M  I  N  I    R  E  A  D  E  R  

   

8  Books  That  Belong  on  the    Shelf  of  Every  Spiritual  Seeker

Compiled  &  Edited  by  Stan  Madson  and  the  Staff  of  the  Bodhi  Tree

Issue  110  January  2016  

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.   Creative Visualization: Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want in

Life by Shakti Gawain

2.   Zen Therapy: Transcending the Sorrows of the Human Mind by David Brazier

3.   Radical Knowing: Understanding Consciousness through Relationship by Christian de Quincey

4.   Awakening Mystical Consciousness by Joel S. Goldsmith

5.   The Ancestral Mind - Reclaim The Power by Gregg D. Jacobs, Ph.D.

6.   The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe by Lynne McTaggart

7.   The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life: Volume 1 by Drunvalo Melchizedek

8.   Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening

by Ken Wilber, Terry Patten, Adam Leonard, & Marco Morelli

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Creative Visualization: Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want in Life

by Shakti Gawain

“Creative visualization is the technique of using your imagination to create what you want in your life. There is nothing at all new, strange, or unusual about creative visualization. You are already using it every day, every minute in fact. It is your natural power of imagination, the basic creative energy of the universe, which you use constantly, whether or not you are aware of it. In the past, many of us have used our power of creative visualization in a relatively unconscious way. Because of our own deep-seated negative concepts about life, we have automatically and unconsciously expected and imagined lack, limitation, difficulties, and problems to be our lot in life. To one degree or another, that is what we have created for ourselves. This book is about learning to use your natural creative imagination in a more and more conscious way, as a technique to create what you truly want—love, fulfillment, enjoyment, satisfying relationships, rewarding work, self-expression, health, beauty, prosperity, inner peace, and harmony . . . whatever your heart desires. The use of creative visualization gives us a key to tap into the natural goodness and bounty of life.”

– Shakti Gawain So begins Shakti Gawain’s classic on the art of using mental imagery and affirmation to produce positive changes in life. Unquestionably, creative visualization works: First published more than twenty years ago, the book has sold 3 million copies in the U.S. and has been translated into 25 languages. Now it has been completely revised and updated. Gawain explains how creative visualization works, then how best to practice it with meditations, exercises and techniques that can become part of your daily routine. With commitment, each is guaranteed to increase your mastery of your life. Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, And everything your heart truly desires must come to you.

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Zen Therapy: Transcending the Sorrows of the Human Mind

by David Brazier

This is a wonderful book, written with both insight and sincerity. The author, who had some illuminating experiences even as a child, is both a practicing psychotherapist and a Zen Buddhist. To many of us, psychotherapy is its own religion, since we turn to therapy to resolve our most troubling issues. And many ideas advocated by psychotherapists about how to live well and be happy ("Don't be afraid to be selfish!") are so widely accepted, that they can become dogma. Though Zen Therapy is not written in an argumentative tone, Brazier challenges such psychotherapeutic truisms. Excessive self-concern, he says, can be the real problem, rather than the solution. In addition, he makes Buddhist psychology accessible to western readers, and shows how the practice of meditation, or mindfulness, is invaluable both for clients trying to resolve a problem, and especially, for therapists, who can then bring greater openness and awareness to the therapeutic encounter. The crux of the matter is that psychotherapy deals with our conditioning, or the imprints of past experiences. Similarly, the question of conditioning is a central issue of Buddhist teaching and practice. However, while Buddhism offers many methods for working with the mind, it points to a deeper level of awareness that is (and always will be) utterly free and unconditioned. Therefore Zen and Buddhism offer a more radical and thorough solution to our life’s dilemmas. That is not to say that "Zen therapy” attempts to gloss over our problems, or ignore them. In fact, it is a way to intensify our awareness of a problem (as our personal Zen koan) until an answer emerges. Though Brazier’s is not the last word in the dialogue between East and West regarding the mind, it shows readers many new possibilities. He regards his profession as an expression of the bodhisattva ideal of seeking enlightenment in order to help others in the best possible way. There is also some magic here, such as the story of an extremely depressed woman whose mood lifted as she silently observed the spring sunlight shining through a window. Is it too simple? According to Brazier, it happened.

