Musings and Reviews of Metaphysical, New Age and Meaningful Writings

Posts tagged ‘spirituality’

WILD AWAKE #BookReview and #AuthorInterview


wild-awake-cover-final“…from time to time we need to ‘rewild’ ourselves,” says Vajragupta, and he shares his encounters with wild creatures and wild landscapes in an enchanting way, making us feel we’ve entered a secret world with him.

Wild Awake: Alone, Offline & Aware in Nature will make you want to follow Vajragupta’s example of using solitary retreats in nature to become more “fully awake,” more like the Buddha, a name which means “one who is awake.”

What are the benefits of being more fully awake? Perhaps you’ll find it easier to meditate, to get in touch with your soul, to make the right choices for your life. In solitary retreat, as Vajragupta describes, you are better able, in the silence, to hear your truth and know the solutions.

“Places, perhaps especially wild places, can talk to us; they can be full of suggestion and meaning. Inner and outer worlds can mirror each other, and this changes our awareness.”

It’s easy to understand how being out in nature stimulates and nourishes your soul, as Vajragupta describes his 25 years of taking solitary retreats. For those who have questions about how to get the most out of such retreats, he provides an A to Z guide with practical advice and suggestions for designing your own.

Read Wild Awake: Alone, Offline & Aware in Nature for inspiration, then get out there as often as possible!

Thanks to author and Buddhist teacher Vajragupta, who answers my questions here…

AUTHOR INTERVIEW QUESTIONS WITH VAJRAGUPTA

What would you like readers to take away from the experiences you shared in Wild Awake?

I would love it if the book encouraged more people to try out solitude in nature. Some people take to this quite easily. For others, solitude can seem more daunting or challenging. Fear and trepidation can put us off. In solitude we are going to meet ourselves fully and deeply. And we might feel afraid of who we might meet!

I remember one place I stayed in for a solitary retreat that had a “visitors book” and it was moving and inspiring reading the entries. Quite a few of them were from people on retreat, and on their own, for the first time, and they described how those first feelings of anxiety soon gave way to a sense of joy and freedom. We all have our ups and downs on retreat, but we can learn to be OK with that, which is tremendously liberating and confidence giving.

How does it feel when the barrier drops between your inner and outer worlds?

Perhaps we won’t even be aware of it till afterwards. At the time we are not thinking about things like that, we are just absorbed in the world around us. There is a story about the Zen master Dogen that I love. He was asked what it was like to be Enlightened and he said, “it is to be intimate with all things.” In nature I sometimes get glimpses, or intimations, of that. There is a sense of closeness and connection, of love. Trees, stone walls, old winding lanes become like friends! Things become more beautiful and interesting for their own sake.

Years ago I heard a story of a man camping on Dartmoor, probably the wildest part of England. He really tuned into the place. So much so, that if he kicked a stone when he was walking along, he stopped and put it back where it came from. That might sound crazy, but I can understand how he felt. I too can feel that strong sense of care, closeness, and respect, wanting to leave things exactly as I found them, wanting to “live lightly in this world.”

How can a solitary retreat lead you to a realization of your life’s purpose or change you and your perspective?

A friend of mine who was a poet once said that in order to write we need space, and space around the space. In other words, for deeper emotions and thoughts to emerge, the heart and the mind really need lots of time and space. Our lives can often be so full and busy that those deeper parts of ourselves get crowded out and damped-down. We lose touch with what is really meaningful and significant. Of course, the day-to-day stuff we are engaged in may be an expression of what is really important to us, but retreats (solitary or otherwise) are really important for staying in touch with those depths and allowing new inspiration to arise.

How did the places you retreated to become part of your transformation?

In the book I describe some of the beautiful places I have done solitary retreats, and how the landscape and character of a place could have an effect on me. For example, I talk about staying in a lovely old stone cottage on the mouth of an estuary. It was a mile from the road, so you had to bring everything you needed in by foot. When the tide was up, you looked out over a mile-wide stretch of water, like a big lake. When the tide was out, there was an open expanse of sand, with the sea just visible on the horizon. Then the tide gradually snaked its way back again. Birds, fishes, and other sea life moved with the tides. Everything was always moving and changing. I loved the changingness of it – it totally absorbed me. It was an easy place just to be, to be still and content. I think I touched into a deeper contentment than I had ever experienced before. That was partly because of the place, the character and atmosphere of the place. It was generous, abundant, it gave so much to me. The outer world spoke to my inner world, it changed me.

How did your solitary retreats make you feel “closer to life?”

