expands the mind. books are one thing that have really helped me to anchor in new levels of awareness through my own awakening and so i have decided to write short reviews on what i’m reading. you’ll find the world that i’m discovering through these books and my thoughts on them...

🤍🤍🤍

30 dec 2022
food rules
michael pollan


a friend gave me this book to read about 6 years ago and i am just adding it to the list here. it is an amazing description on how to determine what is real food vs. fake food. a great reminder and also food rules 101 really. as we know, our supermarkets are full of food like substances that aren’t real food and this book goes into very simple ways to decipher what is real and what isn’t. i especially like the one that says, “don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognise as food”. highly recommend this short book, even for just a little reminder of what’s happening in the world with our diets.

the only part that i didn’t resonate with is about drinking wine/alcohol with your dinner and that it “reduces the risk of heart disease”, if anything didn’t resonate more than this one. sounds like a load of nonsense, sorry not sorry. as you will see below, i’ve just been reading conversations with god and one part of the book really struck out to me, resonating deeply and it is that, “the body is not designed to drink alcohol”. so, take it as you wish but just because you enjoy something, doesn’t mean it is good for you. plus we all know the effects of alcohol on our brain due to destroying nerve endings, it is clearly not a ‘healthy’ substance...and to be honest, it sounds like a bit of an excuse to keep drinking it with dinner! but we can all discern what is good and bad for us by tuning in to our bodies.

i am not interested in telling others how and what they should eat, purely due to the fact that my journey with food has been so varied and ever changing that i feel that it is up to each of us to go on our own adventure when it comes to food and our diet and working out what works for us. i also believe that there are many different ways to feed yourself. it is not one rule fits all and there are many different ways to to be healthy, with meat or without. what i like about this book and these guidelines is that the focus is on eating mainly plants, which makes sense to me. and for other reasons than health, when on the journey of ascension plants are the way to increase light intake and structured water (which is also why alcohol is a no for those of us ascending).


17 dec 2022
conversations with god: books 1, 2, 3 + 4
neale donald walsch


paradigm-shifting, here we go again! this book. wow. haha couldn’t stop, had them all one after the other. but so so amazing. i have already been on this journey for quite some time now and landed in many realisations of what is real and for me, this book really just cemented those even more. supported them in more ways. with additional gems that deeply resonated too. this book is so amazing because it destroys the inverted ideas of god from the distorted religions on this planet. it’s not an easy one if you are living within those boxes already but if you want to blast open to truth and to freedom, then my friend, this is the one. a lot of what it says about religion, i already came to conclude myself, so that was great. it also speaks on the base 12, material a bit by emphasising that we are eternal beings and have based our mathematics and system of time on base 10 instead of 12.

it’s also a book to make you see and take your responsibility for your life. realising the powerful creator in which you are and it just goes deep into the truth of who we are and how it all works, it’s amazing. we are all aspects of the one, we are all aspects of god and we are god. it’s beautiful. and book 3, really enjoyed the part about highly evolved societies and how they live and how they say we are a primitive race, which is just too true! overall, the concepts in this book brought me so much harmony and peace. and real understandings to what is going on here and why. and outside of the duality dance, especially now with all that is happening in the world with ‘evil’ and the dark agenda. highly highly recommend this book. oh and also! it gives a really insightful and specific way of operating our societies in a better way than now, financial systems and all. can’t wait to read them all! 

powerful activator for sure. quotes...

“the body is not designed to drink alcohol”.

“so long as anyone experiences reality as a victim/villain scenario, it will not (make sense what he is saying) but there are no victims and no villains in the world, or anywhere in the universe. there are only sentient beings physically and metaphysically evolving and helping each other evolve. it is as i have said to you previously, i have sent you nothing but angels.” - book 4.

“the continued expansion of your awareness is what evolution is all about.” - book 4.

“all sentient beings experience consciousness at 4 levels: the subconscious, the conscious, the super-conscious and the supra-conscious. energies of creation are emitted by every entity at one of these 4 levels.” - book 4


17 dec 2022
own your self
dr kelly brogan


i ordered both of kelly brogan's books as alec zeck who i spoke to on my podcast, 'the new monks' mentioned that she helped his wife to heal from an autoimmune condition and i had heard about their journey through his instagram account so really wanted to know what dr brogan had to say. this books is also amazing. as i mention below, it's so good that a doctor is coming out of their conditioning and indoctrination and spelling out the truth for us all to see. again, she goes into details here about all the ways in which we are being poisoned and poisoning ourselves and bringing in the conversation for real comprehensive healing to occur. this is a wake up call to know and see deeply what is bad for us, the question is, are you that dedicated to your own healing to give up the life you now lead? many truth bombs in this one and i felt the coherence was a lot more flowing than her other book (below).

quotes from the book:

distress is a sign of sickness to be eliminated by consciousness-surprising drugs, not a gateway to change. it is not an invitation to look at what might be misaligned or out of balance. instead, we are driven by fear to engage a system that makes us sick and then offers us chemical cures that beget more chemical cures. we are told not to trust our instincts, not to consult our heritage for models of wellness, never to honour the inner wisdom of our bodily organism over the seemingly exacting mechanism of modern science.

with perspective, you’ll see your experience of sitting with pain as a test of faith, a true exploration of how much you are willing to relinquish the illusion of control over your path, how much you understand that the unfoldment is only to be witnessed, not managed, and that the people and things you lose are what you needed to shed in order to stop living a lie. but it’s the hardest thing to do because the mind must be quieted for this to happen. we have to say shhh…over and over again. we have to find that silence in order to let go.

maté writes: “negative thinking allows us to gaze unflinchingly on our own behalf at what does not work. we have seen in study after study that compulsive positive thinkers are more likely to develop disease and less likely to survive. genuine positive thinking — or more deeply, positive being — empowers us to know that we have nothing to fear from truth.”

everyone has a shadow, but not everyone knows their shadow. And the degree to which we don’t know our shadow is the degree to which it influences, controls, and runs us.

in many ways, fears that arise around health can be seen as tests of belief. it’s easy to see a given circumstance as an exception, an extreme, or a one-time concession, but each and every health experience we are delivered is a dance with our own belief system and a reflection of the trust we have cultivated in our own bodies. when you truly believe in your body’s capacity and wisdom, you will pass these tests with flying colours.

