Wholeliness by Carmen Harra Ph.D.

Before Hay House Publishing gave me this book to review, I was unfamiliar with the work of Carmen Harra, Ph.D. so starting this book was moving into unfamiliar territory for me, however I soon found myself on solid ground. I think the premise of this book can be summed up with a sentence in the introduction,

“Transformation of the external world must start within.”

Her title draws attention and comparison to the more commonly used word or spelling holiness. In essence she has drawn from the definition of holiness to bring us back to the original and yet a new understanding.

“The condition, state or quality of being healed, whole, and in harmony with the Divine and all that exists.”

From wikipedia: The English word holy dates back to at least the 11th Century with the Old English word hālig, an adjective derived from hāl meaning whole and used to mean 'uninjured, sound, healthy, entire, complete’.

The book moves back and forth within each chapter from personal to global reflecting the belief that transformation begins within each of us individually and moves outward. She blends together scientific and spiritual information working on the concept of “whole”liness. Each chapter concludes with three sections: “observe,” “pray,” and “act.”

What kept me focused on this book was the way she made the material accessible and personal. She included stories from her life that made the information come alive. There is also a prevailing sense of hope which provides relief from the current economic and political news. I have spent time going back through the book looking at the bits that I underlined. Near the end of the book she writes, “Note that every conflict offers a chance to create an experience of cooperation in which you and another person can further expand you thinking and experience wholeliness.” Imagine a world in which this thought process was commonplace. I hope this book becomes one of those books that is read by individuals so often that it becomes ragged in appearance in personal libraries.

Review of "Married to Bhutan" by Linda Leaming

Have you ever heard of Bhutan? I had never heard of Bhutan until I was given the book to read and review by Hay House Publishing. I was expecting a travel journal but instead read a book about the author's personal growth as a result of living in Bhutan.

This book offers a glimpse into the country of Bhutan, a land locked country at the eastern end of the Himalayas bordering on China and India, but on many levels, it really is only a glimpse. The book is primarily about the personal interior journey of an American woman living in Bhutan leaving behind the traditional comforts of the United States. Her initial struggles to survive in a country that, for the most part, does not have electricity or modern transportation but instead has a government committed to "Gross National Happiness."

There are comparisons between the two countries: "An American friend who visited Bhutan from the U.S. commented on the frenetic level of physical energy everyone seems to have in the U.S. There's all this multitasking, and we have to schedule our days and carefully plan so we get everything done. We talk more in the U.S. The opposite is true here. Multitasking is not in evidence yet, and the pace is much slower. But the mental energy here, the level of awareness that comes from paying attention, from having less stuff around and having less on our calendars, is formidable." p. 80

The moments of reading in which the author really grabs my attention is with statements of her own personal learning: "Learn to be water. In dreams, rivers are symbols of change or transition. The river we live next to, the one I sit beside, is called the Thimphu Tsang Chu, or Clean River. If the water weren't so cold, newly melted from the glacier, I'd wade in and lie down in it, have a baptism. Instead I take a handful and shock my face." p. 141. This sentence took me deeper into my own personal learning and I appreciate that in a book.

The book lacks the depth of descriptive writing to allow a reader to picture and feel the country. However, there is depth of writing in the author's struggle to live in this country and her eventual fall into love with a man and the country.

For more depth about Bhutan go to the back of the book to "More about Bhutan" in which the culture and geography of Bhutan is explained in more depth. My recommendation would be to read that first and then go to the beginning of the book. There is also a glossary at the back of the book with Bhutanese words that are used throughout the book.

This is a good read with an eye toward reading about a personal journey rather than the country. For those of you, who like me, have never heard of this country, you will find your horizons expanded.

Be Your Own Shaman by Deborah King

From the beginning of this book Deborah King challenges the reader's boundaries and understandings of what it means to be a shaman and how to be a shaman. "So what does it mean to be a shaman today? Is it someone who wears a feathered headdress, shakes a rattle, and dances around a fire to the beating of drums as he communes with an invisible world of spirits? It could be. But did you know that the sweet little old church lady with blue hair and clothes from the 1950s could be a shaman to?" In Deborah King's context she uses the word "shaman" to mean "a healer." In her words, " someone who expands his or her consciousness and conducts healing energy to help others resolve whatever is ailing them on the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual planes."

