Title: Higher Relationship
Author: Teresa Konnaris
Authors Website: http://www.theequationoflife.org/
Buy Online: The Equation of Life
Categories: Wholeness, Transpersonal, Self, Inner Relationships
Rating: 9/10
Description: This is a book with poetic writings and illustrations of higher relationship. The sacred process of male and female, on their heart chakra journey of unconditional love. A love that has no place for the conditions we have known in relationships, "A union of the spiritual and the sexual". Male and female meet each other from a free and whole place within themselves, that allows their relationship to push through old limitations. A pure hearted, pure intentioned love. This enables trust and safeness to open and expand their energy centres and fulfill the sacred potential.

Title: Crazy Wisdom
Author: Chogyam Trungpa
Authors Website: http://shambhala.org/
Buy Online: Amazon
Categories: Wholeness, Transpersonal, Self, Inner Relationships
Rating: 9/10
Description: Chögyam Trungpa describes "crazy wisdom" as an innocent state of mind that has the quality of early morning—fresh, sparkling, and completely awake. This fascinating book examines the life of Padmasambhava—the revered Indian teacher who brought Buddhism to Tibet—to illustrate the principle of crazy wisdom. From this profound point of view, spiritual practice does not provide comfortable answers to pain or confusion. On the contrary, painful emotions can be appreciated as a challenging opportunity for new discovery. In particular, the author discusses meditation as a practical way to uncover one's own innate wisdom.

Title: Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path
Author: Mariana Caplan
Authors Website: http://www.realspirituality.com/
Buy Online: Amazon
Categories: New Age, Spirituality
Rating: 9/10
Description: The spiritual path is like any other road—it’s going to have its share of potholes and detours. Safe travel requires a quality rarely taught yet critically important in today’s world: discernment. In Eyes Wide Open, Mariana Caplan supports us in cultivating the acute judgment and discrimination that will help us to live a spiritual life with intelligence, clarity, and authenticity. Is enlightenment less about fireworks and bliss and more about dismantling illusions? How do we fully integrate our practice into daily living? What’s the best way to work with the ego and the shadow? Eyes Wide Open explores these questions and more, offering practitioners from any tradition—or those just getting started—a traveler’s guide through “the labyrinth of increasing subtlety” that defines a genuine spiritual life.

Title: Open to Desire: The Truth About What the Buddha Taught
Author: Mark Epstein
Authors Website: http://markepsteinmd.com/
Buy Online: Amazon
Categories: Desire, Relationships
Rating: 9/10
Description: It is common in both Buddhism and Freudian psychoanalysis to treat desire as if it is the root of all suffering and problems, but psychiatrist Mark Epstein believes this to be a grave misunderstanding.In his controversial defense of desire, he makes clear that it is the key to deepening intimacy with ourselves, each other, and our world. Proposing that spiritual attainment does not have to be detached from intimacy or eroticism, Open to Desire begins with an exploration of the state of dissatisfaction that causes us to cling to irrational habits. Dr. Epstein helps readers overcome their own fears of desire so that they can more readily bridge the gap between self and other, cope with feelings of incompletion, and get past the perception of others as objects. Freed from clinging and shame, desire’s spiritual potential can then be opened up.

Title: The Road to Character
Author: David Brooks
Authors Website:
Buy Online: Amazon
Categories: Philosophy
Rating: 8/10
Description: With the wisdom, humor, curiosity, and sharp insights that have brought millions of readers to his New York Times column and his previous bestsellers, David Brooks has consistently illuminated our daily lives in surprising and original ways. In The Social Animal, he explored the neuroscience of human connection and how we can flourish together. Now, in The Road to Character, he focuses on the deeper values that should inform our lives. Responding to what he calls the culture of the Big Me, which emphasizes external success, Brooks challenges us, and himself, to rebalance the scales between our “résumé virtues”—achieving wealth, fame, and status—and our “eulogy virtues,” those that exist at the core of our being: kindness, bravery, honesty, or faithfulness, focusing on what kind of relationships we have formed.

Title: The Ramayana: A Telling Of the Ancient Indian Epic
Author: Valmiki
Authors Website: http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/
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Categories: Desire, Hinduism
Rating: 8/10
Description: A sweeping tale of abduction, battle, and courtship played out in a universe of deities and demons, The Ramayana is familiar to virtually every Indian. Although the Sanskrit original was composed by Valmiki around the fourth century BC, poets have produced countless versions in different languages.

This "telling" of the Ramayana story was adapted by Larry Tominberg for classroom use. If a teacher is unable to provide fuller copies of the text for use with the lessons in Spotlight on Ramayana: An Enduring Tradition, this version should be used.

Title: Iron John: A Book about Men
Author: Robert Bly
Authors Website: http://robertbly.com
Buy Online: Amason
Categories: Wholeness, Transpersonal, Self, Inner Relationships
Rating: 9/10
Description: In this timeless and deeply learned classic, poet and translator Robert Bly offers nothing less than a new vision of what it means to be a man.

Bly's vision is based on his ongoing work with men, as well as on reflections on his own life. He addresses the devastating effects of remote fathers and mourns the disappearance of male initiation rites in our culture. Finding rich meaning in ancient stories and legends, Bly uses the Grimm fairy tale "Iron John"-in which a mentor or "Wild Man" guides a young man through eight stages of male growth-to remind us of ways of knowing long forgotten, images of deep and vigorous masculinity centered in feeling and protective of the young.

At once down-to-earth and elevated, combining the grandeur of myth with the practical and often painful lessons of our own histories, Iron John is an astonishing work that will continue to guide and inspire men-and women-for years to come.