The Changemaker Library includes books for the following topics: core books, creativity, exercise, food, health, meditation, piece of mind, personal development, recovery, spiritual direction, and stress reduction.

For the Changemaker Library, we will be including the basic features of some books you may want to use. All of the books used are the choices of Changemaker without solicitation from any author or publisher. At the beginning of the post, we have listed the name of the book, the author, the ISBN number, and a link where you can order the book if you choose. The rest of the post includes actual content from that book for you to better be able to determine if this is a book for you.

I keep my special books together and use them frequently. I call them my textbooks as I seek direction time and time again from them. The Changemaker Library presently has 50+ books that we are recommending. This library can be acquired gradually either for your individual work or resources.

The Changemaker Library has ten separate topics.

The topics are:

CORE BOOK TITLES

CREATIVITY BOOK TITLES

EXERCISE BOOK TITLES

FOOD BOOK TITLES

HEALTH BOOK TITLES

MEDITATION BOOK TITLES

PEACE OF MIND BOOK TITLES

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT BOOK TITLES

SPIRITUAL DIRECTION BOOK TITLES

STRESS REDUCTION BOOK TITLES

I  have recently added:

RECOVERY BOOK TITLES

Having worked in the addiction and mental health fields, I saw that each field suggested itself to be the solution for addiction and/or mental health. In my 10th year of being clean and sober, I had clinical depression, which lasted for 2 years. I am grateful that the idea of using alcohol was never an option. I am also grateful that the fear of suicide is what finally drove me to a psychiatrist.

Depression is so slow and insidious that each day is a little grayer than the day before. One in five Americans suffers from depression every year. If you are reading this and feel that your life takes all your effort and that you will never be able to enjoy much of anything, please go immediately to a psychiatrist or medical doctor and tell them that you want an anti-depressant. Medicine for chemical imbalance, which is what depression is, has only been on the market for 40 years so it still is much misunderstood by the public.

“Begin to observe your life more and try to awaken the observer in you, the high self. Thinkers from Plato to Freud have talked about the three selves we have within us. I call them the high self, the conscious self, and the basic self. The conscious self is the personality; the basic self is the child. When the conscious self decides to go on a diet, the basic self eats chocolate cake. The high self is the god within us, the part that is eternal and divine. It is always there but we need to activate it….Listen to the slow, still voice we call intuition.”
Arianna Huffington

The first experience I had with beginning to learn how to get control of my own thinking was with Transactional Analysis in 1976. I learned to recognize my inner parent, child and adult. Actually, when I started, I only had a parent and child. The adult took time..

TA was founded by Eric Berne as written about. As explained at this site: Parent is the “taught” concept of life; adult is the “thought” concept of life; child is the “felt” concept of life.TA is founded on two concepts: (1) people can change, and (2) we all have a right to be in the world and be accepted.

The ITAA organization has an extensive group of tools available. Good information is also given at this site.

It states: “With Transactional Analysis, Eric Berne made complex interpersonal transactions understandable especially the “games” that the “inner child” plays in order to gain recognition from others.”

Peaceful Mind: Using Mindfulness and Cognitive Psychology to Overcome Depression
John McQuiad and Paula Carmona
ISBN 1-57224-366-X
Amazon link

Quiet Mind, Fearless Heart
Brian Luke Seaward
ISBN 0-471-67999-2
Amazon link

Serenity in Motion: Inner Peace: Anytime, Anywhere
Mary O’Hara
ISBN 0-446-69085-6
Amazon link

Taming the Tiger Within: Meditations on Transforming Difficult Emotions
Thich Nhat Hanh
ISBN 1-59448-134-2
Amazon link

Turning the Mind Into An Ally
Sakyong Mipham
ISBN 1-57322-345-X
Amazon link

Photo credit.

Kim Thomas

ISBN 0-8054-1853-9

Amazon link

From the introduction:

“From the pattern: “When we sew, we use a pattern and cut away everything that doesn’t look like the item we are making. The pattern makes the going a little easier. It is like that in our lives, too. As we look at Simplicity: A Life Patterned After God, we will discover how to (1) reduce the clutter, (2) persevere in the everyday, and (3) focus on the goal. We find the pattern in Hebrews 12: 1-2: “Let us…lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us (this is the reducing-the-clutter part), and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us (this is the persevering part), fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith (this is the focusing part).” (NASB) Applying the pattern to our physical world, emotional world, and spiritual world (or body, soul, and spirit) will lead us down the path of simplicity.”

