You will be what you will to be.
Let failure find its false content
In that poor word ‘environment’
But spirit scorns it and is free.
It masters time, it conquers space
It cows that boastful trickster Chance
And bids the tyrant Circumstance
Uncrown, and take a servant’s place
The human will, that force unseen,
The offspring of a deathless soul
Can hew its way to any goal
Though walls of granite intervene
Be not impatient in delay
But wait as one who understands
When spirit rises and commands
The gods are ready to obey
THE POWER OF PARTNERSHIP by Riane Eisler
Eisler gives us a “lens,” as she calls it, to view all of our human behavior and see whether we’re operating in the “partnership model,” based on respect, or “the dominator model,” where there is exploitation or domination, based on fear and the need to control.
This book gives us so many solutions to our own problems and to global problems as well. The more you live and work in partnership with people, the happier, healthier, and more successful you will be.
The key is to find the ways to work in partnership with everyone we encounter in life. The key is to find partnership in every one of these areas of our lives — because domination and exploitation is the problem, and partnership is the solution:
Our relationship with ourselves: We start here, coming into partnership with ourselves. For a lot of us, it means getting that inner critic to support us rather than undermine us. Our inner critics have a great deal of wisdom, and can be very helpful when they’re on our team, supporting us taking whatever steps we need to take to realize the dreams we may have.
We need to be as gentle, accepting, and loving with ourselves as we are with our children and best, intimate friends, and forge great working partnerships with the creative child and the spirit and genius we all have within.
Our intimate relations with family and friends: Is there any kind of domination going on? Or do we have partnerships with family and friends? Is there respect? Does everyone have a voice? Is love acknowledged in some way?
Our work and community relationships: Do we have supportive partnerships with those we work with? Or are we still involved in a subtle or obvious system of domination or exploitation in some way (or ways)?
Our national relationships: Do we have successful partnerships with other Americans (or whatever country you’re from)?
Our international relationships: The bottom line is that in the countries we have a good partnership with, there is long-term peace and prosperity, and in the countries where we’re dealing as a dominator and exploiter, we have nothing but endless problems, anger, and hostility.
Our relationships with nature: Dominator or partnership? We have a partnership with our mother Earth that cannot be ignored, and we have to find better ways to change all of our current dominator-based behavior.
Our relationship with spirit: Are we fully aware that we have a spiritual nature as well as a physical, emotional, and mental nature? Do we acknowledge and respect our spiritual nature? Do we let it guide our lives?
To fully realize our dreams, whatever they may be, we have to apply the partnership model in every relationship we have. The more we live and work in partnership, the more harmony, rather than conflict, we create in our lives and in our world.
The Power of Partnership ends with a great challenge for all of us:
“This is the Great Work ahead of us: the reinvention, the re-creation, of society so it is built on partnership rather than domination. Partnership — from our families to the family of nations.”
THE POWER OF NOW by Eckhart Tolle.
This has been my main source of ongoing guidance since it was first published. For months I reflected on one phrase:
“To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness”.
And then I found the phrase that I will probably continue to reflect on for the rest of my life, because it contains all I need to live a wonderful life:
“The happiness that is derived from some secondary source is never very deep. It is only a pale reflection of the joy of Being, the vibrant peace that you find within as you enter the state of nonresistance.
“Being takes you beyond the polar opposites of the mind and frees you from dependency on form. Even if everything were to collapse and crumble all around you, you would still feel a deep inner core of peace. You may not be happy, but you will be at peace.”
The Power of Now is filled with some of the most brilliant teachings ever written. He has put the perennial philosophy, the greatest teachings in the world, in words that are perfect for our age, and for all times as well.
I have no doubt that people will continue to study that book for many generations to come, and they’ll continue to find grace, ease, and lightness because of it.