one of the most critical tenets of growth is integration: bringing what you say, believe, and do into alignment. this involves identification of the ways in which we claim one thing and do another; for example, claiming to believe in the sacredness and emergent design of life but seeking to commandeer and manage the body with pharmaceuticals when sufficiently afraid. illnesses and community-cultivated fears (zika! swine flu! ebola!) may reveal to us our blind spots and unintegrated zones. but in order to live life in the ever-coveted flow, we need to push ourselves beyond the comfort zones of our mind, shedding layers of story and ego in order to become all that much more ourselves.

the next time you reach for pharmaceutical intervention, consider these medications for what they truly are: corporate opportunity to profit from your disempowerment and elective membership in a church that views the body as broken.

antibiotics. by far the most alluring of all the poisoned apples, antibiotics ride a mindset of fear while fostering the illusion of the quick fix.

but know that philosophical underpinnings of the vaccination program are predicated on an antiquated perspective: warring against and attempting to eradicate bad germs. with the advent of our understanding of the microbiome, psychoneuroimmunology, and epigenetics, science has left that childlike notion in the dust, and so should we.

when we interfere and war with the body, we keep the fight alive, and you can’t win the battle against yourself.

the end of war is not to keep on fighting. it is to give up fighting.

we are living in a time of awakening around many established cultural beliefs.

there is no pill that will facilitate a gentle arrival into your own skin, enabling you to walk your own mysterious and glorious path in this wild world. to do that, you must surrender to your feelings and let yourself “fall up.”

i tell them to watch for opportunities to unite with their experience rather than fight it. the way through is to surrender, accept, open, and trust. to know they are experiencing exactly what they need in order to pass through it and come out the other side more whole, transformed.

survival perspective keeps you struggling and stressed. it’s in our culture: have you noticed that we are conditioned, as a society, to fight? we are at war with our symptoms (beat cancer! beat depression!) using anti-hypertensives, antidepressants, and antibiotics. we are at war with the bad guys (reformists, criminals, republicans/democrats). we are at war with nature (germs, weeds, green space). and it’s because we feel disconnected and disjointed. we aren’t tapped into what many refer as the quantum field, so we see everything from the atomised perspective of pieces and parts — not the whole.

when we bring everything into question, we can dispassionately appreciate where our desire for comfort and security ends and where an independent search for truth begins. to pursue this truth, we must acknowledge where and how science has become a religion, and how medicine has become a matter of belief, with a zero tolerance policy for critical inquiry.

dr. gonzalez wrote to me in a personal e-mail, “the last remaining religion is medicine. if you look at sloan kettering, it’s actually like a temple, and the priests wear white coats and they speak their own language. patients tend to bow down to that. never underestimate the power of authority.”

dr. gonzales also wrote, “patients have to do the treatment they believe in. fear is an infectious disease. you can catch fear but you can’t catch faith. that has to come from within.”

04 august 2022
a mind of your own 
dr kelly brogan


this book...sick book! for anyone who wants to learn more about the back to front ways of reality and all the ways that we are being poisoned in detail, this is the book for you my friend! it's also a great perspective because dr kelly brogan was indoctrinated into medicine through our education system and through her own healing has managed to shake of this distorted perspective of 'healing' and describes how she found a more holistic way to heal. which, obviously is the only way forward and so many people are waking up to the absolute cons of western medicine never actually addressing the root. obviously this book also demystifies the term 'mental health' and 'depression' as solely brain chemistry because there's obviously so much more to it. if you want to learn more about true healing then i highly recommend looking into gabor maté's work and reading his books (another recommendation below).

it's just really great to witness and hear an actual doctor know what she is talking about and also know that she was under the spell for a long time and admit that! because this is the awakening and slowly slowly we all start to see more clearly what has been going on. kelly goes into detail about our environment and how there are so many toxicants in our environment that are worsening our health and wellbeing, she debunks so many things, including vaccines! and when you read it and really accept it, then damn, you just see how much of a joke this reality is. ha ha anyways all great things to be aware of and to slowly slowly bring into our lives and clear our inner and outer environments.

the other part about this book that is great is that she goes into detail about diet and food, which isn't something doctors are taught in medical school so it's great to have a doctor connecting these dots, finally! i'm sure there are some but they're hard to find really! again, i'm sure not all of it is completely accurate information, (and no i'm not talking about the debunking and studies to support her views!) but as we know, every body is different, so use discernment and once again be prepared for a paradigm shatter medical industry-myth-busting awakening with this book! i only do deep. enjoy!

quotes from the book: 

i’m convinced that the pharmaceutical industry and its bedfellows, concealed behind official titles such as certain medical societies and associations, have created an illusion of science where none exists, in the service of profit over professional responsibility.

before i even get to the answers, let me be the first to tell you that the only path to a real solution is to leave the medical world you know behind. this, the journey i will take you on, is not just about symptom suppression, it’s about health freedom…my message is from a personal journey and thousands of hours of research that has compelled me to share share the truth about prescription-based care: we’ve been duped.

yes, my entire training was based on a model of a disease care that offers patients only one tool — a drug — and never a shot at true wellness. we’ve handed over our health to those who seek to profit from it, and we’ve been buying into a paradigm based on the following notions. (p.12)

in the words of the Collaborations founder, dr. peter gotzshe, “our citizens would be far better off if we removed all the psychotropic drugs from the market, as doctors are unable to handle them. It is inescapable that their availability creates more harm than good.”

some of us in the medical community are beginning to speak up and to expose the fact that our training and education is, for the most part, bought.

in a 2015 published statement, he wrote: “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.” [dr richard horton edition in chief lancet]

after all, it is through diet that we communicate with our environment. It’s a dialect that we’ve forgotten how to speak.

the best way to heal our brains is to heal the bodies in which they reside. or, as I also like to put it, free your mind by healing your whole body.

there are times in our evolution as a cultural species that we need to unlearn what we know and change what we think is true. we have to move out of the comfort of certainty and into the freeing light of uncertainty. It is from this space of acknowledged unknowing that we can truly grow.