Part I Body: Simplicity in Our Physical World

From the summary: Body: At a Glance

• We were created to reflect the image of God. Some things may need to be carved away so that His image is seen more clearly.
• The pattern : Hebrews 12:1
• Reduce the clutter—lean, clean, and wean. Detach from things.
• Persevere in the everyday—persevere, not endure. Incline yourself to contentment. Make it fun, consolidate, delegate.
• Focus on the goal—time management. Read, seed. Weed, and feed.

Part II Soul: Simplicity in Our Relational/Emotional World

From the summary: Soul: At a Glance

• You are more than mud
• Reduce the clutter. Manage conflict in relationships. We all have

at least seven categories of relationships. To manage conflict,

identify it and have a plan to deal with it.

• Persevere in the everyday. Restore a sense of wonder with sacraments of simplicity: solitude, authenticity, gratitude, and celebration.
• Focus on the goal. Create a personal mission statement. Combine your passion with your talent in the context of a commitment to godly character.

Part III Spirit: Simplicity in Our Spiritual World

• Be supernaturally laundered.
• Reduce the clutter. Get rid of the sin in your life. Identify the plumb line, make a good confession, and then receive forgiveness.
• Persevere in the everyday. Become a pilgrim and establish habits of holiness: meditation, prayer, fasting, the Eucharist, and worship.
• Focus on the goal. Have a heart wholly after God. Hunger and thirst for righteousness, pursue a pure heart, and fix your gaze on the infinite reference point.

Gloria Karpinski

ISBN 0-345-43509-5

Amazon link

From the new disciples:

“A disciple is someone who recognizes, commits to, and is obedient to the promptings of his or her inner spiritual imperative and chooses to bring that consciousness into every aspect of life. Disciplines are responsible for themselves, knowing they are always in the process of growing and choosing to shape their personalities to serve their spiritual intentions. Disciples tend to be open, flexible, and teachable, inclusive in their worldview and dedicated to participating in the healing of planetary challenges.”

“Disciples are found everywhere and are identified by their being, not necessarily by their doing. Disciples have matured in consciousness from “saving the world” into serving the world.”

Her contents include:

Book One: Choosing to live on purpose

The new disciples

Conscious evolution

Beyond chaos

Healing the divided self

Book Two: Twelve lessons in spiritual craftsmanship

Knowing the way

1) Knowledge: The pointing finger

2) Revelation: In the twinkling of an eye

3) Discernment: Clear seeing, clear choices

4) Body: Temple, archive, and laboratory

Becoming the way

5) Love: the master key

6) Will: the divine birthright

7) Faith: cornerstone of the cathedral
Power: focus for the flow

Fulfilling the way

9) Creating: dancing with the beloved

10)Transforming: renewing the promise

11)Enduring: going the distance

12)Serving: Returning the gift

The book has several exercises in the form of questions and/or meditations. They are at the end of each of the twelve disciplines to help the reader develop greater depth with each of the disciplines. For those interested in journaling, suggestions for journaling are given for each chapter.

An example of one of the exercises:

For knowledge: “Memory Cluster and the Thousand-Petaled Lotus”

“All of us have cluster patterns—learned assumptions that are grouped in the mind. For example, is we grew up in a family that dishonored originality, the cluster might come up as: “It’s too dangerous to express myself; safely comes from appeasing and conforming; asserting my creativity will lead to abuse and ridicule.””

“Examine as many of your own clusters as possible. Sometimes we can get to our clusters through an exercise.”

1. You begin by picking a seed word for something you want to understand more deeply. Draw a circle and write this word in the center, as the center of a lotus blossom. For example, you might want to place the word love in the center of your lotus.

1. Next, focus on your breathing. Relax, close your eyes, and wait. Soon a word association will come to mind. You then draw a lotus petal and write the associated word in it. Don’t resist or be concerned about whether you understand it at this point.