Her book is the starting point and a guide for understanding this type of healing. We must start with ourselves first. She writes from the belief that "everyone one of us is a natural born self-healer--those abilities are there within us, even if they've been dormant. Our task, then, is to learn how to access and use them." And that is the basis for this book: to provide an understanding and practice in how to access and use energy medicine to heal ourselves. Learning about the chakras, of which most of us are familiar at least with the word, is only the beginning of what she covers in this book. Deborah King takes the reader much deeper into energy medicine and provides exercises to start or continue the reader's personal healing journey. Along with all of this, Deborah King intersperses her own story which makes all the information much more accessible.

One of my favorite parts of this book is her chapter on "Healing Through the Ages." I love history but it was both surprising and fascinating to learn the roots of energy healing. Deborah King has also included an index which I find invaluable.

I have started a second reading of this book because there was so much material that I found fascinating. This book is a "keeper." I zoomed through the first reading of this book because of the way Deborah King writes. It is personal, accessible and informative: an unusual combination. This book would be a good read for those in the beginning stages of understanding energy medicine but I believe it would also be useful for people who have already delved deeply into energy medicine.

Thank you to Hay House Publishing for sending me this book at no charge. It is another great tool on my journey.

Ravenous by Dayna Macy

How does love become an obsession and how do you gain freedom from that obsession? That is the journey that Dayna Macy embarks on in Ravenous. Hay House Publishing gave me this book to read and review and I found it to be a quick read. Dayna tells her story of her slow weight gain from childhood to present in a way that is touching, amusing, and informative. Each chapter takes the reader through her obsession with one food, her childhood memories of that food and then a visit to a local spot that centers on that food. The chapters end with a recipe. We delve into chocolate, squash, beef, fresh vegetables, and a broth for fasting while we, as readers, learn that “food is just food.”

The last chapters were my favorites: “The Yoga of Food” and “The Practice of Food.” In those chapters Dayna Macy seems to get at the heart of her food struggle. She wonders what happens if her spirit would tell salami and she is told by her friend that her spirit wouldn’t; that there is a difference between the voice of spirit and the voice of addiction. Dayna is told that there would be a certain dissonance. I found resonance with that idea.

Through all her travels to visit her food obsessions she brings the taste of those addictions into our mouths to taste and she does it in a way that has us standing beside her indulging ourselves both in her memories and in our own. This book took me to Sunday dinners of fried chicken and mashed potatoes and Christmas stockings filled with Dutch shoe chocolates. It is good read wherever you are in your food journey.

The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo March 28 and 29

The readings for the 28th and 29th struck me so deeply that I am sharing them on this blog. It may be just the timing in my life right now that explains their impact but I think that what he wrote is so simple it is profound.

Excerpts:

"It is interesting that the earliest peoples believed in something that we, in our modern hive of manufacturing, have forgotten-that immortality is attainable by shedding. The Dusuns of North Borneo have believed for centuries that when God finished creating the world, He announced that 'Whoever is able to cast off his skin shall not die.'...

Of course, for human beings, dead skin takes many forms, the most significant of which remain intangible but suffocating, such as a dead way of thinking, a dead way of seeing, a dead way of relating, a dead way of believing, or a dead way of experiencing.

In essence, shedding opens us to self-transformation. Paradoxically, those of us who refuse such renewal will, sooner or later, be forced to undergo transformation anyway as a result of being broken or eroded by the world. Very often both occur at the same time: that is, we shed from within while being eroded from without." March 28

Life feels like that...a shedding. It seems that from the moment we are born we gather debris that clings to us. Some of it clings on the inside where it can't be seen and we hoard it, protect it. And then there is that which clings on the outside for everyone to see and look at and sometimes we use that as a protection or a closet in which to hide. For me, the last ten years has been a shedding...sometimes painfully and sometimes joyfully. I have watched snakes shed their skin and it takes time and movement in slow increments. Snakes' vision becomes cloudy during the shedding and they will strike out at anything that forms a shadow in their vision. It takes rocks and gravel to help inch that dead skin off but when it is finally released the new skin of the snake is soft and shiny and ready for the next part of life.

"For sure, living is not easy, and living openly is both wondrous and dangerous. The fact is that shedding, no matter how useful or inevitable, always has a pain of its own. Unfortunately, there is no escaping this underside of growth. So it is not surprising that there are many feelings peculiar to human beings that prevent us from shedding what has ceased to work, including fear, pride, nostalgia, a comfort in the familiar, a want to please those we love. Often we give up our right to renewal to accommodate the anxiety around us.