In lots of ways. For example, on retreat you can just feel more alive and energetic. Because there is less external input and stimulation, you can be more in touch with your emotions, and the dreams and reflections of your inner world. You also start to notice the senses more, and what is around you in the external world. Things can feel more raw, but also more real.

One thing I reflect on in the book is encounters with wild creatures – foxes, birds, deer – that have sometimes happened on solitary retreats. For example, I talk about meeting a fox on a mountainside and us just looking at each other for a long time. Like many people, I can find these encounters special, magical, almost like a “blessing.” I have often wondered why we find these meetings with wild animals so significant and wonderful. Again, I think it is about that sense of connection, of overcoming our human separateness from the world. We are drawn out of ourselves and into the world. At the very same time, having that creature gaze at us, in the unblinking way wild creatures just gaze, also throws us back on ourselves. We are aware of them as a creature, with their awareness, looking at us, and that makes us more aware of standing there, being there, as a human being, with our mental faculties and our particular mode of awareness. That is another kind of “closeness to life.”

How can being alone strengthen your connection with others?

This may seem paradoxical, but my experience of solitude is that it helps me be more connected to others. I go back home from a solitary retreat with a stronger sense of those I am close to, perhaps more appreciation of someone, perhaps more understanding. Again, it is about having enough space for the heart to fully open, and for awareness to broaden, so we can really take others in.

Often, when we are too busy for too long, our awareness narrows and our heart closes down. In Wild Awake, one chapter is about a solitary retreat I did quite soon after my father died. This might seem a strange time to choose to be alone, but I found it very helpful. It was a rich and special time. I brought lots of photos of my father from different times in his life and pinned them up on the walls. I had the time and space to really assimilate what had happened, to think of my father, to write down in my journal some of the things he had said in his last months. He was strongly present with me on that retreat: every time I meditated he appeared in my mind’s eye, many nights I dreamt about him. I felt very fortunate to have the time to process his death in this way. Of course there was pain, sadness, and grief, but there was also joy, gratitude, and appreciation.

I understand you are currently writing your next book, Free Time. What did you learn on your retreats that spurred your interest in the subject of time?

I noticed that my experience of time was totally different on retreat. In everyday life I could often be trying to do things fast, so I had more time later. Or trying to get everything ticked off on my “to do” list. Or always planning how I could fit more useful activities into the day, to get more done, more efficiently. But, as Jon Kabatt-Zinn says, “if you fill all your time, you won’t have any.” Time rushes by and feels thin and insubstantial.

On retreat, by contrast, life can seem almost “timeless” in a liberating way. After a few days on retreat, I often feel I have been there for a few weeks. Time feels rich, full, brimming. I am able to have more awareness on a retreat and this means my attention moves along with things as they unfold. I can move along with the day, more in its time and rhythm. Often our attention is leaning back into the past, or straining forward into the future, and this distorts our subjective experience of time. But on retreat we can stay more in the present, which means time feels more relaxed and open. To be more mindful is also to be more time-full!

Wild Awake: Alone, Offline & Aware in Nature is available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback. Also check out the publisher’s website for more information and a video interview with Vajragupta.

Namaste!
Becca Chopra, author of The Chakra Diaries, Chakra Secrets, Balance Your Chakras-Balance Your Life, and The Chakra Energy Diet

www.theChakras.org

 

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book review, Buddhist literature, Solitary Retreats, Spiritual Book

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Calling You – Book Review


Thanks to guest reviewer, Leslie Powell Shankman, who offers this information on Calling You, which is an Award-Winning Finalist in the “New Age” category of the 2016 International Book Awards, and Second Prize Winner at the Amsterdam Book Award contest in the Spiritual Book category.

CallingYou_jpgCalling You, by Dr. Beatrix Czeizel and Aniko Gresko, recently translated from Hungarian into English, is a very unique book and as such defies easy categorization. In looking at the Table of Contents, one might be thrilled and intrigued by the promise of the information within. Or, one might find the span of chapter claims to be audacious. For this book delivers no less than an undistorted history of the Christ Soul, the Holy Family, and the purpose of their presence in the arc of Creation throughout the history of the Earth and the Cosmos. And this means that it offers a story that is so much more comprehensive and spectacular than the thin slice of history from 2000 years ago that humanity holds in current understanding.

Who are the authors? How did they get this information? How can they lay claim to such fantastic insights? They too, defy easy categorization. While one might cast their work as “New Age,” it would be a mistake to write them, or this book, off as light and unsubstantiated fantasy. In society’s terms, Dr. Beatrix Czeizel is an M.D. with a trained specialty in homeopathy. Both authors are healers in the deepest sense and have helped thousands of people in finding and solving the roots of physical disease that come from the more amorphous levels of the soul.