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Radical Knowing: Understanding Consciousness through Relationship

by Christian de Quincey

A radical reassessment of what we mean by "consciousness" and how we experience it in relation to others • Shows the importance of integrating different ways of knowing–such as feeling and intuition, reason and the senses–in our approach to life • Discusses the technique of Bohmian Dialogue where you can learn not only to "feel your thinking," but also to experience true communion with others In Radical Knowing, Christian de Quincey makes a provocative claim: We are not who we think we are. Instead, we are what we feel. Giving disciplined attention to feelings reveals the most fundamental fact of life and reality: We are our relationships. Most of us think we are individuals first and foremost who then come together to form relationships. De Quincey turns this "obvious fact" on its head and shows that relationship comes first, and that our individual sense of self–our "private" consciousness–actually arises from shared consciousness. This shared, collective consciousness is at the heart of indigenous ways of life and their worldviews. De Quincey explains that participating in shared consciousness literally builds the fabric of reality, and that understanding this process is key to unlocking our potential for higher consciousness and spiritual evolution. He presents the technique of Bohmian Dialogue, developed by groundbreaking quantum physicist David Bohm, as one method for experiencing this powerful process. He also explores the mystery of synchronicity, offering a new understanding of the relationship between matter and mind and the underlying nature of reality.

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Awakening Mystical Consciousness

by Joel S. Goldsmith “To know the nature of spiritual power, we must practice it. Talking about water will not

quench thirst; we must drink it.” – Joel S. Goldsmith

This book provides essential principles to enable readers to cope with the personal, communal, national, and international problems that beset us on all sides. It deals in a practical way with living the spiritual life in a material world. Blending profundity of thought with a refreshing simplicity of approach, Joel Goldsmith shows readers how to approach most effectively such concerns as physical well-being, human interrelationships, and problems of lack and limitation. Special emphasis is placed on attaining a consciousness of spiritual power that frees one from fears that engulf the whole world: Fear of disease, of economic disaster, or war–that is, fear for the survival of civilization. Goldsmith provides the means to overcome negative impulses in the self and negative forces in the external world by tapping into our innate spiritual power. Awakening Mystical Consciousness shows how to apply the discipline of the Infinite Way that in turn reveals the healing presence of the Holy Spirit–the experience which is the key to mystical consciousness. From this enlightenment comes the opportunity to open ourselves to the spiritual power that can bring in its wake personal wholeness and world stability. Joel S. Goldsmith (1892-1964), a monumental teacher of practical mysticism, devoted most of his life to the discovery and teaching of spiritual principles, which he called the Infinite Way.

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The Ancestral Mind - Reclaim The Power

by Gregg D. Jacobs, Ph.D.

Why, at a time when we are better off materially and live longer than any generation in history, are depression and stress reaching endemic rates? Emerging scientific research suggests that the answer to this modern paradox may lie within the brain itself. Our emotional well-being is suffering due to our over reliance on the thinking mind – the rational, verbal, self-conscious part of ourselves that has been responsible for some of our greatest achievements – and our separation from a deeper, older part of humanity.

The ancestral mind–our preverbal, intuitive, unconscious emotional mind–contains a deeper, wiser instinctual wisdom that has guided us unerringly for millions of years. Our disconnection from the ancestral mind is a root cause of the stress of modern life.

Based on twenty-five years of research and clinical practice, and a synthesis of recent findings in neuroscience, anthropology, and mind/body medicine, this book offers a practical program for reengaging with this indelible part of our being. It explains how we can access life-enhancing positive emotions, achieve a closer harmony of intellect and emotion, connect with a more intuitive intelligence, and reawaken ancient sources of wisdom and health.

“The Ancestral Mind is a resource that balances and mitigates the harmful qualities of the

Thinking Mind; it doesn’t replace it. It is possible to live in a high-tech society–we don’t seem to have much choice–while also living a greater part of our lives in touch with the healing properties of the Ancestral Mind. But the fact remains that our mind has not caught up with our technology. We now live in a world very different from that which our mind was designed to inhabit–and the conflict is killing us…..By the time you finish this book, you will have gained the knowledge and skills you need to access the Ancestral Mind and to harness its power. I’ve tried to make the techniques for getting back in touch with this ancient part of ourselves easy to incorporate into your life, putting their benefits well within reach.…What I hope you will find here is a key to open the door to a new level of consciousness, one that allows you to move toward self-actualization by using your mind’s capacities to the fullest."

– Gregg D. Jacobs, Ph.D.

