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Halcyon Daze

Books that have changed your life and why

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After doing some rather interesting reading lately I want to introduce myself to a lot more spiritual/ philosophical stuff.

I'd really like to know what writings/literature has changed people's lives and why.

There's so much yet to be learned! :(

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Soo many books have shaped me. Some in big ways, some in small ways.

I think these do stick out from the rest though: (in order of appearance in my path)

Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain by Sheila Ostrander & Lynn Schroeder

This book came along at the perfect moment for me, I was 17 and knew there had to be more to life than appeared at first glance. I threw my heart into understanding this book, and the content rapidly became an obsession for me because I knew I was finally onto something which was confirming what I felt radiating deep from within my very core, that we were all powerful beyond our wildest dreams, that limitations were self-imposed.

Supernature by Lyall Watson

Next to rip through the veil and speak to my soul was this book. The realisation spread. It wasn't just humans that are incredible, everything is incredible. Plants, animals, the earth, the stars, the cosmos, everything has intelligence, wisdom beyond my wildest dreams, and I am here to learn and interact with this exquisite plethora of divine manifestations..

I was able to let go of my fear of not knowing, and embrace my own lack of understanding about how all it works. I realised I didn't need to know everything to feel okay, but learning could offer joy and insight beyond what I had thought possible.

In the cover it says:

"The most beautiful experience we can have, is the mysterious."

- Albert Einstein, in Living Philosophies, 1931.

The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird

I still love this book. Inside the jacket it says: "This book explores the world of plants and their relation to mankind as revealed by the latest discoveries of scientists from many disciples. It includes remarkable information about plants as lie detectors and plants as ecological sentinels; it describes their ability to adapt to human wishes, their response to music, their curative powers, and their ability to communicate with man."

After reading this book, I saw plants in a whole new light.

Many people would brush this and also Supernature off as psuedo-science babble, but for those whom have experienced plant intelligence and plant communication first-hand, it is a real eye-opener. My perspective has been permanently altered by this one.

The Shaman's Body by Arnold Mindell

This book is intense.. Umm, it also appeared at the perfect moment.

Its kinda hard to describe, so I'll have to resort to just including a bit of the blurb on the back:

"Mindell leads us on a 'death walk' through our worst fears and deepest emotional crises to wake our inner shaman - our dreamingbody. Methods of tapping the wisdom hidden in crises free our own internal sorcery for use in our daily lives. These methods enable us to become whole from within and to avoid the phantoms of unrealistic hopes and desires that limit our lives."

I was lost in a very dark, hopeless space when I found this book. It gave me one divine shake up/wake up, which snapped me out of a self-induced spiritual and emotional dormancy which had tainted my experience since very early childhood.

Mind Sculpture: Your Brain's Untapped Potential by Ian Robertson

This book showed me that I had the power to shape the person I am and the way my brain functions.

Simple, easy to understand information about the elasticity of the human brain, shared by one of the world's leading researchers on brain rehabilitation.

"Your brain is physically changed by what you do and think"

"Severe fear and stress can cause brain cells to shrink and die"

"Love grows the brain"

.. I love this, just inside the jacket. I got goosebumps and full-body shivers and I knew I had found a book worth reading when I opened it to find this:

"Listen. Can you hear an aircraft passing overhead? A dog barking? The twittering of birds? In straining to listen, you have just sent s surge of electrical activity through millions of brain cells. In choosing to do this you have changed your brain - you have made brain cells fire, at the side of your head, above the right eye.

By the time you have read this far, you will have changed your brain permanently. These words will leave a faint trace in the woven electricity of you. For 'you' exists in the trembling web of connected brain cells. This web is in flux, being continually remoulded, sculpted by the restless energy of the world. That energy is transformed at your senses into the utterly unique weave of brain connections that is YOU"

:)

I need to find a new book now.

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The where did i come from book. changed my life.

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Love that Lyall Watson Ceres - Lightning Bird is my favourite, I've been to the places he talks about in that book. What about The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks. And The Lorax by Dr Suess.

Edited by vitex
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Probably the one that helped me out the most when I needed it was a book called "Change or Die" by a guy called Alan Deutschman. It's a really eye-opening and well-written book about human nature and why it's so hard to change our ingrained bad habits, even if they're killing us and destroying our lives - and it explores what's realistically needed for change to occur.

Basically it helped me to stop trying to take the world on my shoulders and do it all on my own (and then blaming myself and beating myself up when I inevitably failed) and to actually seek out help and support when I needed it, and it showed me how that actually makes you stronger, rather than weak.

Even if just for the anecdotes and the sobering exploration of problematic and self-defeating human behaviour, I'd recommend it highly.