Both authors experienced car accidents in their 20’s, near-death experiences, entering a beautiful and expanded understanding of life. They could have slipped easily into that infinite freedom, but accepted the challenge of coming back. Beatrix was shown a beautiful light package at the bridge between the worlds and returned to make unraveling that her life’s work. When she came back, that bridge into a broader reality stayed open. Using the gifts of expanded vision that resulted from their accidents, Beatrix and Aniko have been exploring the vaster Cosmos and reporting on it ever since. English readers are fortunate to have access to two of their books, Stellar Nations-Soul Families, The Cosmic History Chronicles of the Milky Way Galaxy, and now, Calling You.

Calling You is essentially the diary of daily meditations which the authors refer to as “attunings.” Perhaps the sincerity of their hearts can be measured by the fact that the attuning sessions for this book involved sitting in an emptied, receptive state, waiting and listening for 7-12 hours at a time for almost a year and a half, from August 2011 through 2012. The cycle of life for the authors seems to involve being called into these “attunings” to receive information, integrating it, teaching it to a loyal group of students and then turning that knowledge into books (six so far) and over 50 guided meditation CDs.

In entering the attunings for Calling You, the prayer of the authors hearts was to be worthy to receive the true understanding of the Christ Soul and his mission, the true scope of his relationship with Mary Magdalene, the truth of the family they created and the truth of the principal characters that surrounded them. The resulting messages are nothing short of revolutionary and offer healing and a course correction for every person who reads and engages with Calling You. The book is organized in the order that the messages were received over that year and a half and as such it is a beautifully deliberate initiation journey. Each level of understanding creates the platform for the next level.

The ultimate aim of the book is no less than creating a pathway for the reader to learn how to wake up the seeds of Christ consciousness in their heart and being. The authors explain this as a consciousness that has nothing to do with religion or even with Christianity; this is the consciousness that we are all inherently capable of and need to move into to evolve humanity beyond the current expressions of strife. They cast Christ consciousness as a living and practical quality and ability of the heart by which a human being can become capable of operating the attributes of the Seven Wisdoms of Christ (unconditional love, acceptance, compassion, giving, forgiving, faith and trust in the power of the Light) simultaneously, in every minute, in every direction of life.

The title, Calling You, is apt. If your heart and curiosity spark to this beckoning and to the beautiful cover and presentation of the book, it is for you. This book offers so much loving explanation through vivid stories and is enhanced with full color pictures, suggested practices and rendering poems that distill and capture the human/cosmic journey. If you are drawn to respond to the call, you will truly enter a new and vast world. This world is not just the book, this world is the expanse and unexplored reaches of your own heart. The authors sum it up well in the introduction, “In reality, this is not a third dimensional book; the message manifested on the pages of this book is a multidimensional, living reality. This message is the map of a spiritual pathway which one must travel to unveil and understand the inner compulsion of one’s being. This message resonates with the hidden intention of the heart that is buried inside of all humans….”

Calling You educates also on the advances in scholarly research into the life and times of Jesus, showing us that the natural inclination of the current age is to inquire more deeply into the limited story of Christ that has been put forth by the institutionalized Church. Somehow we know there is more, that something is missing. It is the authors’ gift to humanity that they can ground us in the new and respected research and then take us well beyond that into our cosmological history and into our own hearts. If you truly engage with Calling You, you will not walk away from this book as the same person who entered it.

For more information, see www.stellarnations.com. The book is also available on Amazon.

Namaste!

Becca Chopra, author of The Chakra Diaries, Chakra Secrets, Balance Your Chakras-Balance Your Life, and The Chakra Energy Diet

http://www.theChakras.org

 

 

 

 

 

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The Unity Oracle: Review and Author Interview


Unity Oracle coverThe Unity Oracle: A spiritual adventure to save the world is truly an action adventure novel that takes you on a page-turning ride into spiritual awakening. The tale begins with a geologist, Jason, in the Artic Tundra, where he finds the Earth’s energy strong and alive… and his search for precious metals becomes more of a search for his soul.

In an area of high energetic magnitude, surrounded by crystal rock on Chevron Mountain, he enters a portal where he sees translucent visions of people, geometric shapes and symbols, and learns from an Inuit Elder that he is about to begin his karmic path. He will be assisted on this path by many spirit guides and helpers including a gold octahedron, an East Indian Yogi, a Hindu couple, two Madonnas, a Polynesian goddess, and a Native American Indian Chief.

