Writing
The following are books that transformed my writing practice in one way or another, either by priming the pump reminding me how much I love to write and how important it is in my life and/or by teaching me a new technique or writing skill that improved my life as a writer. Click on each book cover to purchase.
Awareness Practice
The following spiritual teachers and organizations are ones I turn to again and again for guidance. They are each masters in their own way delivering the underlying same message about the power in accessing our inherent joyful naked awareness without the covering of our conditioning. They teach us how to engage in a contemplative awareness practice so that we can come to our own discovery of the Truth. You will find each has a slightly different flavor. I highly recommend them all. I have also listed some of my favorite books they have written.
Cheri Huber – Living Compassion
Cheri Huber’s background is Zen Buddhism. Her specialty is on teaching how to get rid of suffering by becoming familiar with the negative voices in the head and replacing them with your own inner wisdom. She offers a plethora of practice offerings from a radio show to Zen coaching to practice reminders to email classes to online virtual meditations and retreats. We have been on retreat at her Zen Monastery Peace Center in Murphy’s, CA. It is the location where the events in my essay Butterfly Kissing Life took place.
She also has written a bunch of books.
Byron Katie – The Work
Byron Katie had a sudden awakening in 1986 after a prolonged bout of depression. She has no religious or spiritual training per se. Her specialty is in teaching a method how to closely investigating your judgments of others to discover that they are not necessarily true and rather point to the source of your own suffering. I have been at attendance at an evening workshop with her in Seattle around 1997 and spent some time with a group that practiced her work. Over the years I have repeatedly turned back to the power of her simple teaching. I currently am reading and loving her latest book: A Mind at Home with Itself.
Adyashanti – Open Gate Sangha
Adyashanti comes from a Zen Buddhism background, however his teachings are free of any tradition or ideology. He says the Truth he points to is not confined within any religious point of view, belief system or doctrine. He is sometimes affiliated by others with non-duality. He offers some powerful teachings about how to “stop, inquire and recognize what is true and liberating at the core of all existence.” You can find lots of YouTube with him and also audio books that are wonderful to listen to. I attended a daylong retreat with him a couple years ago. I have participated in a couple different online offerings he has.
Eckhart Tolle – The Power of Now
Eckhart Tolle had a profound inner transformation at age 29 that resulted in the book The Power of Now. He is considered the most popular spiritual author in the USA and possibly the most spiritually influential person in the world. His teaching is simple and points to transcending the ego-based state of consciousness. I sat with him at a daylong retreat in Seattle in about 1997. I frequently turn to his teachings and have participated in a couple different online offerings he has.
Joel Morwood – the Center for Sacred Sciences
Many of you have heard that I go on silent retreat every year. I do so with The Center for Sacred Sciences, usually with Joel although with other teachers from CSS as well. Joel had an awakening in 1983. After which he lived at The Great Space Center in the Sierras with Franklin Merrell-Wolff (see below) studying the mystics of all religions. Eventually started the Center for Sacred Sciences in 1987 in Eugene, Oregon. Joel offers an incredible structured silent retreat that is an immersion experience in contemplative awareness practice and draws from the wisdom of the mystics of religions. His retreats have offered me the opportunity to go deep beneath my own conditioning, allowing clarity to surface with insights into my own stuck thinking. During these retreats there are glimpses of an underlying truth of existence–what I would call Naked Awareness—that is shockingly pure. More than anything else going on these retreats have offered the opportunity to dip into for myself what all the teachers above are pointing to.
Franklin Merrell-Wolff – The Great Space Center
Franklin Merrell-Wolff died in 1989. He was the author of the book Pathways Through to Space (later republished as Franklin Merrell-Wolff’s Experience and Philosophy: A Personal Record of Transformation and a Discussion of Transcendental Consciousness), a journal of his own awakening. This book transformed my life and brought me to Joel Morwood (who lived with Dr. Wolff for a year toward the end of his life.) Dr. Wolff also built a stone edifice high in the Sierras called The Ashrama or Stone Church. The story as to how I came to read Pathways Through to Space, how we came to first go on retreat with Joel Morwood at The Great Space Center and how we ended up celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary at The Stone Church is full of crazy synchronicity. Ask me about it sometime!
Christopher Wallis (aka Hareesh) – Tantrika Institute
Christopher Wallis, also known as Hareesh, is a scholar-practitioner with thirty years of experience. His doctoral dissertation focused on the role of the spiritual experience in the tradition of Tantric Shaivism. He currently teaches meditation, yoga darśana(practical philosophy), Tantrik philosophy, Sanskrit, and mantra-science. He is the Founder of Tantrik Yoga NOW. He has an outstanding online beginners class called “Foundations of Tantrik Yoga.” In it you learn basic techniques in meditation and awareness cultivation. It is well formatted, easy to follow and a joy to participate in. I highly recommend it. His book The Recognition Sutras: Illuminating a 1,000-year-old Spiritual Masterpiece is phenomenal for the more advanced awareness practitioner.
Spiritual Memoirs
Finally, for a full list of spiritual memoirs that I have appreciated, see my essay called Spiritual Memoirs: the Truth is out there! written under my pseudonym:
