“Is the universe friendly?” The answer to this question, once posed by Albert Einstein, is the basis of the book “The Trance of Scarcity” by Victoria Castle. If your answer to this question is “no”, Castle writes, “we feel alone, ashamed, permanently insufficient. We move through the world like dejected spectators; strained, isolated, telling ourselves story after story of our …
Carmen Harra grew up in an environment drastically different than your average American citizen. Raised in Communist Romania, Harra describes her upbringing as “extremely poor” yet with a strong sense of family. “Despite our poverty,” she writes, “we felt rich in our ability to lift each other up through any phase of life.” Lessons from Harra’s upbringing come through in …
There is much teaching these days about the “Ego”, a part of each of us that often can get in the way of our personal growth. One of the best books I have read to distinguish between the unhealthy aspects of the Ego and the empowering thoughts of the Spirit is Sonia Choquette’s “The Power of Your Spirit – A …
Do you have competing thoughts in your head like I do? “Who do you think you are, writing a blog? You are not a writer!” says one of mine. “You have insights to share – go for it!” says another. Colette Baron-Reid’s new book, “The Map: Finding Magic and Meaning in the Story of Your Life” can help you sort …
At first I wasn’t sure what to make of Deborah King’s new book “Be Your Own Shaman”. Coming from a fundamentalist Christian upbringing a word like “Shaman” made me wonder “is this some strange occult book?” And while I now have a much more liberal spiritual orientation my first impression was that King’s book could be on the fringe side. …
When I volunteered to review Marcelle Pick’s new book, “Are You Tired and Wired?” for Hay House I wasn’t sure if I was the right man for the job. Or if any man would be. Pick, an OB/GYN NP, the co-founder of the Women to Women clinic and author of The Core Balance Diet, writes primarily to a female audience …
As a person who has long struggled with weight issues I was especially interested in Dayna Macy’s new book “Ravenous – a food lover’s journey from obsession to freedom”. Ravenous is not your typical diet book. “… diets have always felt temporary to me,” Macy writes, “We talk about ‘going on’ them, and that means we go off them, too. …
Recently I came across Gina Welch’s insightful look into the evangelical church in her first book “In The Land Of Believers” If a movie were to be made of earlier years it might be titled “I Was A Teenage Fundamentalist”! Yes in my younger days I was a conservative Bible believer. Over the years my spiritual outlook transformed to a …
As an avid reader, especially books about spirituality and life, I plan to make short book reviews a regular part of this my new blog. One of the best books I read in 2010 was Mike Robbins “Be Yourself, Everyone Else is Already Taken: Transform Your Life with the Power of Authenticity” Mike Robbins says “We have the ‘disease to …