Remember how the book stores once had very few Self Empowerment / alternate thinking books? How Jonathon Livingstone Seagull inspired us to fly beyond the flock…and then “I’m Okay- Your Okay” came out…I was a teenager then and didn’t really understand it but carried it around for months like an affirmation of somewhere I would be one day!
Then there was the Primal Scream by Arthur Janov who decided we had every unshed tear and soul wound trapped in our body and the sale in beanbags quadrupled as therapists across the globe created little spots for people to anguish-out their pain.
“One flew Over the Cuckoos nest ” let us all know that really, madness was quite okay and it was the drugs and Nurse Ratchetts of the world who were messing things up!
And then Shakti Gawain- once known by a much more western name caught onto the Science of Mind / New Thought teachings and packaged them in a cool and inviting format…”Creative visualisation” groups sprang up across the country and Affirmations became the newest key to making dreams come true!
Some of of us then did months / years of “Women who love too much”…”How to recognise a commitmentphobic man before he breaks your heart”…”Letters from Women who love too much” and “Ten Stupid Things Women do to Mess up their Life”……and STILL let another bad boy in because he was such an irresitable pattern to break…
Our bookshelves and the dusty boxes in the shed are an archival record of the Journey…and it continues ever onward …
Paulo Coehlo let us know that the Alchemist did not have to travel anywhere if only he had looked within…….in the Celestine Prophecy we were shown how control draaamas and Energy snatching is a way of life amongst the still-sleeping-humans…
Not to forget the maverick Richard Bandler who challenged the years of psychotherapy with something he called NLP- Neuro Linguistic Programming - where changing thought patterns and internal states became as easy as the title of his book - Using Your Brain for a Change…
Then there was the energiser bunny of the change-movement, inspired by Bandlers work…as Anthony Robbins bounced across the stage, altering states and appearing with Leeza Gibbons for years on the 2 am infomercials..
We have laid with tissues next to our Gratitude journals…we have loyally committed to ‘doing what it takes’..sometimes falling asleep witih crumpled notes to the Universe and a pile of ‘must read books’ next to our beds…
We have bought exercise books for our one-person Soul class exercises…and meditation tapes back when there were no cds/ dvds/ and mp3’s…
For some the Bible has been a consistent presence but as we have seen with the Biblical wars across the net, it is a book not without polarising emotions…
Then we expanded to reading blogs, downloading pods and vods…and Skyping and Cellphone texting…on and on and on the learning and growing and communicating expands…
Phew! Aren’t we a wonderful group of Soul School Earth students and aren’t we all blessed that the fruits of our fellow travellers and Soul School class mates becomes the nourishment and ponderings for our own journey…that still has infinitity to go……
Some days I browse in the second hand books stores and come across “I’m okay , You’re okay” or a dusty copy of “My Mother Myself” and turn the page of the old fashioned cover with a deep sense of nostalgia and gratitiude that in this dawning of the Age of Aquarius…the Age of Enlightement… we are free to CHOOSE our Soul food and each year produces more and more nourishment and food for thought….( and Yes, the astrology, psychic phenomena, astral travelling, tribal wisdom, aura reading, Silva mind development, Louise Hay -Healing empowerment books should also get a mention in the Archive…
Oh yes….some more name I have forgotten…
John Bradshaw, the dyanamic son of an alcoholic Father showing us how the sickness of the parent is visited upon the child. I still have a 10 part video series we used to use in workshops.. The local free to air community tv station had the tapes playing regularly through out the week for over a year and my mother did one of the exercises that lead her down the corridor within and into her own Awakening…
We still joke that the videos should not be watched alone as it was a frightening experience for her to meet her sad, lonely little girl whose daddy never came home from the war at 11 oclock at night with her husband snoozing on the couch next to her…
I did not read “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” or “Fire in the Belly” and “Iron John” but the caring sharing guys who were a part of my life and fellow shelter workers would head off to their mens weekends with Sam Keen and Robert Bly ‘mens business’ books tucked in their back packs…
I also forgot to mention one book that impacted my priveleged white-girl world enormously when I was just 13 - “Black Like Me”, the diary of a person who changed the color of their skin and shared the reality of racism they experienced having never known it before… in order to make us white-folk really think about the set up we had created……and of course Jane Elliotts “Blue Eyes” , I bought the book, recorded the Oprah Shows and passed on the information whnever and where ever I could…
And how could I forget “Rolling Thunder” Doug Boyds acocunt of the life of the amazing medicine man Shaman who lived in the world of quantum phyiscs, time travel and communiion with Nature…
I flew out of my childhood under Jonathons Livingston Seagulls wide wings…..
Sigh….it was a time of greater silence in the world when the skies were empty of microwares, sattellites, cell phones and the zillion megawatts of electricity that fils the airwaves in these early days of the 21st century…
I feel a little nostalgic for my Frankincense , Patchouli and beads and …..oh…hang on………that’s right..I am still wearing them……
What were the books that shaped your travels ……………and have you bequeathed your library to a fitting new home once your travels in this body have passed?