“just take a typenol.” this might as well be the american mantra. it’s the perspective that we have been indoctrinated to adopt — that our bodies are full of annoying symptoms that can be suppressed by drugs.

vaccines were designed before we knew about DNA, viruses that contaminate cells used to produce them (SV40, retroviruses), the micro biome, or how toxic one chemical can be to one person while leaving another unscathed. one-size-fits-all medicine is no longer appropriate, and we just don’t know how to determine who might be at risk for adverse effects ranging from psychiatric conditions to death.

in fact, vaccines are there only pharmaceutical product acknowledged to cause injury and death that is nonetheless recommended to all individuals—regardless of personal or family history.

food is indeed information…food is a coevolutionary tool for epigenetic expression. In other words, food literally talks to your cells, neuroma included, and that results in how your DNA functions.

throughout history, fermented foods have provided probiotic bacteria in the diet. All traditional cultures fermented their foods, lived in and with nature, and are from it in a way that promotes a now endangered diversity of gut microbes.

it has been my mission to help women reclaim that inner compass, pick up their swords, and defend the enigma of their most unquantifiable beauty and power. It is my grave concern that this power has been co-opted by a paternalistic system that seeks to engender fear and control by coercion and undermine a woman’s inner voice by suggesting that science has cracked the code of the human condition. A system that turns a blind eye to all the times science and medicine has been in error. That we as a society have let fear lead us down a shameful path.



7 march 2022
conscious loving: the journey to co-commitment / a way to be fully together without giving up yourself
gay hendricks + kathlyn hendricks


another change that happened in my life, is that i met someone and have been doing a lot of confrontation and healing within my relationship. it's been hardcore to say the least. we started reading this book as we embarked on our adventure together and one year later we finished it. it takes so long when you're reading together!

this book is fire! so good. it's about a couple who are relationship coaches and their discoveries of how to create a healthy partnership between the two of you in co-commitment and creativity. one of the main focuses is how to get out of the dynamic of power play, ego, tit-for-tat, arguing, blaming and victimhood, which i think is super common to fall into. how to break the cycle is important. and obviously first and foremost you have to be with someone who is willing to put in the work. and i asked for no less than this. so they share many stories from other people's relationships and little techniques and pearls of wisdom of how to see things from a different perspective and exit the energy consuming, looping, negative spiral into the empowering and co-committed relationship where you create together. very cool book for anyone looking to deepen the foundations for a strong, healthy and healing relationship.

unfortunately no quotes from this book but it’s a goodie.


july 2021
voyagers II
ashayana deane


ok so it’s been a little while since i’ve posted here and i also haven’t been reading so much lately because i felt called to create from what i have learnt, which i am slowly starting to release (music, events and other over at www.parthe.one). so much has changed, obviously so much in the outer world has been reflected in my inner world. so yes, i was totally going down the path of shamanism and i even did the medicine wheel foundation training, which was amazing by the way, super powerful for anyone who is already doing the work...i even went to mexico for a bit but at this time it was clear that my path wasn’t going to be leading down the path of shamanism. i never quite found something that was liberating enough for it to stick. now i understand that is because sometimes the teachings and interpretations of the teachings do not lead to astounding freedom, for me. so i stopped the journeying with plant medicines, i got a clear message it was time. i have been pretty clean my whole life (never smoked, never taken any drugs, and stopped drinking alcohol 8 years ago) so it was easy for me, plus i only journeyed with it for healing purposes.

this obviously created space for something else to come through. that wasn't connected to any previous paths and teachings. i discovered a whole new world of discovery in base 12 organic life principles and keylontic science. and this book, is the crux of it. there is a part 1 but i went straight to part 2. the book is so extensive i can’t even put into words what it describes throughout. however, if you are ready for a deeper unravelling of truth then it’s best to just dive in. it’s quite funny because after reading graham hancock’s, ‘supernatural’ (below), which focuses on tribes and shamanism and he touches on how there may be codes and messages in our DNA, which deeply resonated with me and then i fell straight into this field of knowledge, which just explores this so much more!

although i’m sure not everything in this book is true, to understand the jist of it is enough to understand the mechanics behind the way the world is run and has been run since forever. it’s truly insightful and eye-opening. be prepared for your whole world to be torn apart into a different kind of understanding of why things are the way they are and who we really are. for anyone who wants a clear picture that is so close to the truth of who we are, why we are here and why things are the way that they are (back to front and upside down), then this is a good deep dive.

it's very difficult to put into words what base 12 even means but the information is coming through to the surface now, with this book as well as in other ways. what i will say though, is that things are not as they seem and it's up to you how you receive information, it's important not to get stuck in fear or anger and there is a way to see the whole picture without being afraid or angry. this one is really for those who feel deep down and know within that there is more and something doesn't feel right in this world. also, although there is a lot of drama and controversy surrounding the author and content, still i highly recommend with an open and neutral mind. whatever whatever, just don’t get stuck.i shall leave it there.

quotes from the book:

“ascension is a science, with specific mechanics that allow for the evolution of consciousness from simple to more complex forms.”

“If you can realise the significance of this science your evolution will occur much more rapidly and with less effort, for you will learn to work with the natural laws of energetic structure to which your consciousness is bound, instead of working against these mechanics because your consciousness has yet to comprehend the forces through which it manifests.”

“planetary ascension is the reuniting of energy units that had been separated into various dimensional frequency bands, pulling those particles back together by merging the frequencies within which the particles reside.”

“as you assemble DNA strands, perception of both past and future incarnations becomes progressively more available to your present conscious awareness.”

“movement through time is frequency accretion.“


16 july 2020
supernatural: meetings with the ancient teachers of mankind
graham hancock



this has got to be hands down one of the best books that i've read. wow. just wow. as usual it came at just the right time - where i am looking to learn more about the shamanic worlds with plant medicines. so this book was lent to me by a friend. i have heard about graham hancock and was quite interested in reading his book, 'fingerprints of the gods'. my friend had that one on his bookshelf as well as a whole bunch of other graham hancock books but he said no, take this one. it took a while for me to get to it and i started reading it when i came back from India in february.

there are so many twists and turns and you must have an expansively open mind before you read it otherwise you just won't gel. he goes deep into the supernatural. i connected so deeply with this book because i am very fond of working with plant medicines and can relate to and share a lot of the experiences within it and also because a lot of it is set in south africa (where i'm from and where some of the oldest rock paintings live).

so he starts off with the cave paintings and asking the question: why? why did our ancestors draw art and not just any art, not even normal art but supernatural art onto the walls in caves? he follows a trajectory of archaeologists and their viewpoints over many years and summarises that for a very long time nobody came up with a good enough reason. until david lewis-williams, a well respected south african archaeologist posed the theory that these paintings were the result of trance states accessed through dance in south africa and possibly through ergot mushrooms in europe and south america (where other ancient paintings are found). and this is why the images aren't realistic - they depict half-human half-animal figures. hancock then poses the theory that the very foundations of our civilisation and religion are a result of our ancestors accessing these non-ordinary states of consciousness, the same state that we can access today through the use of psychedelics and that it was this experience that helped us to advance as a civilisation.

