Books
There are a few books I have discovered over the years that I have found to be profoundly helpful in my spiritual understanding:
Disappearance of the Universe, by Gary Renard
My favorite spiritual book. Fun to read, offering one amazing insight after another. It's refreshing because Gary is a down-to-earth guy, a professional guitar player and stock trader--a pretty ordinary fellow. Gary finds himself face-to-face with a pair of ascended masters who appear on his couch out of thin air one day when he opens his eyes after meditation. One of them was an attractive woman who introduced herself as Pursah; her partner was a man named Arten. Pursah explained to Gary that the two of them were "appearing to [him] as symbols whose words will help facilitate the disappearance of the universe."
Gary maintains to this day that the visits were real. For me, it doesn't matter either way. What matters is whether what Arten and Pursah (and Gary) have to offer has value.
The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle
For me, there were a lot of "ah-ha" moments in "The Power of Now." This is a personal story of Eckhart's transformation from living the life of a tortured soul, unhappy and alone, to that of a peaceful, lighthearted being of deep wisdom. For him, the change occurred quite suddenly. In 1977, at the age of 29, he says, "I lived in a state of great fear and continuous fluctuation between states of depression and high anxiety." The intensity of his depression and despair reached a climax in the middle of the night. He writes:
I couldn't live with myself any longer. And in this a question arose without an answer: who is the 'I' that cannot live with the self? What is the self? I felt drawn into a void. I didn't know at the time that what really happened was the mind-made self, with its heaviness, its problems, that lives between the unsatisfying past and the fearful future, collapsed. It dissolved. The next morning I woke up and everything was so peaceful. The peace was there because there was no self. Just a sense of presence or “beingness,” just observing and watching.
So began a new life in which the heaviness of his past egoic self had dissolved, unable to sustain itself under its own weight. Eckhart's message is that the past and future are imaginary; the only substance the past seems to have is created in our own minds as we weave stories around memories, memories which are processed in the now. Likewise, the future is mind-created, as our minds fabricate possible scenarios based on memories of the past. He says, in fact, that true immersion in the present moment is the key to inner peace. When we learn to "accept what is," and drop all resistance, the deep peace we seek can be experienced.
The Compassionate Presence, by Stephen R. Schwartz
I was fortunate to have experienced Stephen and his work in a personal way prior to his passing in 1993. He lived the principles of unconditional love, healing many minds through his gentle wisdom and teachings of the power of forgiveness. This book is high on my "favorites" list. Stephen was the kind of teacher that was so tuned in, one could simply transcribe the words that came out of his mouth and publish a book.
