Recommended Self-Improvement Books: Sustainable Living & Parables
The Minding of Planet Earth
Cardinal Cathal Daly - ISBN 1-85390-579-8
Publisher's Note
Eminent theologian, Cathal Daly addresses the relationship between religion and science, asserting that they are complimentary, not contradictory – both are needed for a completely satisfactory explanation of the world. There is an intentional play on words in the title – ‘minding’ referring firstly to the fact that humans, using their mind, can find traces of mind in patterns of order and law in the universe. Using the same reason, we can conclude that the mind and those patterns in the universe have a common source in the creative mind of God. ‘Minding’ also means ‘taking care of’. God fives humans a share in His own minding of the planet – he places them in the world with a duty of care for earth and its inhabitants. The book pleads passionately for peace, for fair conditions of world trade and for a more equitable sharing of the world’s resources. It pleads powerfully for a responsible use of the earth’s limited resources. The author puts the case for world development aid and reduction of debt burden for poorer countries, insisting that these issues must be faced with urgency if catastrophes on a cosmic scale are to be averted. Yet, the book’s message is one of hope. It celebrates the beauty of the universe, which is a reflection of the beauty of God.
Willie's Impression
Excellent – quoted by me on every workshop – an incredibly lucid account of the importance of the here and now – and important reflections on how we might be a little more caring about the planet we share.
The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight
Thom Hartmann - ISBN 0-340-82243-0
Publisher's Note
As the world’s population explodes, cultures and species are being wiped out, and we have now reached the half-way point in our supplies of oil. Humans the world over are confronting difficult choices about how to create a future that works. Thom Hartmann proposes that the only lasting solution to the crises we face is to re-learn the lessons our ancient ancestors knew – those which allowed them to live sustainably for hundreds of thousands of years – but which we’ve forgotten. Hartmann shows how to find this new yet ancient way of seeing the world and the life on and in it, allowing us to touch that place where the survival of humanity may be found.
Willie's Impression
A blend of history, science, quantum mechanics, mysticism, the book proposes an inner approach to changing our own lives and changing the direction in which the planet appears to be heading. Worth reading.
The Celestine Prophecy
James Redfield - ISBN 0 553 40902 6
Publisher's Note
The Celestine Prophecy contains secrets that are currently changing our world. Drawing on the ancient wisdom found in a Peruvian manuscript, it tells you how to make connections between the events happening in your own life right now and lets you see what is going to happen you in the years to come. A book that has been passed from hand to hand, from friend to friend, since it first appeared in small bookshops across America, The Celestine Prophecy is a work that has come to light at a time when the world greatly needs to read its words. The story it tells is a gripping one of adventure and discovery, but it also is a guidebook that has the power to crystalize your perceptions of why you are where you are in life and to direct your steps with a new energy and optimism as you head into tomorrow.
Willie's Impression
The first of three books, exploring, by way of fiction or parable, a growing awareness that there’s more to ourselves and life than meets the eye. Some of my clients love this book – some hate it – in part, it depends on whether you like Redfield’s writing style.
The Tenth Insight
James Redfield - ISBN 0 553 50418 5
Publisher's Note
The Tenth Insight will take you on a journey into other dimensions….to memories of past experiences and other countries, to the moment before our conception and the birth vision we all experience, to the passage of death and the life review we must all face, to the self-imposed isolation of hell and the love-filled afterlife dimension where the knowledge of human destiny is guarded and held. As you grasp The Tenth Insight your memories will expand to include an understanding of the long expanse of human history and the special mission that we all share to bring humanity to answer, as never before, the unspoken questions that loom over all of human experience and in every human heart: Why are we here? What are we to do? Where are we going? Again, with words that resonate with our deepest intuitions and illuminate both the world outside us and within us, James Redfield offers us all a unique, revelatory and ultimately joyful vision of human spirituality. One that could change your life – and perhaps the world.
Willie's Impression
The second book of three – again a parable or story – continuing the adventure into gaining a greater understanding of how life works and our place in it. Feedback from clients is that this book is strange in parts.
The Secret of Shambala
James Redfield - ISBN 0593 042468
Publisher's Note
The power of our vision and expectation flows out from us as a constant prayer. This power is stronger than anyone now knows and we must master it and begin to use it before it is too late. When James Redfield first wrote The Celestine Prophecy, millions of readers discovered within its pages a life affirming truth about coincidence, intuition and personal destiny. The central importance of how we need to master our thoughts and the effect they have on the course of our lives is told through an adventure based on the ancient Tibetan legend of Shangri-la.
Willie's Impression
In my view the best of Redfield’s three parables – the journey of self-exploration continues into the Himalayas. Can be read independently of the first two books.
Manual of the Warrior of Light
Paulo Coelho - ISBN 0-00-714571-3
Publisher's Note
An invitation to each of us to live our dream, to embrace the uncertainty of life and to rise to meet our own unique destiny. In his inimitable style, Paulo Coelho helps us to discover the warrior of light within each of us. With inspiring short passages, we are invited to embark upon the way of the warrior: the one who appreciates the miracle of being alive, the one who accepts failure and the one whose quest leads him to become the person he wants to be.