Jason undergoes phenomenal mystical experiences as he travels around the world to spiritual communities such as the Findhorn Foundation and Oneness University. Along the way, he learns much, often putting himself through pain and peril, e.g., when he proves: “Most fear is not even real and the only way to understand that is to step into it.”

Step into it he does, and we grow along with Jason as his wild spiritual adventure encompasses finding 7 golden triangles in mysterious ways that reflect his personal growth and finally combine to become a golden octahedron, The Unity Oracle, that can bring love and healing to our world.

Along the way, Jason undergoes out-of-body experiences, release of entities and primordial emotions, kundalini rising, communicating with angelic beings, accurate premonitions, bilocation, the use of animal totems, visualization and the art of manifestation. Take the ride with Jason through his spiritual boot camp and you too will envision a possible future of beauty, with the Great Spirit working with the Earth and its people.

Joseph D. Drumheller is a spiritual healer and geologist, living on transecting ley lines in the evergreen state of Washington, USA. He describes himself as an international man of mystery, who when he’s not at home writing about the Adventure, is out living it. Here, he answers my questions about The Unity Oracle.

Becca: In general, how much of your book comes from your own personal experiences? 

Joseph: The Unity Oracle is about 20% pure fiction. I’ve lived the rest of it. The inspiration behind the book comes from mystical experiences I’ve had in Alaska, Findhorn, Oneness University and other places in Nature. I’ve also sprinkled in a little wisdom from what I’ve learned through relationships and the internal world of healing.

Becca: Your protagonist, Jason, faces some dangerous, disorienting episodes. Is that par for the course in spiritual awakening?

Joseph: I’m not sure. I don’t know what other people go through. Everyone’s spiritual awakening is a customized gift from the Divine. No two are alike, so it’s best not to compare. The disorienting and dangerous awakenings Jason experiences are a reflection of my own. I’m an Aries. We tend to hit head first.

Becca: What message do you hope readers take away from your book?

Joseph: My first aspiration was to paint a positive vision of the future. We’re in rapidly changing times with uncertainty looming on the horizon. We’re also in an unparalleled time of spiritual awakening. I wanted to combine global spiritual growth with a somewhat realistic outcome. It’s really an adventure about hope.

Becca: On Jason’s adventure, what main spiritual truths are conveyed?

Joseph:

  1. Suffering. Suffering is a result of suppressed pain that gets locked into the subconscious mind. When that happens, pain repeats.
  2. Healing. Suppressed emotion can be healed in meditation. When that’s done, repeating patterns of pain stop.
  3. Relationships. Close connections with people act as mirrors designed to accelerate personal growth. Marriage is the best example.
  4. Awakening. When suppressed emotion is healed, it opens the doors to spiritual awakenings. That’s when someone evolves from the understanding of a higher power to the experience of it.
  5. Union. When two people are independently awakened, they can form a bond of spiritual union, which goes beyond the physical and emotional aspects of most ‘normal’ relationships.
  6. Power. When someone is spiritually awakened, they can begin to align their will with the Divine. That creates the dynamics of flow, synchronicity and developing skills that transcend the physical world.
  7. Synergy. Synergy is the exponential multiplier effect applied to spirituality (i.e., the tipping point). Through collective consciousness and intent, we can change the world.

Becca: What is your vision of the Divine?

Joseph: Unfortunately, I’m not a visionary seer or a psychic. That means I don’t see God. I’m a feeler. My connection to a higher power is through a developed level of sensitivity. To me, it feels like electricity running through my body.

Becca: How would you suggest someone approach their desire for spiritual awakening?

Joseph: Aggressively and with their whole heart.  Go for it.

Becca: Do you have a continuing spiritual practice?

Joseph: I meditate daily, but my personal experience of Divine energy is greatly amplified when I work with other people in my healing sessions. It’s a type of synergy.

Becca: How does your non-fiction book, The Subconscious, The Divine and Me, relate to The Unity Oracle?

Joseph: They are more or less the same story. The Unity Oracle is an epic adventure of storytelling. The Subconscious, the Divine and Me is a how-to introduction to spirituality with lots of examples and case studies. Both cover similar aspects on the evolution of spiritual truths.

Joseph Drumheller’s books, The Unity Oracle and The Subconscious, the Divine and Me, are available on Amazon.

Namaste!
Becca Chopra, author of The Chakra Diaries, Chakra Secrets, Balance Your Chakras-Balance Your Life, and The Chakra Energy Diet

www.theChakras.org

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Review and Interview with Fred Howard on Transforming Faith: Stories of Change from a Lifelong Spiritual Seeker


Guest blogger Margaret Placentra Johnston, a practicing optometrist, is the author of Faith Beyond Belief: Stories of Good People Who Left Their Church Behind, Gold Winner of the 2013 Nautilus Book Award in Religion/spirituality.

I was delighted for the opportunity to read and review Dr. Fred Howard’s timely new title, Transforming Faith: Stories of Change from a Lifelong Spiritual Seeker. In it, he mixes snippets of his own personal faith journey with spiritual development Tranforming Faith coverwisdom from the ages. He uses these tools to work his way through to one of the clearest and most inspiring articulations of postreligious, postconventional faith that I have heard yet.

Howard’s book elucidates the spiritual development trajectory on three levels, his own personal journey, a synthesis of the stages other spiritual development theorists have described, and a trip through historical changes in religious authority that suggest our society in general is evolving through the same trajectory an individual might traverse.

A literal Christian in his youth, Howard worked his way through the inevitable religious doubts that anyone honestly engaging with our increasingly postmodern world would encounter. He emerged, as do many people going through these stages, with a deeper, kinder and greatly expanded interpretation of Christianity (and faith in general.) This form of faith allows him to engage more authentically in the world minus the provincial and limited religious beliefs of his youth.

Drawing on commonalities among the works of other spiritual development theorists, Howard refers to the earliest stage as “Adopted Faith*” common to most people in most traditional, organized religions, and similar to what he engaged in during his “born again” stage as a youth.

Howard calls the middle stage Individuating Faith, similar to James Fowler’s Individuative-Reflective Faith**. Here, a person faces down the inevitable doubts the rational mind is likely to impose upon the literal beliefs taught in most churches. This honest open-ended questioning and critical reflection may involve risk of defection from the church. But the benefit is that it can lead a person beyond the spiritual infancy of Adopted Faith, and may result in an individuated form of personal growth that is rarely acknowledged in conventional society.

The greatest gift of Howard’s Transforming Faith is in his articulation of the “final” stage. (I put the word ‘final’ in quotation marks because this is only the final stage we can articulate at this point. Spiritual growth is never finished, and we have no idea to what levels people may one day evolve.) He calls this Holistic Faith*** and says it is “a way of seeing life that [gives] wholeness, meaning and purpose to life,…better understood as a process….a verb rather than a noun…It’s an alignment of one’s heart with the heart of life and the heart of the universe.” Brilliant!!

But Howard lends added richness to the spiritual development concept by mentioning how our understanding of religious authority has continued to evolve throughout history. During the first fifteen hundred years of Christianity, tradition was the primary source of religious authority. Truth was dictated by outer authorities, especially in the form of the hierarchy headed by the pope. With the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, scripture emerged as the primary source of religious authority in the Western world. Together, these two eras may be seen as a society displaying a form of the Adopted Faith that is typical in the development of the individual.

With the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, the emphasis shifted away from outer authority toward greater importance on human reason as the more authentic determinant of reality. This era corresponds to Howard’s Individuating Faith stage.

Finally, in the nineteenth century, individual personal experience began to emerge as the ultimate determinant of reality – a type of faith “people can never fully grasp with analytical minds,” and corresponding roughly to Howard’s Holistic Faith stage – where faith is seen as trust – as opposed to beliefs. Howard wisely tell us: “Faith is not the absence of doubt. Faith is having enough confidence in the guidance of the heart.”

Transforming Faith serves as an excellent introduction to a hopeful and heartening view of individual spiritual development and overall societal human evolution, that has been articulated in many other books. Lest we be blinded by the “trees” of chaos and discord to which we are exposed through our conventional media, Howard’s perspective shares a glimpse of the “forest” – an optimistic future for humanity.

*referred to by other stage theorists as the Formal, Institutional, Fundamental, the Synthetic, Conventional, the pre-critical, the Faithful stage

**other theorists have called it the Skeptic, Individual stage, Critical Faith, the Rational Level, or the Critical Distance.

***referred to by other stage theorists as Mystic, Communal faith, Conjunctive Faith, post-critical faith, the Mystic level.

Here, Dr. Fred Howard responds to my questions:

MARGARET: What vision inspired your desire to write Transforming Faith?

FRED: When I first learned of the stage theory of spiritual growth, it so resonated with me as a process which I was in the midst of at that very moment. It made so many seemingly disparate parts of my life fall into place. Since then I’ve wanted to find a way to share it with others. Writing a book that included significant turning points in my journey struck me as a good way to do that.

MARGARET: How does your stance within Holistic Faith inform your work as a Unitarian minister?

FRED: Unitarian congregations are really a microcosm of our increasingly diverse religious world and, as such, have the potential to model good interfaith relationships to the rest of our society. Being in community with self-identified Buddhists, Christians, Jews, and even atheists, as is the case in many of our congregations, requires we develop a Holistic Faith approach.  The minister must think in terms of both/and rather than either/or. My goal is not to blend religions together.  Rather, I ask the members of our congregation to remain steadfast in their religious identity. I encourage everyone to find ways to be true to themselves and yet still be in relationship to one another. As we find ways to creatively accomplish this we develop Holistic Faith. We grow spiritually as individuals and as a community.

MARGARET: I know you are clear about this in your book, but for readers of Becca’s Inspirational Book Blog, could you supply a concise explanation of your view of God?

FRED: The word “God” has different meanings for most everyone.  But regardless of whether or not someone takes the notion of God literally, people with all varieties of spiritual sophistication still use the word to speak of a reality beyond the material world. So God, in essence, is a metaphor for meaning – a way for human beings to speak of something greater than ourselves, the great mystery of our existence, which gives life purpose. Heard in this way, it matters little whether or not God “exists” in any conventional sense.

Thank you, Margaret, for this incisive review and interview. Transforming Faith is available now on Amazon.com.

Namaste!

Becca Chopra, author of The Chakra Diaries, Chakra Secrets, Balance Your Chakras – Balance Your Life, and The Chakra Energy Diet

Download my FREE Chakra Balancing Video at www.theChakras.org

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We Are All Our Own Best Gurus


Screen shot 2013-05-07 at 7.30.58 AMLast night I watched the documentary, Kumare, on Netflix downstreaming. Vikram Gandhi, a 2nd-generation Indian man living in New Jersey wondered about religion, gurus and their authenticity. He searched America and then traveled to his ancestral homeland of India only to find what he felt were “false prophets,” espousing what he already knew. So, he decided to pose as a guru himself, learn yoga, meditation, and see if he could find a following in Arizona. Well, he did.

What he espoused was that he, Kumare, was an illusion, and that the guru was within each one of his disciples. While it almost made a joke of all things new age and spiritual, such as the psychic who saw him as a guru in many past lives, Kumare made a positive impact on everyone he met. He used age-old methods that all Indian gurus have used – yoga, meditation, visualization. And a powerful practice was having his disciples tell him what 5 things he needed to do (as if talking to themselves). Well, they all took their own advice and did what they told him to do.

When he did his unveiling 40 days after leaving the group, a few were shocked and upset, while the rest embraced him as just another fellow traveler sharing his wisdom and knowledge.

The message: We all have the power within us. We are all our best gurus.

But, watching the documentary, it also became clear that we as humans benefit from helping each other, energize each other when doing group practices, and feel happiest when in community. Vikram said he was his best self as Kumare. I think we are all our best selves when helping each other, sharing our inspiration, our knowledge, our wisdom. Because we are all on a search for meaning, for happiness and love.

FREE TODAY: My memoir of finding my own power, Chakra Secrets, is free for Kindle download today or tomorrow, May 7-8, at http://amzn.to/129rO5I

Namaste!

Becca Chopra

www.thechakras.org

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Power Up Your Chakras


CHAKRA POWER! How to Fire Up Your Energy Centers to Live a Fuller Life by Harriette Knight is a beautiful introduction or reminder of the importance of the chakras to our health and well-being. She explains the chakra energy system so well that no one who reads this book will ever forget that the “chakras are the wheels of the bus that get you where you need to go.”

Harriette shows how chakras affect everyone’s daily lives and are not just esoteric Eastern concepts for the yogi. She uses entertaining tidbits from the Wizard of Oz – likening the ruby slippers that guided Dorothy home to our own red Root Chakra, the base of safety and security. And she likens the Yellow Brick Road that took Dorothy to the Emerald City to the Solar Plexus Chakra, our personal golden path to the green Heart Chakra of love and compassion… brilliant analogies that make the chakra system so easily understandable.

Along with her colorful explanations of each of the seven chakras, Knight offers tips to heal each chakra, as well as a bonus section on “The Meanings of Stones You Wear,” describing the healing properties and chakra activation of gems ranging from abalone to zircon. This book is a great addition to any library of books on chakras and one I’ll refer to over and over again.

Harriette Knight, Master Healer & Psychic-Medium is also the author of GEMSTONE POWER! 52 Meanings and Meditations from Abalone to Zircon.

You can hear her Psychic & Healing Hour on Blog Talk Radio every Wednesday from 3:00-4:00 p.m. PT at www.BlogTalkRadio.com/HarrietteKnight.

