The great thing about January 1 is that while it has no real significance in the natural cycle of things, it is a time that people have picked as a day of great renewal. The date of the new year is not based on moon cycles or seasons, but has been celebrated for thousands of years as a refresh date. While on the one hand, it’s a time set aside to reflect on the passing year, it’s also a chance to look towards the future with a new perspective. You are one year older, but also, you are one year more experienced in life, and with the help of the books below, maybe even one year wiser and stronger.
Getting Your Life on Track
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Maté, MD
Based on Dr. Gabor Maté’s two decades of experience as a medical doctor and his groundbreaking work with the severely addicted on Vancouver’s skid row,this Canadian bestseller radically re-envisions the misunderstood field of addiction by taking a holistic approach. Dr. Maté presents addiction not as a discrete phenomenon confined to an unfortunate or weak-willed few, but as a continuum that runs throughout (and perhaps underpins) our society; not a medical “condition” distinct from the lives it affects, rather the result of a complex interplay among personal history, emotional, and neurological development, brain chemistry, and the drugs (and behaviors) of addiction.
Finding the Words by Susan P. Halpern
An essential book for finding one’s way back to intimacy from conflict, nagging discomfort, and anger, Finding the Words teaches methods of responding, negotiating, and compromising. Drawing on her years of experience as a psychotherapist, wife, and mother, Susan Halpern explains how to communicate with care for a wide range of real-life and often common difficult situations, from parenting woes to sibling rivalries, and financial troubles to joint-living irritations.
Feeding Your Spirit
Spiritual Clearings by Diana Burney
Through spiritual clearings, Diana Burney proposes, we can release our own negativity as well as guide unseen negative forces toward the light. The book’s clearing rituals include prayers that invoke the assistance of higher beings such as archangels and Ascended Masters, incantations and chants from different spiritual traditions, the visualization of divine light and the violet flame, and the expression of gratitude. Additional meditation and visualization exercises, descriptions of divine beings, and a summary of the universal laws provide readers with a clear path to fulfilling their potential and creating a personal environment of confidence, creativity, love, and acceptance.
A Personal Aristocracy by True Blue Indigo
Unlike those who use Western civilization and aristocratic values to advance a backward-looking agenda, author True Blue Indigo—an off-the-grid roamer with an iPhone, Indian-Hippie with a love of Italian Renaissance ideals, and itinerant scribe—has an expansive purpose in mind: to offer a tonic for the pervasive rudeness and self-absorption of modern culture. He gives those interested in New Thought, consciousness, and spiritual growth a fresh perspective on classical values, encouraging them to explore beauty and graciousness that surpass the old forms by imbuing the best of the secular with spirit.
Looking Ahead
The Cracking Tower by Jim DeKorne
Beginning with a lively memoir of the author’s experiences in the ’60s, the book goes on to explore apocalyptic thinking through perennial philosophy, shamanism, gnostic mysticism, the body as a vessel of consciousness (and death as “an extended out-of-body experience”), and psychedelics. Shaping the discussion is the fascinating metaphor of the cracking tower, an apparatus for distilling gasoline, as a vehicle for distilling our awareness. Rather than speculating on what might occur in 2012, DeKorne proposes vigilance of a more introspective sort. “The important thing,” he says, “is to ignore the finger and strive to comprehend the moon,” to see what our apocalyptic tendencies reveal about ourselves.
Shamanic Astrology by Lucie Harmer
Western-based astrology has a provocative counterpart in the Native American medicine wheel, with a spirit animal equivalent for each sign of the zodiac. In this thoughtful book, Lucy Harmer shows readers how to find the spirit animal that corresponds to their birth sign, providing detailed descriptions of the strengths and weaknesses of each of the twelve spirit animals. Once readers determine their spirit animal, they can better understand their relationships with family, friends, and associates, while discovering those people who are part of their animal clan and the various compatibilities and incompatibilities between all the spirit animals.
Excellent read!