Willie's Impression
A book of sayings from Coelho – casting our everyday lives in a “warrior setting”. Nice little insights.
The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho - ISBN 0 7225 3293 8
Publisher's Note
Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist is such a book, with over 20m copies sold world-wide. This is the story of Santiago, an Andelusian shepherd boy who dreams of travelling the world in search of a treasure as extravagant as any ever found. From his home in Spain he journeys to the exotic markets of Tangiers and then into the Egyptian desert, where a fateful encounter with the alchemist awaits him. The Alchemist is a transforming novel about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, learning to read the omens strewn along life’s path and, above all, following our dreams.
Willie's Impression
A beautifully written parable about our search for peace and happiness – a search that leads ultimately to an inner truth.
Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse -
ISBN 0-330-35485-X
Publisher's Note
No other novel in the canon of Hesse’s fiction matches the immense appeal of Siddhartha for the modern reader. Inspired by Hesse’s profound regard for Indian philosophy and written in prose of almost biblical simplicity, it chronicles the quest of the Brahmin Siddhartha for the conquest of suffering and fear. His tortuous road leads him through the temptations of luxury and wealth, the delights of sensual love and the sinister threat of death-dealing snakes, towards the fulfilment of destiny as a ferryman guided by the all-knowing voice of the running river. This new expanded edition includes a comprehensive and illuminating preface by Donald McCrory that combines Hesse’s biography with the writing and meaning of Siddhartha. McCrory also provides a select bibliography, an index of people and works influential to Hesse and a glossary of Sanskrit, Hindu and Buddhist terms for newcomers to the novel.
Willie's Impression
A fictional work that, in many respects, parallels Siddhartha Gautama’s, The Buddha’s, search for enlightenment. Beautifully written, of great insight – a story with a message for everyone.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Mitch Albom - ISBN 0 7515 3614 8
Publisher's Note
‘All endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time’. On his eighty-third birthday, Eddie, a lonely war veteran, dies in a tragic accident trying to save a little girl from a falling cart. With his final breath he feels two small hands in his – and then nothing. He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it. These people may have been loved ones or distant strangers. Yet each of them changed your path forever.
Willie's Impression
A parable exploring the manner in which we are all inter-related and how our actions affect ourselves and others.
The Perfect Heresy - The Life and Death of the Cathars
Stephen O'Shea -
ISBN 1-86197-350-0
Publisher's Note
The fascinating story of the Cathar movement in Southern France, from a revolutionary flowering to its hideous suppression by a crusade of Church and King. A very well informed and highly readable account of one of the great religious and social crises of the Middle Ages, the book offers an intelligent analysis of the heresy and the conflicting theories surrounding it.
Willie's Impression
Wonderfully accessible history of the brutal suppression of the Cathar heresy in the French Langeudoc by the Roman Inquisition. The Cathars had a different perspective of the life and times of Jesus – and the aftermath of the crucifixion – than did orthodox teaching. But, then, orthodox teaching is only orthodox because it managed to silence the alternative perspectives.
The Brother of Jesus
Hershel Shanks & Ben Witherington III - ISBN 0-8264-7430-6
Publisher's Note
The discovery of a first century burial box with the inscription “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” set the world of biblical archaeology abuzz. Could this be the first tangible proof of Jesus’ existence? The inscription on the burial box – or ossuary – is said to refer to Jesus of the Bible, his father Joseph and his brother James, the head of the Jerusalem Church. The ossuary and its inscription are now regarded as authentic by top scholars in the field; they represent the first visual, tangible, scientific evidence of Jesus’ existence. The implications are monumental for our understanding of Jesus, his family and the Jewish Christian movement during the formative years of Christianity. The discovery has also rekindled an ancient debate over whether Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a virgin throughout her life – a doctrine that still divides Catholics and Protestants. Hershel Shanks, a central figure of biblical archaeology, recounts the story of the ossuary’s discovery and authentication. Ben Witherington III, a leading New Testament scholar, shows how the discovery reveals surprising facts about a story people thought they knew: how Jesus was raised in a large, religiously conservative Jewish family; how his brothers and sisters were sceptical about his claims – until he died; how Jesus’ brother James went on to head the Jewish Christian movement in Jerusalem, becoming the leader Peter and Paul looked to for guidance and approval; how James brokered the major church controversy of the first century and wrote a book of the Bible; how he was martyred and soon written out of history by the Church of Rome. The dramatic discovery of the ossuary allows us to become reacquainted with the towering historical figure the apostle Paul called a “pillar of the church”.
Willie's Impression
Detailed and well researched, this book explores Jesus’ legacy in the middle-East and how his teachings were carried on by his closest followers, led by his own brother, James, right up to the third century, when Roman orthodoxy, and political will, extinguished what would now be viewed as a heresy. But, then, orthodox teaching is only orthodox because it managed to silence the alternative perspectives.
