Thubten Chodron, Don't Believe Everything you Think: Living with Wisdom and Compassion (Boston & London: Snow Lion, 2012) ("Compassion is a very important element on the bodhisattva path. Without it there's no way to benefit sentient beings or attain enlightenment. The chief enemy of compassion is anger because when we're angry at someone, be it ourselves or others, there is no way to have compassion in the mind for them at the same time. As we know from our own experience, anger is disastrous. Each of us can think of times when, overwhelmed by our anger, we said or did things to the people that we cared about the most. Looking back on those words and deeds, we regret them now and know that we never would have said or done those things if anger had not overwhelmed our mind." Id. at 113.).
Bryan R. Donahue (with M. Rutledge McCall), On Borrowed Time: How I Built a Life While Beating Death (North Haven, CT: 2POINT2 LLC, 2012) ("Dying will either make you grow, or make you bitter. No way was I going to allow it to make me bitter. There was much in me that needed attention--and not just physically. I didn't want to be any kind of a burden on anyone, for any reason. I wanted to be normal. And normal begins in the mind: the outlook, the mindset, the attitude, which (again) goes back to choice. Choice includes those little daily decisions we each must make to self-regulate our responses in order to overcome the natural human tendency to give in to the negative pressures that life continually throws our way." Id. at 64.).
Donald M. Epstein, Healing Myths, Healing Magic: Breaking the Spell of Old Illusions; Reclaiming Our Power to Heal (San Rafael, Ca.: Amber-Allen, 2000) (I don't think there is much substance to this book. "When we are frightened, confused, or lost in despair, we often turn to our 'myth spinners' to give meaning to our experience. In naive cultures, such individuals are usually shamans and other types of healers and magicians. In contemporary Western society, teachers, doctors, therapists, clergy, attorneys, and legislators are among the socially empowered storytellers of myth spinners of our time. Taking its cues from these authority figures, our society then legislates and enforces the prevailing myths to 'protect' us from harm." Id. at 3-4. "Myths have long exerted a powerful impact on the way we view health and healing. In centuries past, we were taught to believe that disease was caused by evil spirits.... Today, we are taught that disease is the result of viruses or faulty DNA." Id. at 6. "The purpose of Healing Myths, Healing Magic is to help you to become the storyteller of your own life; to recognize and empower those stories that help your life flourish, so you can experience a greater level of health and well-being than any previous story has allowed. Your job, as a storyteller, is to act as a catalyst to bring forth a new story--to convert it from myth to 'reality.'" Id. at 10.).
Jane Goodall (with Phillip Berman), Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey (New York & Boston: Grand Central Publishing, 1999, 2003) ("Billions of couplings led to the bodies and minds of Beethoven, Saint Francis, Hitler. The blending and mixing of billions of unique life strands can lead to one person so strong, for good or evil, that he or she can influence the lives of billions of others and change the course of history. It was obvious that every human, every unique being, played some role in the shaping of progress, though only some got into the history books. Throughout every second of every day there was change abroad in the world, change due to the impact of mind on mind; teacher and pupil, parent and child, world leader each one of us carried seeds for change. Seeds that needed nurturing to realize their potential." "I had no doubts that, given time, we humans were capable of creating a moral society. The trouble was, as I knew only too well, time was running out. I had observed the chimpanzees, I had held in my hands the bones of our ancient stone age ancestors. I knew from whence, over millions of weary years, we had come. But we did not have the luxury of millions of years for all humans to become true saints, Not if we continued destroying our environment at the present rate. So, I thought, we would simply have to try, each and every one of us, to become just a little bit more saintlike, That, surely, we could do." Id. at 202-203.).
Carol Horton & Roseanne Harvey, eds., 21sr Century Yoga: Culture, Politics and Practice (Chicago: Kleio Books, 2012) (ugh!! :-(( ).
Anodea Judith, Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System as a Path to the Self, Rev. ed. (Berkeley: Celestial Arts, 2004) (having a PhD is psychology is no safeguard against committing the offense of psychobabble, here masquerading as yoga).
Anodea Judith, Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1987, 1999) (interesting; but the substance could have been conveyed in 100-150 pages, rather than 412).
B. K, S. Iyengar, Core of the Yoga Sutras: The Definitive Guide to the Philosophy of Yoga (London: HarperThorsons, 2012) ("Coordinating the intellect of the head with the intelligence of the heart achieves integration (samyama) between the two. I believe that yoga is the union (samyoga) of these two branches of intelligence. Though Patanjali does not say this explicitly, I feel that this union--of the intellect of the head with the intelligence of the heart--does take place through yoga sadhana. This integration makes consciousness spread in the body from the inner layer of the skin up to the seat of the soul (citta prasadanam), just as water spreads evenly across any surface. This, for me, is yoga." Id. at 15.).