Edited by gtarman
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Co-creation - Book 4 of the Ringing Cedar of Russia series. All the books in this series had a profound effect on me but book 4 in particular set my heart on fire. Some of the other effects included a sudden deep urge to consume as much fresh home grown or wild fruit, vegetables & herbs as possible. I was very run down from driving in heavy traffic between 4-6 hours everyday plus 8-10 hours work before reading the series but during and after reading I had amazing energy and had so much positive energy/that loving feeling in my heart that work just became a breeze and staff from companies I was doing work for often called up my manager and commented on how they couldn't believe how pleasant & kind I was etc :)

I look forward to speaking with people from Australia who wish to create a Eco-village like outlined in these books.

edit : I should mention that I was doing a pretty low paying labor intensive job before and while reading the first 3 books but when I was starting to read book 4 was when my new boss called up, gave me a job that some weeks paid 10 times more than the previous job & also the fact he was into philosophy, Vedic astrology in particular (the books are about people who are Vedic/Vedruss).

Edited by Leaves
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maybe not what ppl would expect, not ppl that know me well anyhow, but im not sure that exists ...

I was most influenced by a book called "Think and Grow Rich"... it was sort of my introduction to mind science

but I have to admit I discovered that book at a time in my life when I was very materialistic and caught up in egoism...

It's also pretty old school, but based on the science from a much older school...

there are plenty of versions going around of the same info in different covers... I also must admit that I didn't fully grasp the lesson

til I just about lost every material thing I had accumulated in nearly a decade of hard work and stress...

but it was well worth it...

more recently though i've been influenced by Joseph Campbell, and I haven't read his books but

more so been exploring him on the internet... after seeing a vid of him on PBS "Themes of Sacrifice & Bliss", and then seeing a

very wise someone I know post on a fb page "Joseph Campbell saved my life" I decided to explore further

I had his name and that title written on a little piece of paper, in my wallet, for over a year until I saw that comment on fb

at the beginning of this year actually... that man's work and lectures really opened me up to a new point of view just in the past few months...

good stuff! he's got alot of books that i've been recommended...

theres alot of stuff I want to read but im waiting on audio versions lol

I tend to overwhelm myself with my "want to read" list lol

in all honesty, its really rare that I get all the way through any book from cover to cover

but i've read parts of many many many books haha

Edited by Spine Collector

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Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach (1970)

A seagull who frees himself from the shackles of flock life to find God through the perfection of his physical and spiritual self.

A book everyone should read in their lifetime, it's very short so even people who don't read should read it.

Mum gave it to me when I was very young. I still love reading it!

"The only true law, is that which leads to freedom" - Jonathan

Other books like War is a Racket, Smedley Butler; The Doors of Perception, Aldoux Huxley; The Cosmic Serpent - Jeremy Narby, and the Torah Gospels and Qur'an.

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I love this thread already :wub:

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Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach (1970)

A seagull who frees himself from the shackles of flock life to find God through the perfection of his physical and spiritual self.

A book everyone should read in their lifetime, it's very short so even people who don't read should read it.

Mum gave it to me when I was very young. I still love reading it!

"The only true law, is that which leads to freedom" - Jonathan

Other books like War is a Racket, Smedley Butler; The Doors of Perception, Aldoux Huxley; The Cosmic Serpent - Jeremy Narby, and the Torah Gospels and Qur'an.

I saw a 1970's film adaptation of that, where they took hours and hours of footage of seagulls and then overdubbed it with speech, and the whole soundtrack was done by Neil Diamond. It was pretty hilarious...but if I'd been high I would probably have lost my shit completely and still be laughing to this day.

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I think every book i've ever read has changed my life in some small way.

Important books for me were:

The Buddhist scriptures (the penguin short edition) - reading this startign at age 6 made a profound impact on my morality and beliefs about the nature of the world. What better start could a kid have. Christianity scared the crap outta me as a kid, staring at that guy nailed to a cross bleeding from his hands feet really gave me the heeby jeebies.

Reading the Teachings of Don Juan at age 14 was also fairly profound, its like cool spiritual sci-fi. Was probably also a bad influence lol. But it got me interestred in anthropology, ethnobotany, and gave me an appreciation for the role plants played in magic.

And then there was the rest of that series that i read over the next three years .... wow.

Dharma Bums and Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac, was how i felt during my teens years, made so much snse.

Joseph Campbell, "The Masks of God" series, and the audio interviews revealed an amazign inner world to myths and mythology, Alot of us know it, but he was able to very clearly articulate what goes on. Every book by him i thin is incredible, especially his atlas of mythology series. It was campbell that inspired me to really get into the literary canon.

Another book was "the Genus Psilocybe" by Guzman .... I wonder why lol.

The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra, also helped meld interest with shamanism, buddhism to modern physics, and how they are different way of looking at the one picture.

Its interesting, but as i get older books have not had a tendency to have as powerful an impact. I think in part life doesnt allow me to become as deeply absored into the narrative. I used to be able to sit and read for whole days, but now with kids, job, life etc. it just cant happen. I guess instead movies have had to fill the gap.

Edited by obtuse
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The Buddhist scriptures (the penguin short edition) - reading this startign at age 6

You read about Buddhism at age 6? I'm 26 and I still have no fucking idea what those buddhists are talking about.

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I forgot the Kon-Tiki expedition! :) Especially when you get the subtext about a group of desperate guys who are trapped into doing something outrageous in order to change their lives :)

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The Source Field Investigations by David Willcock was very good for me personally but what blew the cap off my cranium entirely was material from the MCEO Freedom Teachings. Holy whack. Yup. words can't even begin to describe it. ok they can seem a bit cult-ish but if mathematics and sacred geometry is your thing, see what the MCEO has to offer. fuck it awakened something in me I still feel throbbing deeply even much much later, despite I don't even wholly agree with everything the MCEO stands for and portrays

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I thought I would copy this post of mine from the Tony Abbott thread...because I feel like good books are wasted on the likes of politicians :P

I feel like if everyone in our country were forced to read and study the following 3 books, that we would live in a much more sane world.

The Righteous Mind - by Jonathan Haidt

Manufacturing Consent - by Noam Chomsky

Merchants of Doubt - by Naomi Oreskes

But I guess the problem isn't that the information isn't out there...the problem is that people don't want to hear it, they want to stick their heads in the sand, and there are too many right-wing politicians who are only too happy to cater to that want and capitalize on it. Shame really, we could be so much better.

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The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

Read around age 14, changed my style of humour and writing and the way I thought about everything. Made things a little less serious for me which depending on your view has been a good or a bad thing.

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Hi Halcyon, what kind of books do you have in mind? If you're more interested in actual philosophical books rather than literature or quite "philosophically pure" spiritual books, then I can name some. Can you narrow down what you mean by spiritual? ie. what book or book have you just read that inspired you to write this thread? Trust me, I recommend books for a living.

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I started a similar thread over at The Nook if interested (http://www.thenook.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=83561). Here are a few books I've been strongly influenced by. Sorry no comments on the reasons why I find them important.

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tsu
Magic: Black and White - Franz Hartman
Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind - Richard Maurice Bucke
The Urantia Book
Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
Essays, 1st and 2nd Series - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Dhammapada
Mysticism: The Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness - Evelyn Underhill
Commentaries on Living - Krishnamurti
The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind - Julian Jaynes
You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation - Deborah Tannen
Reason and Emotion In Psychotherapy - Albert Ellis
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion - James Frazer

~Michael~

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I read some Frank Herbert and Robert Heinlein when I was a teenager. It gave me a better idea about what makes people and our societies tick. That in turn gave me some ideas of behaviours and thoughts I might want to avoid, or pursue, and certainly headed my life down a different path than I might otherwise have taken.

Oh, and Doors of Perception was in there too.

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Body Language by Alan Pease. < good, easy to understand, powerful insights into reading body language, recommended for everyone. good for learning to be more conscious of your own body language when communicating face to face as well as interpreting body language of others

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^ The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy - and all Douglas Adams material - because sometimes you do find yourself chasing a chesterfield sofa though a paddock, and for a brief moment, all your cares and worries are gone, and you're as mad as a hatter and it doesn't matter. (I've read all his books 32 times each and still read them, maybe I'll stop at 42 times, but I might not)

The Hobbit: My first real book - I swore at my primary school teacher that I'm sick to f*ing death of reading about some stupid twit Jane that can run... 'Run Jane Run, See Jane Run - go f*ck yourself Jane you silly twit! So she gave me the Hobbit - which was absolutely well over my head, but I managed to get though it in 3 months, and it sparked my love of all things magical, and from then on I read books daily and still do.

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I started a similar thread over at The Nook if interested (http://www.thenook.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=83561). Here are a few books I've been strongly influenced by. Sorry no comments on the reasons why I find them important.

The Urantia Book

~Michael~

I know you said no comment, but seriously, you really read this book!? That surely would take atleast a year to get through!!

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Ha ha ha, I read The Urantia Book twice in one year when I was 16 (high school didn't much interest me). I read it a total of 6 times front to back by the time I was 21. It taught be some of the most valuable lessons I needed as a youth. I believed it for years, but in a radical turnaround I'm now a mythicist devote of Alvin Boyd Kuhn and Archarya S. (D.M. Murdock), both of whose works belong in my list for sure. All of Kuhn's work's can be found online for free (http://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Alvin%20Boyd%20Kuhn%22), but what I call his "trilogy" is all that's needed.

  • The Lost Light: An Interpretation of Ancient Scriptures (1940)
  • Who is this King of Glory? (1944)
  • The Shadow of the Third Century: A Revaluation of Christianity (1949)

~Michael~

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Osho - The Book Of Secrets

112 beautiful meditation techniques explained clearly with context provided. i stumbled upon this book purely by chance, and it had a huge impact on the direction of my life. it's full of wisdom and i believe it has made me a better person. highly recommend to anybody who's serious about growing as a human being.

Edited by Scarecrow

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