such a powerful book and i was so inspired throughout. he does go on to talk about some pretty wild things after that, which unless you have had experience of — i'm sure it will be pretty hard to 'believe' and absorb but our experience is truly unlimited if only we can allow ourselves this privilege. big ups to this super powerful supernatural book by graham hancock and the work of david-lewis williams to inspire us to more understanding. i was later told by a friend that this theory is actually the standard narrative in shamanic societies. obviously.

also i love the ending. it ends on such a cliffhanger and i swear entices you into the world of plant medicines, well it definitely made me feel excited and inspired about exploring the world of shamanism more.

quotes from the book:

matter and spirit. as above so below. science teaches us to believe that the material world is the primary and only reality. but from the ayahuasca perspective, this is absolutely not the case. what we call the material world, our ‘consensual reality’, is only part of the pattern — probably not even the primary part. viewed through the lens of ayahuasca, another ‘world’ becomes visible, another reality, perhaps many of them. and because these worlds interpenetrate our own, effects in this world may turn out to have causes in the other worlds. perhaps the material world is indeed the creation of spirits but if so then presumably they made it because they need it (for their own experience/evolution/development?). the material world, if cut off from the spirit world, becomes meaningless and empty. so the material world needs the spirit world too. ayahuasca, and similar ‘master plants’ appear to provide a direct means of communication with the spirit realm for sentient beings of the material world. the plants educate us by allowing us to experience in visions the reality of the supernatural — some — thing normally impossible or very difficult for us to do as material-bound creatures.

instead it seems that art and religion were bestowed upon us like secret and invisible powers, by inner mental realms that our societies now despise and legislate against — the realms of altered states of consciousness, most commonly entered (by us as by our predecessors) through the consumption of potent hallucinogenic drugs.

it has been said, however, that ‘the greatest trick the devil ever played was to convince the world he doesn’t exist.

living in societies elevated by technology to almost godlike heights, we have convinced ourselves, against the wise advice of our ancestors, that there are no supernatural intelligences — that spirits do not exist, that fairies are crazed delusions and that aliens are just figments. we may be wrong.

but if our DNA is not ‘of this earth’ and originated with an alien civilisation in command of advanced genetic engineering technologies, as he proposes, then we cannot rule out the possibility that it’s scientists might have been able to record meaningful information, ‘messages’ or ‘wake-up calls’ in the language of DNA. if they were clever enough, they might even have transcribed their entire accumulated knowledge of their culture into DNA to await the evolution and attention of intelligent species on whichever planets anywhere in the universe the original cargoes of bacteria had happened to land...

it may be, in other words, that the ancient teachers of mankind have been inside us all along but that we must enter altered states of consciousness in order to hear what they have to say.

arguably the rot sets in from the moment that any culture begins to devalue its shamans as madmen and visionaries, to deny the legitimacy of direct revelation amongst ‘ordinary people’, and to place its spiritual trust in a sacerdotal class who can only teach what they have been taught by others rather than what they themselves have experienced.

“in the pursuit of the unknown, all possibilities must be considered.” — persinger

but we have been through these arguments before. shamanism is not confined to specific socio-economic settings or stages of development. it is fundamentally the ability that all of us share, some with and some without the help of hallucinogens, to enter altered states of consciousness and to travel out of body in non-physical realms — there to encounter supernatural entities and gain useful knowledge and healing powers from them.

mushroom appear in the poppy vuh in direct association with religious activity, and archaeologists have found hundreds of stone sculptures and ceramic models of mushrooms in ancient mayan tombs and religious sites in guatemala, el salvador, honduras and mexico dating back to the first millennium bc. ‘It is now clear’, writes richard evans schultes, director of the harvard botanical museum, ‘that whatever the use of these “mushroom stones”, they indicate the great antiquity of a sophisticated sacred use of hallucinogenic mushrooms.’

and once again the question arises — who are these ancient teachers, who some call ‘gods’, and some call ‘aliens’ or ‘spirits’, who come to us in altered states of consciousness with strange messages that have shaped the course of human history?

many scientists dismiss such accounts as hoaxes, or delusions or ‘mere hallucinations’, and don’t consider the possibility that the eyewitnesses might have seen something real. however, this is a knee-jerk response driven by deeply embedded materialist prejudices about the nature of reality rather than by any solid research or evidence.

the real issue that science keeps dodging is why they are all hallucinating the same things. why do the same other worlds and spirit beings keep appearing, and what does this all mean?

_

9 June 2020
The Energy Codes
Sue Morter

it has been so long - a year since i've posted here! so i read this book a while ago and i thought it was really good. although it took a while for me to get to the juice but then it was juicy! i like it for the way that it talks about energy in our bodies and how to feel a more peaceful state within our bodies with a practical guide of how to and how to get in touch with our spirituality because it is here for all of us to experience ya na.

she uses this analogy called the bus stop conversation where before we came onto this planet we had a conversation 'at the bus stop' about what we wanted to learn in our lifetime and then we hopped on the bus to have our human experience...and it is through our interactions with people that teaches us exactly what we signed up for and that leads us to "the discovery of our magnificence and capacity for love".

here are some quotes:

we can see the greater good in everything that is coming through. we know that without a doubt that everything is serving our own expansion as well as everyone else’s and no matter what happens it’s all in our favour. because of this, love is automatic, there is no judgement or rejection, only total acceptance and complete compassion that is grounded and integrated. we trust in our desire because we know it is filtered through love. no longer afraid to speak out or manifest we carry through with our visions, taking bold and loving action. we know we are made of goodness and so we trust our desires and our actions without hesitation. there is no reservation, we’re all in. we know that we wouldn’t desire a particular vibration if it wasn’t a part of us that is ready to birth onto the planet even though it may look very different from what we thought it would. we are unattached from how we think things will be because we are grounded in heaven/earth, where all things are ultimately serving our highest good. as we own our desire, our visions and our power, people begin to experience and perceive, a strength and a presence about us that has them wanting to come closer. they start to listen when we speak. we find ourselves getting the promotion or getting the advance or accepting the role of being a visionary though it was never something that we set out to be. ❤

life flows to us and through us, as us, surpassing anything we could have dreamed.

remember that the ultimate plan at the bus stop was to experience our divinity, divine love and so we will ideally come to see the challenges that we experience as the greatest support available for precisely that outcome. family relationships, finances, and work all engage our circuits and so offer the bottom-line challenges that we requested at the bus stop and lead us to the discovery of our magnificence and capacity for love. ❤

we are here to be the creators of our lives and masters of our reality. everything in this life is energy, meaning, there is nothing that you are not. everything you experience and encounter in this life is a perfect reflection of your inner world, meaning that you are the one who determines and reveals heaven/earth within you. ❤

_

9 June 2019
A New Earth
Eckhart Tolle


I love Eckhart Tolle, I think he is such a genius and what he says makes so much sense. He has definitely helped me and I'm sure thousands of other people to come into presence. I already read The Power of Now a few years ago, at the start of my awakening, which I loved and this one was also on my reading list so I finally dug into it.

