5 Books To Elevate Your Consciousness
Since it’s World Book Day I thought I’d share some of the books that have influenced my thinking and contributed in various ways to the development of the energetic methods and practices that you can see in-action on the GOOP Labs on Netflix.
Books stimulate and expand our minds, reduce our stress, increase our memory and improve our focus and concentration. Since our choices in life are heavily influenced by our beliefs and conceptual models of the world, regular reading is a powerful way to keep up-leveling our cognitive understanding of the world within and around us.
If you are looking to learn more about the inner-workings of your body and mind and want new maps, models and practices to raise your energy and expand your awareness, the following books are sure to enlighten you:
The Translucent Revolution by Arjuna Ardagh — This book sheds light on a way of being that might best be described as living in paradox, while remaining at ease. It’s a book about personal and collective transformation and awakening — about changing the world through changing your inner-reality. A “translucent” person, according to Ardagh, is someone who has access to their deepest nature as limitless and unchanging consciousness yet who remains fully involved in the events of their personal lives. Abundant examples of what it looks and feels like to live a translucent life are given, including examples of what translucent businesses, parenting-styles and education systems are like. In essence, this is a book about practical spirituality with a forward by philosopher and founder of Integral Theory, Ken Wilber.
The Biology of Transcendence by Joseph Clinton Pearce — This is a book about what’s possible when human beings evolve into their full potential and how culture and conditioning can limit the brain’s biological development leading to many of the challenges we face as a society today. This was a pivotal book for me when I first read it eighteen years ago because it makes the scientific link between how our inner-world development effects and is affected by culture. Pearce, who died in 2016 at the age of 90, was what I’d describe as a “mystic-scientist” most known for his work on childhood development and the importance of nurturing the whole child in a way that supports their evolution into a compassionate and integrated adult. If you have young children his books The Crack in the Cosmic Egg and Magical Child are must-reads.
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche— We’re all going to die at some point, there’s no way around it. In the West we tend to either avoid thinking or talking about death or we approach it with a naive “I’m sure It’ll work out all right for me” attitude. This book based on the teaching of ancient Tibetan mystics, offers more than just a peek into the Buddhist perspective. It provides practices and meditations along with a roadmap of what to expect and how to approach the process of dying, when it comes to both our loved ones and ourselves. Curious about Karma, near-death experiences and reincarnation? This book covers it all in a warm and gentle way that transmits the wisdom of masters through its pages.
The Dancing Wuli Masters by Gary Zukav — Quantum mechanics is the science of how energy moves and interacts at the subatomic level in the strange world of entanglement, uncertainty and particle-wave duality. Admittedly, this science is confusing even to quantum physicists and Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman is famous for saying, “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” A number of books have been written for the lay-person on quantum physics but this classic is one of my favorites. Originally published in 1979, it’s still my pick for one of the best reads for people interested in quantum physics theories and how they relate to our lives on the macroscopic level. If you are in the mood for a more pragmatic approach to this subject and have a mathematical background, you can knock yourself out with Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum by Leonard Susskind and Mark Friedman.
The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton — Bruce Lipton was my biology instructor when I was in chiropractic college back in the early 1990’s before he received international acclaim, and he’s still as passionate as ever about teaching how the power of consciousness impacts our bodies and lives. This book will leave you knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that your genes do not determine your fate and how the invisible epigenetic influences of your mind and emotions can change your biology just as easily as physical molecules like penicillin can. Lipton cites numerous scientific studies and gives ample examples of how our beliefs control behavior, gene activity and ultimately the unfolding of our lives.
All of these books will get you questioning the Newtonian/materialistic “reality” that you were likely taught in school (where your physical body is somehow separate from your mind and the world around you) and acquaint you with the new paradigm — a universe where limitless possibilities abide and the body and mind are one.