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The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe

by Lynne McTaggart

The Field explores the new emerging scientific ideas that challenge what we believe about how the world works and how we define ourselves. For a number of decades respected scientists in a variety of disciplines have been carrying out well-designed experiments whose results offer us fascinating information about the central organizing force governing our bodies and the rest of the cosmos. Lynne McTaggart writes, “At our most elemental, we are not a chemical reaction, but an energetic charge. Human beings and all living things are a coalescence of energy in a field of energy connected to every other thing in the world. This pulsating energy field is the central engine of our being and our consciousness.”

On our most fundamental level, we and all living things, are packets of quantum energy constantly exchanging information with the universal energy field. Thinking, feeling–every higher cognitive function–has to do with quantum information pulsating simultaneously through our brains and body. We are in correspondence with all aspects of our world and the cosmos and we literally resonate with it. We are starting to appreciate that we are the same stuff as the cosmos and we are engaged in a creative dance of subtlety and beauty woven with intelligence.

This book is intended for a lay audience and investigative journalist Lynne McTaggart has a comprehensive and creative ability to describe quite complicated notions and radical ideas with candor and clarity. We may not fully understand every aspect but we cannot but be impressed and excited by the extraordinary new sense of the possible. The Field is a highly readable scientific detective story that offers a stunning picture of an interconnected universe and a new scientific theory that makes sense of supernatural phenomena.

“Our brain primarily talks to itself and to the rest of the body not with words or images or

even bits or chemical impulses, but in the language of wave interference: the language of phase, amplitude and frequency – the ‘spectral domain’. We perceive and object by ‘resonating’ with it, getting ‘in synch’ with it. To know the world is literally to be on its wavelength.”

– Lynne McTaggart

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The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life: Volume 1

by Drunvalo Melchizedek

"Exactly how to connect with one's higher self is what many people, including myself, have

been trying to understand. Many people who have somehow made this connection often don't know how it happened. In this course I'll attempt to explain exactly how to connect with your higher self. I'll do my best."

– Drunvalo Melchizedek The Ancient Secret Of The Flower Of Life is an edited transcript of a workshop that Melchizedek presented to Mother Earth from 1985 to 1994, and is a synthesis of mystery, evolution, geometry, consciousness, reality, otherworldly dimensions, astronomy, archeology, and psychic phenomena. Specifically, the Flower of Life is a geometrical design that leads us in and out of physical existence. It is the creation pattern of all life in the universe. Though this may appear as news to us now, Melchizedek assures us that we were once familiar with the Flower of Life since we experienced the universe on many different levels and lived in many dimensions. In parts of his book, Melchizedek discusses the history of humanity's fall to the third dimension on planet Earth and the evolution of the modern world. He also points to the danger that man presents to the Earth, Egypt's role in the evolution of consciousness, the beginnings of Christ Consciousness and how love is, and will be, humanity's saving grace. The book’s many illustrations support the information that Melchizedek reveals. In the last 25 years, Melchizedek has studied with over 70 teachers from all belief systems and religious persuasions. He continues the delineation of his work in the second volume of The Secret of the Flower of Life.

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Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual

Awakening

by Ken Wilber, Terry Patten, Adam Leonard, & Marco Morelli

Over the last several years, Ken Wilber has developed an integral “theory of everything” that makes sense of how all the world’s knowledge systems–East and West, ancient, modern and postmodern–fit together and can elevate our awareness. Drawing of science, psychology, human development, spirituality, religion, and dozens of other fields, Integral theory is a revolutionary framework for understanding ourselves and the world we live in. At last, this book is a complete guide showing how to use Ken Wilber’s acclaimed Integral Approach to design a personal program of transformational practice. Integral Life Practice (ILP) is a customizable, user-friendly approach to spiritual practice that meets the needs of the whole person by including not only spiritual activities like meditation and prayer but also exercises for body, mind, and shadow (any part of ourselves that we repress or deny). ILP allows practitioners to choose the practices that most suit them, in a mix-and-match style, adapted to whatever belief system or religion they may already be following. With its combination of exercises, explanations, theory, examples, personal stories, and illustrations, Integral Life Practice will be the bible of a truly integrated approach to practice for years to come.

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MINI  READER  

Compiled  &  Edited  by  Stan  Madson  and  the  Staff  of  Bodhi  Tree  

Published by Bodhi Tree House LLC

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