1. Then release the association and bring your attention back to the center, to the word love, and wait. Soon another association will come. You draw another petal, write in the word, release it, and return to the center of the lotus.

1. Continue this process for as long as you like. But be certain to always return to the seed word in the middle of the lotus. There is no right or wrong way to do it. In time this little exercise can reveal clusters and provide real insight into hidden associations you might be carrying.

You might discover that the first associations are obvious—or

Perhaps they are so fragmented that they make no sense. Just

stay with it, even when you hit a block. That may be the point at

which you hit a block. That may be the point at which you are

peeling away to some deeper issue or vulnerability you need to

encounter.

1. When your mind is slow to give a new association, pay close

attention, as your defenses are starting to show up and say,

“That’s far enough.” Then take the last word association and

make it the center of a new lotus.

Brian Luke Seaward

ISBN 0-471-67999-2

Amazon link

From the author—

“Current statistics suggest that 1/3 of the American population is one anti-depressants. Alcoholism, drug addiction, self-mutilation, and suicide are just some of the more popular ways that people cope with their stress today. Through these tactics, people merely avoid the problems at hand, rather than work to resolve them. For stress to be dealt with effectively, no matter how much pressure is bearing down on us, avoidance is rarely a viable option.”

“If you listen closely to people’s conversations, you might notice how they tend to be stuck: not processing every aspect of a given situation to make sense of it, but rehashing thoughts and feelings, which, in turn, only validates their stress.”

“In what is often called the Universal Law of Attraction, a critical mass of negativity forms, and like a magnet, our mental focus begins to attract more things to complain about. As a result, we get caught in a whirlpool of negativity, from which is is really hard to escape. In the words of Marcel Proust, “The real act of discovery is not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.” Attitude, once again, is the paintbrush with which we color our world.”

From Chapter 5: The Human Equinox: Six Ways to Bring Balance into Your Life—

1) Work life balanced with personal life

2) Freedom balanced with discipline

3) Mental stimulation balanced with quietness

4) Right-brain thinking balanced with left-brain thinking

5) Technology balanced with nature

6) Ego balanced with Soul

“Rest assured, behind every unresolved personal drama lies an overactive ego trying to control, manipulate, or dominate whatever it can.”

“At its most rudimentary level, the ego is the bodyguard for the soul, to serve in the role of protector. The problem comes when the bodyguard forgets its primary position, eclipsing the soul’s splendor, to dictate a policy of human behavior.”

From the introduction:

“In the spirit of one of my heroes, Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth), a man who certainly understood the relationship between stress and spirituality, this book is divided into sections that resemble the classic template of what Campbell called “the Hero’s Journey.”

Part I: Into the Unknown frames our departure from the familiar into a brave new stressful world and the problems often associated with that departure.

Part II: Crossing the Threshold highlights the ageless wisdom of the dance between stress and spirituality and features several stories of

everyday heroes who perform the dance masterfully.

Part III: Life in the Balance contains abundant how-to advice to help you build a solid foundation or an action plan, using effective coping skills to victoriously meet the challenge of life’s stress and thus celebrate your own heroic qualities.

Part IV: Back Home Again brings you home to a hero’s welcome, with a few inspirational stories that promise that you, too, can complete the journey and return home as “the master of two worlds.”

“To support the theme of balance, sprinkled throughout the book are exercises, action plans, photographs, meditations, and poems to engage the right brain, help the left brain to process and reintegrate the information, and remind us of what we already know. It is my hope that Quiet Mind, Fearless Heart can reawaken your slumbering spirit, help you build a foundation of balance in your life, and enable you to regain a sense of personal homeostasis, so that the winds of change become the winds of grace that will allow your spirit to soar!”