I guess this book is about the evolution of consciousness in the human race and how to ascend with it. He talks about quite a lot of different topics in this book around how this evolution will affect society and is creating a new earth. He breaks it down all very simply and I love how he focuses on presence. Everything is about presence and as long as you are nurturing that for yourself then you are already 'inheriting the earth' and evolving. I have been fascinated with this notion of time that doesn't actually exist and in his book The Power of Now, it is exactly about how the only time that really exists is this present moment and even more about how that will help to change the world.

We are already going through an evolution of consciousness right now and it is not outside of us, it is within. In this book, Tolle describes exactly how this evolution is happening and it is all through our individual abilities to be present. To be conscious of what we are doing when we are doing it and to be embodied in our bodies. It's very powerful...because we all know the saying, "if you want to change the world, first start with yourself" but what does that actually mean and how do you start with yourself? Tolle describes from an objective point of view what is happening on the earth right now and it all starts with an awakening. Waking up to the true nature of things. It's exciting for me because that's how it all started for me, 5 years ago and I feel this new earth arising within me. I also love how he says that it is important to be these frequency holders of the new earth through our actions and just hold presence in all that we do. Powerful.

It is a bit crazy how this idea of now and only now can have such drastic consequences but I feel it. Because it's not just about remembering that, it is about being that, about being here and tuning into the unmanifest, the realm that cannot be seen but only felt, the cosmic soup, the mystery of interconnectivity, the spirit world, whatever you wish to call it. That is presence. That is now. That is when we really know who we are and that is when we are really being who we are because it is truth and it is underneath the veil of ego. I guess the world is always changing but personally, this feels like one hell of a change in the evolution of the human being and not just that but the whole of our planet.

Quotes from the book:

"Only by awakening can you know the true definition of that word."

"The greatest achievements of humanity is not it’s works of arts, science or technology but the recognition of its own dysfunction, it’s own madness."

"All religions are equally false and equally true depending on how you use them. You can use them in service of the ego or you can use them in service of the truth."

"Fighting unconsciousness will draw you into unconsciousness yourself."

"It has been said: stillness is the language God speaks and everything else is bad translation."

"Whatever you do takes time. Yet it is always now."

"What the world doesn’t tell you because it doesn’t know is that you cannot become successful. You can only be successful. Don’t let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment. And what is that? There is a sense of quality in what you do. Even the most simple action. Quality implies care and attention, which come with awareness. Quality requires your presence."

"We need to bear in mind here that nothing we say about the nature of the universe should be taken as an absolute truth. Neither concepts nor mathematical formuli can explain the infinite. No thought can encapsulate the vastness of totality. Reality is a unified whole but thought cuts it up into fragments."

"When you want to arrive at your goal more than you are doing what you are doing. Then you become stressed."

"Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth" — Jesus

"Who are the meek or the humble and what does it mean that they shall inherit the earth? The meek are the egoless, they are those who have awakened to their essential true nature as consciousness and recognised that essence in all others, all life forms. They live in the surrendered state and so feel their oneness with the whole and the source. They embody the awakened consciousness that is changing all aspects of life on our planet including nature because life on earth is inseparable from the human consciousness that perceives and interacts with it. That is the sense in which the meek will inherit the Earth."

"A new species is arising on the planet, it is arising now and you are it..."

_

22 April 2019
DMT: The Spirit Molecule
Rick Strassman



This one was recommended by a friend. DMT is the active ingredient in Ayahuasca which causes the psychedelic and introspective experience. It is also found in our brain and is only released when we are born and when we die. Some people say that it is released during sleep but this isn’t mentioned in the book, so I’m not sure if this is true. This book depicts Rick Strassman’s journey into doing research with volunteers taking DMT in the ‘90s. The pure DMT experience lasts about 20 minutes (with Ayahuasca it is much longer from 5-9 hours).

At first, when he describes the volunteer's experiences, they start off quite calm and then later he goes into details about how many volunteers experience extra-terrestrial beings as if they were travelling to another dimension and having all sorts of experiences. Strassman is rather surprised by this because he wasn’t expecting it to be such a common theme among volunteers. He was doing the research, first of all, to see the if it could be helpful for health and wasn’t so many people to see aliens. There is one line that I really like with one volunteer, he says that he meets extra-terrestrial beings and they say to him, “we’re so happy that you’ve figured out how to use this technology.”

This book really got me thinking that while we are out here trying to physically get to the moon and looking outside to see where other life exists, the real magic exists within and we can travel to other realms but it is through the magic of our minds. Other beings and life do exist but it is not as we would think it to be, by physically travelling somewhere. We can travel when we close our eyes and this is just the same thing. It is all very real. We don’t have to travel with our bodies. This part about the book really resonated with me because when I took Ayahuasca for the 2nd time, I also met some other beings and went to another dimension. For weeks after this image was very strong in my mind. I like this perspective on DMT and extra-terrestrial beings, which I think can very easily be overlooked.

I also like that they call DMT the spirit molecule, as if it is the essence of all. There are some theories and Strassman says himself that he thought that the production of DMT in our bodies is related to the pineal gland and our third eye but none of this has been proven and he even says later that he realised it’s probably not so accurate. 

At the end of the book, Strassman gets involved in a Buddhist community and it’s very interesting because when he tells them that he is doing this research they freak out big time. Hehe. I read this book before I embark on another Ayahuasca adventure. This week, I am going to be in a documentary called, “What the F are we Looking For?” which follows 6 of us taking the medicine in Ibiza. I’m really looking forward to it and meeting Mama once again.

This book is also a documentary.

