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Halcyon Daze

Books that have changed your life and why

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Beelzebub's tales to his grandson by G I Gurdjieff. Made me feel a bit crazy at first. I was told to read it when I had become more present. I didn't listen. Was also told that there are people out there who had read it twenty times and I would not want to meet them.

I've become one of those people. No turning back from having to face myself.

Certainly a good book to shake things up in a big way. All the certainty about who or what 'I' was went out the window.

Very dated but that's not the point. To actually read it and accept what it is saying at face value seems a bit meaningless as well.

It was written to foster a type of conciousness in the reader that leads to self remembering or more simply put remaining present.

A challenging book to read because as soon as the mind starts to wander into anything but what the book is saying it makes us aware somehow how asleep we really are.

Gurdjieff uses ridiculous words to keep our attention or fall back to sleep.

Actually a good book to read for insomniacs like myself. It puts me to sleep like nothing else.

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I used to be the ultimate bookworm, flicking through our 1983 encyclopaedias, dad's architectural magazines, shampoo bottles in the shower... anything really; but between the ages of 18-24 I kinda just couldn't sit still long enough to get absorbed, and since that point I read again but sometimes can't finish because some other amazing book looks too tempting and I forget the old one to pick the new one up...

Anyway books were my gateway drugs, total absorption when I get into one now. My younger years I preferred fiction (if one assumes that later, more "philosophical" books are actually true; which I don't believe as GOSPEL), and let my young mind make its own judgements on what is fair, what is "wrong", what is worthy of contemplation etc. Also I LOVE letting my mind's eye paint it's own picture, rather than being shown a picture and told what means what. I think that's why I love Stephen King so much, he allows your own visual interpretation in one moment and the next your deepest darkest fears are being artfully excised from your subconsciousness into full visual acuity just waiting for you to go to sleep and come face to face with said Daemon. I personally found that any fear I may have had (I'm not generally a fearful person) was made diluted and eventually obsolete.

Black Beauty when I was 7. The personality of animals and their inherent rights for a good life made clear and firm.

Watership Down when 9. Community, politics, intuition, survivalism, the term "deus ex machina" et al through the voices of a breakaway colony of wild rabbits. Dad wanted me to read it and I still have the original copy we bought together in a second hand book stall.

Early Stephen King books, particular It which I read when 11. Way too many themes to go through... though the ritual of Chud sending the consciousness of the kids through time/space on the back of the Turtle of Time still sends shivers down my spine.

Also The Dark Tower by SK... again way too many themes to type up. Many many more SK earlier stuff...

The Power Of One and Tandia by Bryce Courtenay.

Wilbur Smith books regarding the history of southern Africa via the fictional Courtenay bloodline (not related to Bryce...) fascinated my young self to no end. Also his ancient Egyptian books River God etc... Masterpiece!

The Dice Man, read when 16... also couldn't quite tell if it was a true story and also momentarily contemplated the Dice Life! lol.

The vampire chronicles by Anne Rice; meant a lot more to me when I was a teen, and re-read them recently to find some interesting themes but they're just not as well-written as I remembered.

I'm going to leave this post at my younger readings because there's too many more to remember right now...

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Modern primitives and then Psycotropedia

Just because they were before the internet really took off, and explored concepts that weren't really out at the time.

Then sacred cacti :)

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Happy High Herbs - Ray Thorpe, that's the book that first sparked my interest in the spirit plants and medicinal herbs :) 

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Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra by D. T. Suzuki and Dogen Zenji's Shobogenzo

i finally understand what the Universal Mirror Consciousness is now (I guess)

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https://www.amazon.com/Tuesdays-Morrie-Young-Greatest-Lesson/dp/076790592X  ...this book gave me a different perspective and changed how i think about posessions and time 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Richest_Man_in_Babylon_(book) ...this changed how i think about people and money 

 

http://www.loyalbooks.com/book/aesops-fables-volume-1-fables-1-25 this book helped me form ideas and think about how people interact, the nature of people, morals etc...

 

https://straydogbooks.com.au/products/complete-works-of-banjo-paterson-singer-of-the-bush-1885-1900-and-song-of-the-pen-1901-1941 my old man used to read from this to me when i was a kid an some of these poems/ballads would make my imagination go wild 

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Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness - William Styron | Helped me make sense of depression and feel less alone

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad | The imagery of the Congolese jungle and the sense of isolation gripped me 

Dirt Music - Tim Winton | The book takes me back home when I've lived away from the coast

The Stranger - Albert Camus | A book that profoundly changed my life and highlighted the absurdity of society's expectations regarding dealing with loss

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