There are some books that literally blow you away when you read them. Something inside tells you that life will never be the same again if you adopt the principles contained within them. They may not have the answer for us as an individual, but they can often go a long way to helping us find it. I have drawn on the principles of many of these in Finding Peace. (The links to books and other materials to purchase are via Amazon and I receive a commission payment from any purchases made via the links as an affiliate. Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.)
The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion: Freeing Yourself from Destructive Thoughts and Emotions
Christopher Germer, PhD. Life is hard, but we make it harder on ourselves by creating expectations that can never be met. This means that we spend our lives beating ourselves up, so can never be truly happy as we’ll always perceive ourselves as not good enough. It’s as if we believe that we can only be happy when we are perfect and life does not present any problems to us. That’s never going to happen. By taking a lighter, more accepting and understanding approach to ourselves and those around us, we can achieve that elusive happiness without anything ‘happening’, as we can achieve it through understanding rather than beating ourselves up for imaginary ‘failings’.
Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha
Tara Brach. Tara’s main premise is that as human beings we think we are somehow broken or deficient so need fixing, but this is completely wrong. This concept of being inadequate or deficient is also at the root of the entire self-help and self-improvement industry. The ultimate truth is that we don’t need fixing as we are perfect and complete as we are. It’s society that’s wrong by saying we need to be better or more beautiful, wealthier, a higher achiever, more successful in our career or better parents. But what’s really needed is acceptance that this is wrong and that we already have everything we need. We were born with it, but we need to realise it.
Conversations with God, Book 1: An Uncommon Dialogue
Neale Donald Walsch. There are three books in the series and the real life-changer is Book 1. The overall premise is that the author sat down one day and asked the big questions in life such as ‘why are we here?’ and ‘is there a God?’. The answers he received later became the three books. Don’t get too hung up on whether this is true or not and whether he really did get answered by God – that’s not the point and is a bit like asking whether Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is factually accurate. It doesn’t matter, it’s an excellent book regardless.
Don’t worry if you’re not religious or ‘don’t do God’. Read Book 1 with an open mind and treat the conversational approach as just a mechanic with which to put across a message. The message will blow you away if you open to it.
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Eckhart Tolle. There is only one way to live, and that’s in the present moment. If we live in the past, we will be filled with regret and sadness about events we can’t do anything about it. If we live in the future, we will be filled with anxiety and fear about something unknown that may never happen. But each and every moment is now – in the future, every moment will be a new ‘now’, and this moment will be the past. So there is nothing else other than this moment. Only this moment. Things have never been any different and never can be. This book shows the importance of living in the moment – the ‘now’ – and how to do it. It will change your life beyond recognition if you open to it and use mindfulness to practise the messages contained within.
The Deepest Acceptance: Radical Awakening in Ordinary Life
Jeff Foster. Like Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now), Jeff is an ordinary bloke who suddenly ‘got it’ whilst suffering from severe depression and then turned his life around based on spiritual principles. Jeff’s particular area is ‘non-duality’ which is like the Buddhist concept of emptiness, but don’t be put off by this. The central message of the book is learning how to accept what’s happening in our lives. This doesn’t mean we should lie down like a doormat and take what comes at us. On the contrary, we are more likely to be fully energised and working to make our lives and everyone else’s better. Acceptance in this context means ‘not denying’, rather than the opposite of ‘resist’. As an example, pretending we’re not angry or upset at something achieves nothing, other than to make us more unhappy, more angry and more upset. It also makes the feeling worse so that it comes back and bites us later.
Instead, using mindfulness, we can see how we are feeling and accept it but without engaging in it (such as being consumed by the anger). This means we can investigate the cause without getting upset, then take action that is more appropriate, wise and compassionate, rather than blowing up and throwing oil on the flames, which is what many of us usually do. Accept what’s happening, investigate thoroughly, then act wisely. Imagine how much better, calmer and happier the world would be if we all did that. With Deepest Acceptance we don’t have to imagine it, we can “be the change we want to see in the world”, as Ghandi said.
M Scott Peck. Dr Peck is a psychiatrist and has distilled his decades of experience into this book. It is incredibly powerful and shows us why our lives are the way they are, together with a path out of it. Read it again and again to help achieve peace and understanding with life. One of the key concepts in the book is that life is hard. But when you accept that it is hard, it no longer feels as hard. Instead you can open up to what it has to offer without the burden of prior expectations.
The Wise Heart: Buddhist Psychology for the West
Jack Kornfield. This presents a broad picture of several basic Buddhist concepts but puts them into a Western context. Jack Kornfield was born in the USA but then left to become a Buddhist monk in South East Asia before returning to the United States, getting married, having a family and becoming a qualified psychologist. So he writes from a perspective of wide understanding and experience. As such, it offers a very valuable perspective on how spirituality – Buddhism in particular – can be applied to our lives.