_

23 March 2019
Waking the Tiger
Peter Levine



This book was the first in a series that I started reading on trauma last year. I definitely got locked into it and seems that I didn’t take any notes with this one! Along with Gabor Maté and some others too, there seems to be a lot of research and analysis of how trauma affects us. I find it all very exciting because it’s all early stages at the moment. What I learnt from my readings is that we are all going through trauma. As human beings, even if we don’t realise it, we are all very sensitive to the experiences that we go through. This book starts with a great practical definition of how we get trapped in trauma. As animals, when in a potentially traumatic experience, our reaction is either fight or flight and there is also another one called freeze. Apparently, animals are very good at dispelling the energy but as humans, it is still something we are to fully grasp; this ability to discharge the energy. Levine says that it is all about energy. If we have an accident, at the time, our body’s way of protecting itself may be to freeze, not move, not shout, not run. By doing this, the energy gets stuck and causes problems later on in life. I guess, some people don’t ever realise that this is what is going on. So our job is to find ways to discharge this energy, even if it is many years after the event.

Another interesting thing he mentions is that trauma isn’t about going through a big dramatic experience, it could be the smallest thing such as falling on your head when you were a child. The trauma is actually the way that our body responds to whatever experience that we are going through. He explains it on a physiological level and we are animals after all, so it’s about becoming conscious of how our body and system is interpreting the world around us.

He has a lot of case studies, which is always great and he also explains different ways to deal and go through trauma, I was particularly interested in somatic therapy. It’s a very good read and I won’t go into too much detail here because we should all read it. Trauma is very real and it is something that we all experience even if at the smallest degree.

_

18 February 2019
Maps to Ecstacy
Gabrielle Roth



This book kept me up until 5 am, I couldn’t put it down - it was one of those books and I read it in under a week. OK, it’s not that long, but still. Gabrielle Roth is the creator of the 5rhythms, which I would describe as a ‘conscious dancing meditation practice’. I first stumbled into the practice last March when I went to Afrika Burn and I knew it was something I had to explore. Someone plays music and guides you through the session...and my body just started moving without my consent. Haha you know it was a moment where I was watching where my body wanted to take me, rather than directing it. So I have been doing it since last July now.

Maps to Ecstacy is so great. I don't even know where to begin. The basic concept of the 5 rhythms is that there are these rhythms that exist throughout life and we are constantly in motion within them. It starts with flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical and stillness. So it goes through this cycle, I'm sure you can get the gist, climaxing at chaos and then falling down to stillness. Roth mentions that we all have a more dominant rhythm naturally and it's good to recognise this in ourselves and others, so not to cause friction but to understand. It is also reflected in the cycle of life and death, of having sex, of accidents, of pregnancy and giving birth. There are always moments to reflect on what cycle you are in.

The practice is very healing and obviously focused on being more present within your body. To move and dispel blockages and energy in your body, to dance it out, get in touch with the wisdom of your own voice and ultimately to liberate yourself. There are no teachings in the class other than presence and awareness. There is no choreography other than what is intuitively guided by you in the session. It's pretty cool and necessary seeing how we are so disconnected from our bodies these days. These kinds of things aren't taught to us and I guess the 5rhythms are also used to integrate our mind, body and soul. I think that the theory behind it is solid, which I only discovered through reading this book. Thank you for the inspiration and the rhythms!

I really connected with this book, it’s been a while since I’ve read a soul fulfilling spiritual read. I have loved dance ever since I was a child and I always felt that it gave me this sense of freedom that I just could not get elsewhere. I've always allowed the music to move me no matter where I am. It seems to be this uncontrollable thing that happens to me but I also believe that dance is something that is so intrinsic to all of us. I also connect to how she describes herself as a child and I know that dance is one of my callings in this life. I would say it is a read for overall life guidance, reflections on the awakening path through dance and it has a lot of practical wisdom. There are some great stories about people she has taught as well as her own teachers in her life too.

Here are the snippets:

"In many Shamanic societies, if you came to a shaman or medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask you one of four questions: When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?"
"And those five powers are grounded in five creative archetypes. When we embody all of them, we become the fascinating, mysterious, mystically inclined, poetic, free-form selves we were born to be."

"Movement isn’t only meditation; it’s also medicine that heals the split between our minds and hearts, bodies and soul."

"Healing is a journey. It involves stepping out of our habitual roles, our conventional scripts, and improvising a dancing path."

"You need to catch the rhythms of people, places, times of the year, the week, the day, and learn to dance with them."

"As you free your body to receive the power of being, all kinds of feelings start to flow — old feelings, new feelings, dark and light. Being alive is dangerous. It means feeling, feeling things you might not want to feel or thought you never would. Being alive means having a heart and expressing it. In freeing the body, we free the heart to experience the power of love — the task of the next chapter."

"Why would anyone want to transcend being real, being alive? Why would we not want to experience our heart? The basic emotions are vital to our survival and total well-being. The challenge is not to transcend them, but to transform our relationship to them. We need to befriend and express our feelings with purity and directness in the moment."
"Life itself, through its stages of development, is the path to enlightenment. All we have to do is to live it, not fight it, control it, or resist it. Life is a mysterious game: the only way to win is to surrender."

"Disease is inertia. Healing is movement. If you put the body in movement, you will change. "

_

10 February 2019
When the Body Says No
Gabor Maté



This book is on fire. Gabor Maté is an absolute G. There are quite a few podcast interviews with him around at the moment. There’s one with Tim Ferris and another with Russell Brand, def check those out if you have the chance. I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading into trauma recently, this is probably my fourth book now and I will review the other ones soon too!

So personally I feel like this book is ahead of its time and is at the forefront of research into the connection between stress and disease but not just on a physiological level. On a whole, complete level that incorporates all parts of who we are. Obviously, Gabor Maté comes from a background in Western medicine practice. He is a physician and uses his personal practice to explain a lot throughout the book. I am sure that there will be some people who don’t agree with what he says but I’m not one of them. This book touched me as it’s so close to what I have personally experienced. I was actually gifted it by my friend Alex, so thanks, Alex!

Gabor Maté talks about a lot of different diseases and conditions that he has seen with his patients and how he has noticed a lot of them have a similarity in their childhoods. This is usually; not being able to stand up for themselves, varying types of abuse and the number one thing is not being able to express their feelings, so repressing them instead. I think it’s so easy to overlook these environmental aspects and to think that they don’t correlate with our health but the thing is, everything is connected within our body and everything without affects us so intricately. It is only because we see things as separate that we don’t see the interconnectedness between us and all things, our environment, the way that we deal with situations and stress. Mad how our vision can restrict what can’t be seen, that little trickery!