Excerpt from “The Health of the Human Spirit”:

Twenty-one Strategies for Letting Go of Stress:

· A bird’s eye view: keeping everything in perspective

· Flexing the funny bone: comic relief

· Physical exercise: flushing out the stress hormones

· Decompression: the art of calm

· Do not enter: establishing healthy boundaries

· Respond, don’t react: taming that ego

· Seeking a balance: complexity versus simplicity

· Good vibrations I: turning off the TV

· Anger management: learning to fine-tune expectations

· Meditation: take five or even ten

· Adopt an attitude of gratitude: counting your blessings

(and curses, too)

· Good nutrition: avoid putting gasoline on the fire

· Empowerment: remember, you’ve got the goods

· Friends in need: having a good support system

· Back to nature: getting and staying grounded

· Diversify your interests: place your eggs in more than one

Basket

· Amazing grace: the healing power of prayer

· Reserving judgment: the power of acceptance

· Seizing the day: the future is now

· Forgiveness: the last frontier

Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics: Lifestyles for Self-Discovery

Marsha Sinetar

ISBN 0-8091-2773-3

Amazon link

From the introduction:

“My bias is this: ordinary, everyday people can and do become whole. They can and do live in ways that express their highest and most cherished values—values which also happen to be those most prized universally and collectively throughout human history. People who become whole are the ones who find completeness by consciously integrating inner and outer realities. This is a book about such persons, and about the way in which they manage to merge their inner truths with the demands of everyday living. It is for them, and for all who long for their own wholeness, that this book is written and dedicated.”

“It has been said that the inception of real personality health occurs when an individual stops trying to get the world to meet his needs and wants, and begins seeking out ways to perform some needed and meaningful service for others. That seems like a good and practice starting point for the discussion at hand, since it allows us to view wholeness through an inner/outer filter of how people conduct their life in relationship to others.”

From advancement to wholeness:

“Wholeness exists to the extent an individual is conscious of and receptive to his innermost self. The more aware and accepting a person becomes of his inner images and motivations, the more he becomes healed.”

“Paul Tillich’s phrase, “the courage to be”, is insightfully descriptive of what is required of one who would be whole. In his book of the same title, he reminds us that the self-affirming life requires will: the will to have more life, to surpass ourselves. This sort of courage banishes everything cowardly; it is the opposite of submissiveness to external gods. Rather it affirms that which really is alive within, and is the will which compels the individual to take on difficult, but perfectly natural, life battles. It allows him to tackle the kind of small deaths which open him up to a larger life.”

From the mystic type along the way:

“A key difference between mystics and all others is that their spiritual eyes have been opened, and they have “seen”. From the chaos of their early inner confusion, mystics awaken to an illumined posture of Being. They are in a state of Being rather than—like most others— seeking to become. They possess such a high degree of interior richness that with little effort—or so it may seem to others—they develop their latent powers of transcending ordinary reality.”

From Dr. Lee Sannella who has researched the physical experiences or alterations to his/her physical state:

“Spiritual rebirth has become…a well-defined entity…It is not simply an altered state of consciousness, but an ongoing process lasting from several months to many years, during which the person passes in and out of different stages of consciousness…(This) can be described as an evolutionary process taking place in the nervous system.”

From Swami Paramananda, one of the first Hindu teachers to impact the United States,:

“The deep things do no come suddenly. Let us be patient—with ourselves. We may recognize many defects in our natures…it can all be removed. Go on working silently. Silence and patience go together. Silence has wonderful creative power. Make a study of the lives of great men. They conceive an idea but they do not go out and shout it before the world; they think silently and work quietly until they realize their ideal.”

From solitude and silence in the development of wholeness:

“Selected meditative and solitary practices help develop personality because the still-point of being, the innermost core of self, can—at first—only be reached indirectly: through dreams, through a flash of insight, through feelings or symbols, through stilling the mind.”

From psychiatrist William Glasser, a discipline must meet six requirements if it is to help people grow:

• It should be non-competitive and be done, for the most part, alone.
• It should be a practice which is not dependent on others for execution.
• It should be easy to do, should not require much mental effort (e.g., straining to make the mind blank turns people away from meditation despite their sound intentions).
• It should be a practice which is done regularly, about one hour per day (or twice a day in equal amounts of time).
• It should be something that the doer believes will improve his mental/physical state. He must see his own improvements, without needing an “expert” or guru to tell him he’s getting better—in other words, in every respect it should build self-sufficiency rather than dependence upon another.
• It should be something which can be done without inordinate self-criticism or comparison to someone else’s progress. The individual hurts himself, and his developmental progress, when he thinks, “I’m not running as fast, as far or gracefully as John,” or when he cruelly ridicules himself for the form or manner in which he sees himself doing the practice.

