For pleasure/personal growth, below is what I’ve been reading lately. I’ll not go back in time and post my entire library as there are hundreds of books. This has been one of the most important parts of my life.
Immediate changes if you..
Immediate changes occured in me and my daily activities as a result of having listened to this once and I plan to use and incorporate more now and for a long time…
A brilliant person will forget/overlook
No one is immune. The most experienced builder, surgeon, stock trader still forgets or overlooks something that in retrospect…
One of my favorites of David’s
Do you ever find that you are always waking either a little bit more or that you are just now beginning to come awake after not having realized you’d fallen asleep again?…
Soul medicine
David’s poetry and interpretations of poetry and life are medicine for the mind and the soul. His voice is…
One of the greatest
Eckhart is one of the greatest spiritual masters I have read in my life. I read his sermons out loud to…
2nd Volume: In Search of Lost Time
Each of these is so widly different. I’m in the third volume at present and it is my least favorite thus far. I am totally floored with Proust’s brilliance…
Memory, perception, mental gymnatics, beautiful and terrible
I’ll be reading Proust a long, long time now. In Search of Lost Time (of which this is the first volume) has seven volumes, all of which are long and every sentence (almost) complex. No one writes, has ever written like this imo…
Outlive who?
Me! Outlive my other/old self anyway. This book is full of wisdom and motiviation for living healthier lives. I continue to share it with others…
Fascinating world of fungi
We are here because of fungi and could not live without it and still know so very little.
A mash up of fun and informative short stories
There’s nothing else to say for me. If this is what you’re looking for, why not!? The dirty jobs guy will take you through his own experiences as well as stories he’s heard from others and that are well documented. You often don’t know who or where or even when is the subject of each story until the very end. That part is also fun. You’re thinking, Germany, and you come to find out that it was really Korea. Or Marilyn Monroe, and you were right! That kind of thing.
Masculine/Feminine Sacred Intimacy
John Wineland is one of the greatest teachers of my life on taoist energy principles in the context of intimacy and romantic relationship between the masculine and feminine. He doesn’t know it because I’ve just subscribed to his material and followed over time but I’ve used it and it’s been fantastic. Actually I’m certain it is this work which brought my current partner and her beautiful now 11 year old daughter to me (3.5 years together now). My partner purchased this for me…
How the Tao comes through
What a straightforward (as it gets) ancient text on Chinese philosophy and appreciated commentary by Jung comparing the East to the West with guidance of how to approach the East as a Westerner and explanation for what exactly is the Golden Flower, the Christ, the image of psyche as singularity. The breadth of life within the microcosmic orbit (although not called as such here) from Mantak Chia does, I think, originate here (though…
A riot. Learned a lot about the man I wouldn’t have guessed.
I don’t usually like Kevin Hart’s material. It’s always funny until it’s not. Growing up with him, I remember all of the early work he talks about in the book that didn’t quite “make it” big. Like Paper Soldiers. Like The Big House. I don’t think I ever liked his comedy either. In some later things, like Jumanji. But this book (narrated by Kevin Hart) is not only hilarious but very…
Two of my favorite people in conversation
Two great icons speaking together about their own inner landscapes and orientations of the heart through difficult times. I’ll not say much here except that I’m happy to add this one to my “read” audio library.
My first of Wendell’s
This would have been much better to go through in print, holding it in my hands. I find I cannot listen to many good books. Then I do not get a chance to really be with them. Wendell explores richly how our present thought and forgetfullness about our past has come to be. He helped me take a good look through two different conversatons/realtionships in time at our racism, shared sufferings, and incredibly complex present day efforts with both successes and failures at meeting our own ideal of culture, equality, freedom, and self-respect.
Excellent work on the lineage, purpose, and meaning of Tantra
Tantra is usually associated with sex or sexual positions or some kind of cult sex ritual. But that is not even close. The principles of Tantra are taught in various other times though history and in places which had little to no contact with each other: that I am the whole and not just a part thereof. The wave on the ocean goes back to the ocean and yet what could the ocean be without the wave? They’re inseperable. In that spirit, I am the wave and I am the ocean…
God and drugs and me
Highly recommend this one for anyone with a fundamentally religious background or near cultural/family influence. It does such a good job of showing the history of the eucharist as it was before the catholic church for many thousands of years. History did not begin 10,000 years ago around the time homosapiens began writing things down and staying in one place and farming. We have been here…
Sadhguru - maybe my first foray
This guy. Sadhguru was likely my first foray into mindfulness, yoga, and tantra. He’s a brilliant man and excellent teacher. I found this very well done and likely worth a relisten. Practical wisdom. Principles of philosophy explained perfectly clear. He can get a little blingy for me but then I remember, I’d probably be a whole lot more blingy than that. Highly recommend. If there is just one book, this is a solid pick.
Grief following the death of a loved one
My neice died some time ago. And my partner and I experienced the loss of a womb child, a great possibility, an incredible committment which called forth something beatufiul of the Father in me. My partner and I read this together. But it was my neice’s death that this book helped me with. Because there is a kind of unwell which is possible in greif which may not be without a great and unexpected loss…
Couldn’t finish. Too much nonsense. And yet…
After a couple hundred pages, I just wanted to let myself enjoy it for fun. But it was too much of the same thing repeatedly. That said, the reason I ordered and gave it the best I had available is because it was referenced in another reading I appreciated as being the greatest literary example of the power (and hilarity) of personal story and perspective. That said…