Stress is a very commonly used word and when Matè says that stress is related to disease, he’s not talking about external events that occur in our lives but actually about how our body internally reacts to the external stressor. Thus, stress is actually the physiological make-up of our internal system. Which is also different for all of us, it’s not what happens to us but how our body process it that is key. It could be a very simple thing that happens externally to one person, which is internally very stressful.

Personally I think that Western medicine is great but it is not complete. Far from it actually, I think we have a long way to go. One thing that struck me, which I guess doesn’t really surprise me that much is that Maté asks many of his patients about their life situations, which opens up an emotionally expressive conversation. Many of his patients say that their doctors have never asked them about themselves. Unsurprising as it is the way that they have been educated. First of all, I think this is very sad but I also think that we’re missing the point and missing out on something very crucial here.

This book is great and reminds me of my understanding of Buddhism with the all-encompassing aspect of interconnectedness, being able to look at the dark parts of ourselves and the fact that our past experiences translated as emotions can get locked and stored in our bodies as ‘trauma’ and it is our job to do what we can to release the stagnant energy (which is what I understand from vipassana meditation). He also gives a great ‘how to’ explanation at the end on what we can all do to help ourselves.

I think that we are all in need of healing, I mean, look at the state of the world. I don’t know about you but if we think that this isn’t affecting us and also, why we are destroying our planet as well as ourselves and each other. There’s definitely a lot of good going on too!! But we can only be what was passed down to us, taught to us and through us. Another thing that this book got me thinking about; our connection to our ancestors and this cycle that keeps spinning around, ways of being that we have inherited, what he cites Dr Lipton calling the ‘biology of belief’ and how to break from these unconscious unhealthy aspects in order to become healthy and pass that on to future generations. This is the work of the spiritual path. It is a path to healing. I think that overall Maté describes a way of being and an idea of what it means to be healthy that encompasses all parts of who we are, not just one (see final quote).

Read this book it’s necessary.

It was hard to pick quotes as there are so many gems in here but here we go:

“This is the reason why the cure of so many diseases is unknown to the physicians of Hellas; they are ignorant of the whole. For this is the great error of our day in the treatment of the human body, that physicians separate the mind from the body.” - Socrates. ❤

“Artistic expression by itself is only a form of acting out emotions, not a way of working them through.”

“Interactions with other human beings — in particular, emotional interactions — affect our biological functioning in myriad and subtle ways almost every moment of our lives. They are important determinants of health, as we will see throughout this book. Understanding the intricate balance of relationships among our psychological dynamics, our emotional environment and our physiology is crucial to well-being.”

“Many people may have the illusion that they are in control, only to find later that forces unknown to them were driving their decisions and behaviours for many, many years. I have found that in my life. For some people, it is a disease that finally shatters the illusion of control.”

“Emotional competence is what we need to develop if we are to protect ourselves from the hidden stresses that create a risk to health, and it is what we need to regain if we are to heal.”

“The nature of stress is not always the usual stuff that people think of. It’s not the external stress of war or money loss or somebody dying, it is actually the internal stress of having to adjust oneself to somebody else. Cancer and ALS and MS and rheumatoid arthritis and all these other conditions, it seems to me, happen to people who have a poor sense of themselves as independent persons...They live in reaction to others without ever really sensing who they themselves are.” ❤

“Emotions — fear, anger, love — are as necessary for the organism’s survival as nerve impulses, immune cells or hormonal activity.”

“Emotional intimacy is a psychological and biological necessity. Those who build walls against intimacy are not self-regulated, just emotionally frozen. Their stress from having unmet needs will be high.”

“It is intuitively easy to understand why abuse, trauma or extreme neglect in childhood would have negative consequences. But why do many people develop stress-related illness without having been abused or traumatised? These persons suffer not because something negative was inflicted on them but because something positive was withheld.”

“Those perceptions are programmed in our cells on the molecular level. Early experiences condition the body’s stance toward the world and determine the person’s unconscious beliefs about herself in relationship to the world. Dr Lipton calls that process the biology of belief. Fortunately, human experience and the ever-unfolding potential of human beings ensure that the biology of belief, though deeply physiologically ingrained, is not irreversible.” ❤

“The potential for wholeness, for health, resides in all of us, as does the potential for illness and disharmony. Disease is disharmony. More accurately, it is an expression of an internal disharmony. If illness is seen as foreign and external, we may end up waging war against ourselves.”

“Illness not only has a history but also tells a history. It is a culmination of a lifelong history of struggle for self.“ ❤

“The more I listened, the louder the message became: I needed to write, to express myself through written language not only so that others might hear me but so that I could hear myself.”

“Physically it is easy to see that our sense of separateness from the universe is false: we do not go “from dust to dust,” we are dust enlivened. We are a part of the universe with temporary consciousness, but never apart from it. Not by coincidence is the word seeking frequently employed in relation to spiritual work. Faced with illness, many people seek their spiritual selves almost instinctively, often in surprising ways.” ❤

“Many people have done psychological work without ever opening to their own spiritual needs. Others have looked for healing only in the spiritual ways — in the search of God or universal Self — without ever realising the importance of finding and developing the personal self. Health rests on three pillars: the body, the psyche and the spiritual connection. To ignore any one of them is to invite imbalance and dis-ease.” ❤


_

16 January 2019
How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics
Michael Pollan





This book, I guess it started a little thing of adventuring with psychedelics for me last July. Well, I actually read it 8 months after taking Ayahuasca for the first time (and having never taken any plant medicines or any drugs whatsoever before that). What I found most interesting; if you haven’t gathered already, I have been going through a hectic awakening over the past 4 years and that’s a WHOLE OTHER STORY trust me...but what I found interesting is that I have had some of what Michael Pollan calls mystic experiences before, without the use of psychedelics and well, I didn’t really know that psychedelics are a ‘route’ so to say to these mystic experiences. And didn’t even know what ‘mystic experiences’ were as described by him. Again it’s another book about getting in touch with what exists beyond our senses and how to expand your default level of consciousness.

Ultimately, it’s not really about finding the light or source in such a temporary way but rather, finding a way to integrate what you feel and experience through a psychedelic journey and taking that into your life. Because for me, I have felt this sensation before psychedelics, with and after them and I know that it exists right here, right now. I think that this is one route, one path and it is a very sacred one and when it comes down to it, it’s very important to have a continuous practice. Staying in touch with spirit continuously, if that’s what you want.