Wayne Teasdale

ISBN 1-57731-102-7

Amazon link

Part I: Finding What Unites Us

Introduction The Mystic Heart: Our Common Heritage

Chapter 1 A Bridge Across the Religions and Beyond

Chapter 2 Crossing Over: Pioneers of Interspiritual Wisdom

Chapter 3 The Mirror of the Heart: Consciousness as the Root of

Identity

Chapter 4 “The Paths are many But the Goal is the Same”:

Discovering the Way

Part II: The Practical Nature of the Mystical Way

Chapter 5 The Mystic Character

Chapter 6 Spiritual Practice : The Crux of Inner Change

Chapter 7 Out in the World: The spirituality of Action

Part III: The Mysticism of the Natural World

Chapter 8 Natural Mysticism: Reading the Book of Creation

Part IV: Global Mysticism

Chapter 9 The Promised Land of the Spiritual Journey

Chapter 10 Opening the Heart of the World: Toward a Universal

Mysticism

An excerpt from “A Bridge Across the Religions and Beyond”

“What is Spirituality?

“Being religious connotes belonging to and practicing a religious tradition. Being spiritual suggests a personal commitment to a process of inner development that engages us in our totality. Often, when authentic faith embodies an individual’s spirituality, the religious and the spiritual will coincide. Still, not every religious person is spiritual and not every spiritual person is religious.”

“Spirituality is a way of life that affects and includes every moment of existence. It is at once a contemplative attitude, a disposition to a life of depth, and the search for ultimate meaning, direction, and belonging. The spiritual person is committed to growth as an essential, ongoing life goal. To be spiritual requires us to stand on our own two feet while being nurtured and supported by tradition, if we are fortunate enough to have one.”

An excerpt from “The Promised Land of the Spiritual Journey”:

“As I look back over the extraordinary moments in my own spiritual journey, I am fascinated to see how interspiritual it is. Although I am primarily a Christian, a Catholic contemplative, my heart and life are now totally open to whatever and whenever mysticsl graces take me. My experiences have ranged from pure, unitive elevations into the divine reality, to a painful phunge into the void in my early years as an undergraduate. They have included intense nondual moments with nature and its inhabitants—trees, flowers, mountains, birds, deer, raccoons, dogs, cats—even one sagelike turtle I encountered in Oklahoma. I have had the classic upanishadic realization, the overwhelming awareness that everything is within me and within everyone and everything else.”

I don’t do book reviews. Instead, I give the book title, the author, the ISBN number and a link to Amazon to buy it. I also include excerpts from the book chosen so that a reader can decide if this book is a good match for him/her.

The Gift of Change: Spiritual Guidance for Living Your Best Life

Marianne Williamson

ISBN 0-06061-611-7

Amazon link

One of the best writers about A Course in Miracles, Marianne Williamson’s newest books is titled The Gift of Change: Spiritual Guidance for a Radically New Life.

According to the author, A Course in Miracles, is a “self-study program of spiritual psychotherapy”. In this new book, she advocates her readers to begin a thorough plan of change from the inside out.

The main learning from Course is that there are only two emotions: love or fear. She advocates that love can transform anyone.

The ten bridges of transformation that we can experience are:

1) From forgetting who we are to remembering who we are,

2) From negative thinking to positive love,

3) From anxiety to atonement,

4) From asking God to change the world to praying that He changes us,

5) From living in the past and future to living in the present,

6) From focus on guilt to focus on innocence,

7) From separation to relationship,
From spiritual death to rebirth,

9) From your plan to God’s plan,

(10) From who we were to who we are becoming.

One of her more powerful suggestions is that wherever we find ourselves—that is where we should be. “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

Gregg Levoy

ISBN 0-609-80370-0

Amazon link

From the introduction:

“In many traditions, calls—in the form of sounds—precede prayer, rites of initation, spiritual healings, and major life events. The purpose of calls is to summon adherents away from their daily grinds to a new level of awareness, into a sacred frame of mind, into communicatin with that which is bigger than themselves. The calls may come from bull-roares, trumpets, rattles, wooden clackers, songs, and bells.”

(Calls may also be “still messages and/or thoughts, songs, etc.)