The Melanesians of New Hebrides contend that this is how we lost our immortality. Sir James Frazer has preserved their story. It seems, at first, human beings never died, but cast their skins like snakes and crabs and came out with youth renewed. But after a time, a woman, growing old, went to a stream to change her skin; according to some, she was Ul-ta-marama, Change-skin of the world. She threw her old skin in the water and observed that as it floated it caught on a stick. Then she went home, where she had left her child. But the child refused to recognize her, crying that its mother was an old woman, not this young stranger. So to pacify the child She went after her old skin and put it on. From that time, human beings ceased to cast their skins and died.

And so, when we cease to shed what's dead in us in order to soothe the fear of others, we remain partial. When we cease to surface our most sensitive skin simply to avoid conflict with others, we remove ourselves from all that is true. When we maintain ways we've already discarded just to placate the ignorance of those we love, we lose our access to what is eternal." March 29

Isn't that a profound image? Imagine a snake trying to slink itself back inside the skin it had discarded simply because the other snakes no longer recognized it. But yet...

I talk about being who I am in the comfort of my own home or with the people who recognize, see and understand the shedding that has taken place over the last several years but at times I head to the closet and pull out that old skin, slip it on and zip it up tight. It does feel suffocating but it also feels safe and easy like scuba gear designed to protect the skin from the elements in the water. I don't know which it is...a fear that I will be seen and not loved or a fear that I won't be seen at all. Perhaps that is the next skin that needs to be shed because either way that is a fear that is based on what is outside of me...just another piece of the life accumulation of debris that needs to be shed. How soft and shiny will the next skin be?

The Angel Therapy Handbook by Doreen Virtue

Recently I was given the book The Angel Therapy Handbook by Doreen Virtue published by Hay House to read and review. I have not read any books by this author but chose this title because I have been working at developing my intuition and this book seemed to call to me.

I was reading this book at the same time I was reading another book that focused on a crisis I was experiencing in my life. It amazed me how the two books dovetailed one another. When I would hit a deeply emotional point in my crisis book, The Angel Therapy Handbook would provide a technique to handle it. I am a newbie when it comes to communication with angels so this kind of response was a complete surprise.

For a beginner at intuition work, this book provided an amazing amount of information in a very accessible manner. The book starts out simply with the names of angels, their hierarchy and their roles. Part Two gives therapy methods detailing how to communicate, how to understand a personal methods of communication, and how to clear the paths of communications. The third section is for lightworkers who wish to start or expand a spiritual based business. For me, this book was a page-turner, particularly the first two sections. This will be on my “read-it-again” list and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in developing their intuition or communicating with their guardian angels.

Father Time

Again, it's been months since a posting but this morning this called to me.

I’ve been living with my father off and on for almost five years now and he continues to be one of my greatest teachers.

Yesterday a member of the Rush Presbyterian Alzheimers study came to visit dad. He became part of the study when my mother was ill and he was trying to get her any medication that might slow or stop her dementia. That was more than 15 years ago. Now he is one of the oldest living members of the study and they come once a year to check on him. One of the questions he was asked was, “what year is it?” That simple question reminded me of the differences between what is important to us and what is important to him. Time is fluid for him. He moves back and forth between this moment and all the past moments. Each is real for him. Why would the number of this year be important? It no longer matters to him what year it is. He is alive in this moment. He marks time by what he sees. Each morning he wakes up and looks outside. What he sees gives him a sense of when it is.

“Looks like there’s snow on the ground. It must be cold out there”

For him, that is all he needs to know about time.

That simple question that Rush Pres asked had me wondering about how rooted we may be or at the very least how I may be rooted in time. Our sense of time and its measurement seems to give us a fixed point from which to move forward and backward. It gives a sense of stability and a framework for our lives. How would we react if that sense of time was stripped away? Imagine for a moment being totally fixed in the moment without the rooting of the year. I looked outside in the dark of the morning with the outline of the trees just becoming evident and tried to step out of my sense of time. For me there was a momentary feeling of disorientation, of quicksand under my feet, of a shifting that left me feeling slightly nauseous. Then, it momentarily smoothed out and there was a lifting and a sense of release. Then it all slipped away and the year was present again.

To me, there is something very important to learn from my father about this sense of time. There is something about the ease in which he moves through it...about his living in the moment that seems to be worth learning. Maybe it is simply his detachment from its importance that is the learning. Perhaps it is the letting go of the rooted feeling of time that is important. The learning beckons me.