So Michael Pollan is in his 60’s and has never taken psychedelics before, he describes his journey taking numerous plant medicines and psychedelics toward the end of the book. The beginning is a big fat history of LCD and others until present. It’s all very interesting. I think there is a lot around at the moment about the healing power of these medicines. In the past there was a lot of unmonitored research in America in the ‘60s, particularly with LSD and it lasted for ten years if I remember correctly, and recently they have started the research again and it has been ongoing for the longest period of 20 years. He also talks a lot about psilocybin mushrooms, his experience with them too and different ways to view and expand ‘consciousness’ throughout our lives.

Here are some quotes from the book:

“ The journeys have shown me that what the Buddhists try to tell us but I have never really understood: that there is much more to consciousness than the ego, as we would see if it would just shut up. And that its dissolution (or transcendence) is nothing to fear; in fact, it is a prerequisite for making any spiritual progress.”  ❤

“Robin Carhart-Harris’s paper got me wondering if, at least for the mind, ageing is really a process of declining entropy, the fading over time of what we should regard as a positive attribute of mental life.”

“Getting older might render the world more predictable (in every sense), yet it also lightens the burden of responsibility, creating a new space for experiment. Mine had been to see if it wasn’t too late to skip out of some of the deeper grooves of habit that the been there's and done that's of long experience had inscribed on my mind.”

“If you want to understand what an expanded consciousness looks like, all you have to do is have tea with a four-year-old.” — Gopnik

“A spiritual experience does not by itself make a spiritual life.” — Huston Smith  ❤


-


4 January 2019
Autobiography of a Yogi:
Paramahansa Yogananda

This book is full of so much magic. I think that I am very open-minded when it comes to what I can’t conceive and this book really just reinforced that sense of wonder within me. The main story I would say is actually about Paramahansa Yogananda’s guru, who is just a magician and has a depth of knowledge that is out of this world. It definitely has opened up my mind to the magic that exists in this world and to always stay open to it. There are infinite layers of awareness in which to experience life, the question is whether you are willing to go there, to be open enough to believe.

There are a few quotes that I will include below. I especially like the one where Paramahansa Yogananda’s guru goes into detail about the reality of astrology. There is also another section of the book toward the end where there is an in-depth explanation of reincarnation and the other realms that we are constantly re-born into.

“Ordinary love is selfish darkly rooted in desires and satisfaction. Divine love is without condition, without boundary, without change. The flux of the human heart is gone forever at the transfixing touch of pure love.”

“The hardcore of egotism is difficult to dislodge, except rudely. With its departure, the Divine finds, at last, an unobstructed channel. In vain it seeks to percolate through the flinty heart of selfishness.”

“ ‘I don’t believe in astrology’. It is not a question of belief, the scientific attitude one should take on any subject is whether it is true. The law of gravitation worked as efficiently before Newton as after him. The cosmos will be fairly chaotic if its laws could not operate without the sanction of human belief. Charlatans have brought the ancient stellar science to its present disrepute. Astrology is too vast, both mathematically and philosophically to be rightly grasped except by men of profound understanding. If ignoramus’ misread the heavens and see there a scrawl instead of a script that is to be expected in this imperfect world. One should not dismiss the wisdom with the wise.

All parts of creation are linked together and interchange their influences. The balanced rhythm of the universe is rooted in reciprocity my guru continued. Man in his human aspect has to combat two sets of forces. First, the tumult’s within his being caused by the admixture of earth, water, fire, air and ethereal elements. Second the outer disintegrating powers of nature. So long as man struggles with his mortality he is affected by the myriad mutations of heaven and earth. Astrology is the study of man's response to planetary stimuli. The stars have no conscious benevolence or animosity they merely send forth positive and negative radiations. Of themselves, these do not help or harm humanity but offer a lawful channel for the outward operation for cause-effect equilibriums that each man has set into motion in the past. A child is born on that day and at that hour when the celestial rays are in mathematical harmony with his individual karma. His horoscope is a challenging portrait revealing his unalterable past with his probable future results but the natal chart can only be operated by men of intuitive wisdom, these are few.

The message boldly blazoned across the heavens at the moment of birth is not meant to emphasise fate, the result of past good or evil but to arouse mans will to escape from his universal thraldom; what he has done, he can undo. None other than himself was the instigator of the causes of whatever effects are prevalent in his life. He can overcome any limitation because he created it by his own actions in the first place because he possesses spiritual resources that are not subject to planetary pressure. Superstitious awe of astrology makes one an automaton, slavishly dependent on mechanical guidance. The wise man defeats his planets, which is to say his past, by transferring his allegiance from the creation to the creator. The more he realises his unity with spirit, the less he can be dominated by matter. The soul is ever free, it is deathless because birth-less it cannot be regimented by stars. Man is a soul and has a body. When he properly places his sense of identity he leaves behind all compulsive patterns. So long as he remains confused in his ordinary state of spiritual amnesia he will know the subtle fetters of environmental law. God is harmony, the devotee who attuned himself will never perform any activity amiss. His activities will be correctly and naturally timed to accord with astrological law. After deep prayer and meditation, he’s in touch with divine consciousness. There is no greater power than that inward protection.
‘Then dear master, why do you want me to wear an astrological bangle?’

It is only when a traveller has reached his goal that he is justified in discarding his maps. During the journey, he takes advantage of any convenient shortcut the ancient rishi’s discovered many ways to curtail the period of man's exile in delusion. There are certain mechanical features in the law of karma that can be skillfully adjusted by the fingers of wisdom. All human ills arise from some transgression of universal law. The scriptures point out that man must satisfy the laws of nature while not discrediting omnipotence. He should say, Lord I trust in thee and know thou canst help me but I too will do my best to undo any wrong I have done.”

And there is a great gem here from Gandhi,

“It is curious how we delude ourselves fancying that the body can be improved but that it is impossible to evoke the hidden powers of the soul. I am engaged in trying to show that if I have any of those powers I am as frail a mortal as any of us and that I never had anything extraordinary about me nor have I now. I am a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own however that I have enough humility to confess my errors and to retrace my steps. I own that I have an immovable faith in God and his goodness and an un-consumable passion for truth and love but is that not what every person has latent in him? If we may make new discoveries and inventions in the phenomenal world must we declare our bankruptcy in the spiritual domain? Is it impossible to multiply the exceptions so as to make them the rule? Must man always be brute first and man after, if at all?” — Gandhi

🤍🤍🤍