Here, she enlightens us on her writing process:

Becca: What inspired you to write the book?

I have been in love with the psychic arts since I can remember. As a child, I had vivid past life memories, and envisioned my loved ones who had passed over floating around watching over me. At age 14, I started to fix up my friends according to their astrological signs. It wasn’t just the psychic arts that I loved, I loved art itself. I have been an artist my entire life.

If anyone told me that when I grew up I would be a psychic-medium or healer, I would’ve thought they were crazy. I always knew I would be an artist and a writer, but going from point A to B had a lot of detours.

In the early 90’s, after I divorced my husband, I dove head first into my spiritual practice. I was like a vacuum for information about everything from channeling to energy clearing to meditation. At the time I was searching for a book on chakras that was easy to understand and user friendly. All the books I found had a lot of big words and esoteric philosphies that did not resonate to me. There was one Chakra meditation tape that I tried and tried to listen to but the women’s voice grated on me like nails on a blackboard. I thought, “Where is an easy to understand book about Chakras??”  Fifteen years later my book, CHAKRA POWER! How to Fire Up Your Energy Centers to Live a Fuller Life was born.

Becca: What is something no one knows about you?

What most people don’t know is that for 12 years I was in an abusive marriage. This is shocking to many since my personality is independent and strong. I met my (ex) husband while working on the movie “Porky’s.”  He was one of the stars of the movie, and I was the Production Coordinator. It was love at first sight.

As time progressed, what began as flattering attention turned into controlling and mentally and verbally abusive behavior. Over the course of the relationship, I felt as if I was slowly dying, and the only thing at that time that kept my spark alive was my artwork. It was something I never gave up and, on one level, I believe it saved me.

One of the things I love most about the chakra work is its alignment with the colors of the rainbow. To me, it’s a beautiful weaving of my art background and spiritual practice.

Becca: What is the best thing anyone has said about your book?

I am very proud to say that I have heard the following words more than once. “Your book has changed my life.” Having had that experience from other authors, I can’t think of a higher compliment.  If I have been able to inspire even one person, I feel as if I have done my job well.

Becca: Any advice for others who feel they have inspiration to share?

Yes! Share it!! I believe that everyone is gifted with abilities that NEED to be shared. We are all teachers and students at the same time. Sharing inspiration often defies logic.  Listen to your intuition. Let your heart lead you. You will be shown the way for your messages and gifts to be shared. As long as you come from a place of integrity and honesty, you can never go wrong.

For healing sessions & healing jewelry, visit: www.HarrietteKnight.com

Namaste!
Becca Chopra, author of The Chakra Diaries and Chakra Secrets

www.thechakras.org

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Book Review, Creative Writing, Health Benefits of Balanced Chakras, Indie Authors, Inspirational Books, Reading Recommendations available on Amazon, Spiritual Books

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HAPPINESS IS CLOSER THAN YOU THINK


What is the meaning of life? When you get right down to it, it is to be happy. To experience a life of meaning and joy.

Jennifer O’Neill in her new book, The Pursuit of Happiness, provides a mini-course outlining 21 spiritual rules to finding success. The book was designed with a specific purpose, as a guide to help you tap into your natural ability to be happy. Everyone has the ability to find happiness in his or her life, yet sometimes you need a road map. The Pursuit of Happiness is your spiritual road map. Jennifer’s book can help you enjoy the journey.

Here’s a snapshot of her spiritual rules. Her explanations of each rule are simple and motivational. I won’t give you the full story here – The Pursuit of Happiness is free on Amazon Kindle today and tomorrow – download it and be inspired!

Get your free copy on Kindle, at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007RGJ07Y.

Happy Reading!

Becca Chopra, author of The Chakra Diaries

www.thechakras.org

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Book Review, Free Kindle Books, Inspirational Books, Reading Recommendations available on Amazon

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WRITE YOUR INSPIRATIONAL STORY!


Have you gone through life’s tough experiences and come out the other end with wisdom to share? My friend Peggy has gone through chemical injury, breast cancer, broken bones and more. And she’s learned methods of coping, plus inspiration to help others as well. So, she’s starting to write. You may have a story to tell as well, and it’s cathartic (which can be good) to get your words out.

Creativity is linked to the second or sacral chakra, which gets strengthened as you flow with the inspiration in your life. As you shout out your message to the world, even on paper, you’ll also be strengthening your throat chakra, which is linked to speaking your truth.