Alanna Kaivalya & Arhuna van der Kooij, Myths of the Asanas: The Stories at the Heart of the Yoga Tradition (San Rafael, CA: Mandala Publishing, 2010) (interesting light read).
Sally Kempton, Awakening Shakti: The Transformative Power of the Goddesses of Yoga (Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2013) (The book's targeted audience is almost exclusively women.There is little, or nothing, in this book which would motivate (straight) male readers to tap into their feminine side and see the goddess(es) within themselves. In other words, would not men benefit from awakening Shakti in themselves? Would not men benefit from the transformative power of the goddesses of yoga? I think so. Missed opportunity.).
Ondrea Levine, The Healing I Took Birth For: An Autobiography of Ondrea Levine as Told to Stephen Levine (Vista, CA: Aperion Books, 2012) ("After a few more appointments at the Cancer Center getting labs and asking questions, my mind reexamined old escape routes that might be available to me. I scared myself silly. I was stressing out with fear. I rummaged through books about healing in our considerable library, which lacking much consolation, were donated to us by patients who had died." "I watched states of mind come and go on advancing waves. And I watched the body try to find a place to hide within itself. I was at first, so surprised that I had yet another round of cancer to go through. Though I knew better than be surprised; 'knowing' is often to superficial to penetrate our deepest fear." "As we used to say to groups in our workshops, 'understanding is not enough.' And understanding does not quite reach where this second cancer experience was about to take me." It took me months before my meditation fully touched ground." "I had to forgive the body for betraying me. I had to send compassion into the explosion of cells in my marrow." Id. at 190-191.).
Michael Roach & Christie McNally, The Essential Yoga Sutra: Ancient Wisdom for Your Yoga (New York: Three Leaves Press/ Doubleday, 2005) ("The worst attachment of all is to be attached to the idea that the things all around us exist out there on their own, concretely, in the sense that they don't depend on how we lead our lives." Id. at ~13. "The serious study of the spiritual classics--burning the midnight oil in the pleasant company of the greatest Masters of history--is not much in vogue in our times. Perhaps it's because knowledge has come to be associated with universities and degrees, rather than years of deeply fulfilling apprenticeship under a true Master." Id. at ~59. "In Master Patanjali's time, people didn't relate to books the way we do: to read once from cover to cover, put away, or toss out. A relationship with a really meaningful book was like a marriage. You sat down and read it, studied it--probably memorized most or all of it. You kept it with you, as a friend and help-mate, your entire life." Id. at ~104).
Vanamali, Shakti: Realm of the Divine Mother (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2006, 2008) ("The wonder is that this modern age seems to have forgotten the Divine Mother's very existence. This the Dark Age, Kali Yuga, in which our increasing engrossment with the physical side of life has torn us away from our metaphysical roots and alienated us from our Divine Mother. The ancients were nurtured by the milk of kindness that is always oozing from the breasts of our Divine Mother, and that is why they had a sense of the higher purpose of human life, a sensibility that seems to be lost in this age." Id. at 8. "[T]he human vital energy of body and soul, when aroused, flows forth in either beneficent or destructive forms, demonic or divine, depending on the nature of the desire that prompts it to externalize. The battlefield of the world is filled with such demonic and godly characters--the Hitlers, the Mussolinis, the Ghandhis, and the Christs. In fact, the universe itself and our individual worlds are just such transformations of the absolute. Each one of us projects our individual shakti (vital energy) into our own little universe--our immediate environment. We color the neutral screen of the supreme consciousness with the dramas and dreams of our inner personalities and get caught in the web of our own make-believe world. The world that we perceive and react to is the product of our own maya or delusion. Thus we are captives of our own maya shakti and get caught up in its dramatic events, delights, an calamities. Whenever we are entangled and enmeshed in any vital or passionate issue, we are dealing with the projection of our own imaginations. This is the spell of maya, of creative, life-engendering, life-maintaining energy. It is also the spell of nescience or ignorance, Since the mind is the chief producer of our personal dramas, ancient Indian wisdom is based on mind-transcending experiences in yoga and meditation, and aims at a total transmutation of human nature, a new awareness of both the world and itself. It seeks to release human beings from the spellbinding projections of their own maya shakti and thus expose their hidden divinity." Id. at 114-115.).
Alberto Villoldo, Yoga, Power, and Spirit: Patanjali the Shaman (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2007) (puff).