“Primarily this force announces the need for change, and the response for which calls is an awakening of some kind. A call is only a monologue. A return call, a response, creates a dialogue. Our own unfolding requires that we be in constant dialogue with whatever is calling us. The call and one’s response to it are also a central metaphor for the spiritual life.”

“They may be calls to do something (become self-employed, go back to school leave or start a relationship, move to the country, change careers, have a child) or calls to be something (more creative, less judgmental, more loving, less fearful). They may be calls toward something or away from something; calls to change something, review our commitment to it, or come back to it in an entirely new way; calls toward whatever we’ve dared and double-dared ourselves to do for as long as we can remember.”

“Saying yes to the calls tend to place you on a path that half of yourself thinks doesn’t make a bit of sense, but the other half knows that your life won’t make sense without.”

“We find that we must act on this imperative despite temptations—to back down and run for cover—that will divide even the most grimly resolve against themselves. We must persist with the sort of hope about which playwright and former Czechoslavakian president Vaclav Havel spoke when he said, “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

The main body of the book is divided into 5 sections:

1) Part 1 The call to attention

2) Part 2 Receiving calls

3) Part 3 Invoking calls

4) Part 4 Saying no to calls

5) Part 5 Saying yes to calls

An excerpt from Saying Yes to Calls:

“Much of the pain associated with callings comes from avoiding them, from not surrendering to them. However much sacrifice may be involved, much of the pain we feel in surrendering to callings actually comes from our anticipation of the pain and not from the actual capitulation. Once we do surrender, we often feel a sense of great relief, and just as often we are bewildered about why we didn’t do it years ago.”

“We mistakenly equate surrender with defeat and sacrifice with annihilation. We bring to our renunciations the same oanic and anxiety—“Oh God, I can’t give that up”—that we often bring to our deliberations about intimacy, the fears of beng devoured and overpowered, of giving our lives away. Granted, parts of us are broken into smithereens in the process of following our calls and experience real compromise and real suffering, but this is not defeat any more than a flower suffers defeat by going to seed. Futhermore, say theologian Frederich Buechner, “What’s lost is nothing to what’s found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarely fill a cup.”

Friends in Recovery

ISBN 0-941405-12-5

Amazon link

From the introduction:

“The 12 Steps for Adult Children is a personal guide to understanding the spiritual power of the Twelve Steps. This material is primarily for adults whose childhoods were negatively affected by a less-than-nurturing environment. This environment often resulted when adults responsible for care were influenced by substance abuse, emotional problems, or compulsive behaviors. The Twelve Steps offer a way to grow beyond the harmful effects of a troubled home environment.”

“When used as intended, the steps are a profoundly powerful process for allowing God to heal damaged emotions. The 12 Steps for Adult Children is a spiritual tool that helps us regain balance and order, and leads us to improved health and increased happiness through a renewed relationship with our Higher Power.”

Starting the journey:

“This book provides a practical way to use the Twelve Steps as a recovery tool, and to fully integrate the steps as an ongoing part of our recovery journey. The book helps us to identify and deal with issues that are interfering with our lives. If we approach this work seriously, we will experience recovery that nurtures physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.”

Working with a recovery partner:

“A recovery partner is similar ro a mentor or sponsor. This person can be a role model for learning how to enjoy a better quality of life through the love of a Higher Power and the wisdom of the program.”

Benefits of a recovery partner:

“Many benefits result from working with a recovery partner. Some of them are:

• Partners provide a non-threatening system of mutual accountability. For example, a partner can agree to call the other for support and prayer in abstaining from a harmful habit.
• Partners focus on each other’s specific area of need each time they meet. Openly sharing thoughts and feelings helps to clarify needs in problem areas. This contribules to one’s freedom from the past. The focus is to live honestly in the present with realistic expectations.
• Partners encourage one another to progress from a state of physical, emotional, and spiritual sickness to wholeness of life. It is normal to feel discomfort when unhealthy familiar behaviors are being transformed. Healthy behavior is a result of doing our Higher Power’s will.
• Partners aid one another by being sensitive to personal and relationship needs. When partners openly share their faults with one another, honesty, trust, and healing occur. It is not appropriate to focus on a particular behavior and lose the value of the moment or the point of what is shared.”