Whether you are writing a self-help work, like I am with Balance your Life, or fiction, as my colleague R. R. Harris is penning with Double Take, it pays dividends to be organized. “An outline is crucial and saves so much time. It tells you where the story is going.” John Grisham

Harris and I are both writing our new books, in a month!, using the program NOVEL IN A MONTH.

So, how should you start?

TITLE: Give your work a name, or something that can reference your project.

GENRE: Be flexible as this may change as the plotline and characters and your thoughts morph and develop. List all of the genres that your story might fit into.

POINT of VIEW: Will it change from scene to scene or will the main character narrate in first person throughout? An author friend of mine said that when she began her autobiographical “coming of age” novel that her original intention was to have the first-person voice change as her character grew and matured. However as she drove further and further into the hinterlands of her work, she realized how maintaining that direction complicated her writing and de-railed it from flowing freely from her consciousness. For example, she would have to ensure that her teenager was not speaking with the voice of a worldly and wise, middle-aged maven or vice versa.

Some authors choose voice from scene to scene by weighing what character stands the most to lose. Although unless skillfully written, this approach can leave a reader wondering what is going on and especially, who is talking.

WHO wants, WHAT do they want, WHY do they want it and What/who stands in your character’s way? Not sure where to begin?

“What if X happened? That’s how you start.” Tom Clancy

“Don’t wait to be struck by an idea. If you are a writer, sit down and damn well decide to have an idea. That’s the way to get an idea.” Andy Rooney

SETTING: Can make a story gel into a dish fit for the Queen or alternatively turn it into cold tasteless soup that even hungry flies shun. Of course, there are endless possibilities. You can create memorable characters as at home in the book’s setting as a well worn slipper, but who enliven it and blaze brightly at the slightest provocation. Perhaps others triumph despite all odds or seemingly invincible villains meet their match in a unforeseen avalanche of choices that could not have been forecast.

“Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it’s up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting.” John Updike

HOOK/SPARK: Yeah, the night was dark and stormy and she came to the door with nothing on but the radio, but then what? What will I write in the second paragraph and on page 87 that will keep my reader into the book? Will the last sip of my book be as satisfying as the first, or even more so?

As an author I must constantly ask – have I set-up conflict, created suspense and action and left the reader panting for more? Am I solving a problem the reader has, conveying knowledge or fulfilling a need?

“I want the reader to turn the page without thinking that she is turning the page. It must flow seamlessly.” Janet Evanovich

DON’T QUIT: “Nobody cares whether you write or not, and it’s very hard to write when nobody cares one way or the other. You can’t get fired if you don’t write, and most of the time you don’t get rewarded if you do. But don’t quit.” Andre Dubus

If you want to join me in the challenge of writing a book in a month, try the program along with me….

Learn how YOU can write your own book in just ONE MONTH, by visiting the official website:

http://www.novelinamonth.com/?afl=90058

For help with your book, see www.IndieAuthorCounsel.com.

Namaste!
Becca Chopra, author of The Chakra Diaries, www.thechakras.org

 

Do you want your story to inspire people around the world?

Visit Lulu.com to find the best publishing option to help you reach your desired audience.

Category:

Creative Writing, Indie Authors, Inspirational Books, novel in a month, reading & writing, Spiritual Books

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Happy I Read This!


The Happy Place is part poignant memoir, part self-help. It’s a quick read, but can have profound long-term effects on your life. What Gosselin does so well in her book is to take the most recent neuroscience research confirming that the brain is capable of change, tell us how she changed her own brain circuits, and then simply explains how the reader can too.

Gosselin recounts how her expectations were creating her reality and how we’re all doing that every day. Once she realized that she was programming her mind with her “words” or “feelings” every morning, she learned to correct the negative programs she was running in order to lead a more happy, healthy and fulfilling life.

“Don’t live as if the present is the past,” she writes. Instead, check in with yourself every morning, asking “How do I feel?” Then she explains how to follow the feeling to its root – usually in childhood to the first time you felt this way. Once you become aware how your brain was “wired” early in childhood and became addicted to certain feelings, you can then choose a better feeling and change your words. Doing this every day for 28 days will rewire your brain, explains Gosselin, so it’s a good daily practice.

Taking Gosselin’s journey with her as she discovers why she is unhappy, or always feels second-best, and then dramatically changes her life by processing her own feelings, is very inspirational and can guide anyone along the same beautiful path.

The Happy Place is available on Kindle at Amazon.com.

Becca Chopra, author of The Chakra Diaries

Category:

Health Benefits of Balanced Chakras, Inspirational Books, reading & writing, Reading Recommendations available on Amazon, Spiritual Books

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