What a straightforward (as it gets) ancient text on Chinese philosophy and appreciated commentary by Jung comparing the East to the West with guidance of how to approach the East as a Westerner and explanation for what exactly is the Golden Flower, the Christ, the image of psyche as singularity. The breadth of life within the microcosmic orbit (although not called as such here) from Mantak Chia does, I think, originate here (though…

I don’t usually like Kevin Hart’s material. It’s always funny until it’s not. Growing up with him, I remember all of the early work he talks about in the book that didn’t quite “make it” big. Like Paper Soldiers. Like The Big House. I don’t think I ever liked his comedy either. In some later things, like Jumanji. But this book (narrated by Kevin Hart) is not only hilarious but very…

Two great icons speaking together about their own inner landscapes and orientations of the heart through difficult times. I’ll not say much here except that I’m happy to add this one to my “read” audio library.

This would have been much better to go through in print, holding it in my hands. I find I cannot listen to many good books. Then I do not get a chance to really be with them. Wendell explores richly how our present thought and forgetfullness about our past has come to be. He helped me take a good look through two different conversatons/realtionships in time at our racism, shared sufferings, and incredibly complex present day efforts with both successes and failures at meeting our own ideal of culture, equality, freedom, and self-respect.

Tantra is usually associated with sex or sexual positions or some kind of cult sex ritual. But that is not even close. The principles of Tantra are taught in various other times though history and in places which had little to no contact with each other: that I am the whole and not just a part thereof. The wave on the ocean goes back to the ocean and yet what could the ocean be without the wave? They’re inseperable. In that spirit, I am the wave and I am the ocean…

Highly recommend this one for anyone with a fundamentally religious background or near cultural/family influence. It does such a good job of showing the history of the eucharist as it was before the catholic church for many thousands of years. History did not begin 10,000 years ago around the time homosapiens began writing things down and staying in one place and farming. We have been here…

This guy. Sadhguru was likely my first foray into mindfulness, yoga, and tantra. He’s a brilliant man and excellent teacher. I found this very well done and likely worth a relisten. Practical wisdom. Principles of philosophy explained perfectly clear. He can get a little blingy for me but then I remember, I’d probably be a whole lot more blingy than that. Highly recommend. If there is just one book, this is a solid pick.

My neice died some time ago. And my partner and I experienced the loss of a womb child, a great possibility, an incredible committment which called forth something beatufiul of the Father in me. My partner and I read this together. But it was my neice’s death that this book helped me with. Because there is a kind of unwell which is possible in greif which may not be without a great and unexpected loss…

After a couple hundred pages, I just wanted to let myself enjoy it for fun. But it was too much of the same thing repeatedly. That said, the reason I ordered and gave it the best I had available is because it was referenced in another reading I appreciated as being the greatest literary example of the power (and hilarity) of personal story and perspective. That said…

I feel there was in my childhood a kind of shadow cast on E.A.P. containing horror and death and stories of curdlywordly spiders. As if that were reason not to investigate, not to seek and find. And so, of course, I did not. For there was a great stretch and I am not too unaware of the tendency to relapse when I would avoid whatever was given a warning…

My thoughts/feels while reading were apparent but only clear in retrospect. As if, I wasn’t sure if I was getting it. I have to say I was tempted to put this one down from the first 20-30 pages given how bounced around I felt. I’m glad I didn’t…

My first of VA Woolf. The most important thing for me here is that to create, to write or whatever, one needs a great deal of time to one’s self. And to have time, one needs money (or to be supported). Virginia was the heir to a perpetuity…

It follows well on the last post to read one published some decades later touching on the same. The Title, “Sennex & Puer”, my first of James Hillman’s. This is another Jungian analyst but here I think is a new paradigm…

Another of von Franz, excellent analysis of The Little Prince and other stories. There is an eternal child in me, to be sure…

Philosophical novel, asks and answers a large number of questions. Or rather points towards the answers as these are the truly cursed questions, the unanswerable. Ones I’ve wrestled with the…

Everyone has a bit of Jekyll in them. Everyone a bit of Hyde. Timeless I think given humanity’s inner and outer struggle with identification of and with good vs evil…

Again, Camus, really awesome work! It is no wonder you won the Nobel for literature just one year after publication. To think that the works of Camus (among others, Nietzsche, Jung, etc.) had been in circulation for almost 50 years during my Christian belief and pretend leadership in college astounds me. Though I think it was important to go through “as if”…

My second of Von Franz’s. She was the co-founder of the original Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, perhaps Jung’s most famous student and colleague, and certainly the preeminent on interpretation of fairy tales among other topics. Touching the relationship with my own anima is guaranteed while reading her analysis…

My first reading of Eric Fromm’s. Published in 1956. Bits about homosexuality and allusions to gender norms of the time made me look! Minor distractions really. I believe I came across this googling something like ‘best fucking books ever written about love…

How did I get here? Serendipity. On a bookshelf in my office is a pewter statue of Sisyphus rolling his ball up the infamous hill. It was to commemorate my retirement from one work life and the entering of another with unforeseen successes and failures. The eternal struggle between efforting and finding meaning…