When discussing spiritual books, we are talking about self-help books taken to the next level of human transcendence, evolution, or improvement. We are speaking too, I think, not religious tomes for bible study but spiritual books as essential contribution to human adult development where mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual balance is the goal.
Different books provide different focus, of course, and each of the “best-selling” spiritual books adds to our repertoire of working toward becoming good, pure, whole beings. Okay. Enough with the groovy generalizations: let me just get to the specific spiritual books to which I make such vague reference:
Spiritual Books by Sylvia Browne
From her books on psychic experiences and evolution (such as ADVENTURES of a PSYCHIC) to her works regarding reincarnation or the afterlife (as in LIFE on the OTHER SIDE: A PSYCHIC’S TOUR of the AFTERLIFE) to her latest discussions of God and spirituality (such as LESSONS for LIFE or EVERYTHING YOU NEED to KNOW about the PARANORMAL), Sylvia Browne is the spiritual guru of the postmodern generation. And she writes in a candid and no-nonsense, yet personable tone that is engaging and informative without being so lofty readers are alienated or put off otherwise.
Spiritual Books by Rosemary Altea
There is something regenerative, something spiritually engaging to the point of being mystical about Altea’s spiritual books. In THE EAGLE and the ROSE: A REMARKABLE TRUE STORY and PROUD SPIRIT: LESSONS, INSIGHTS, and HEALING from “the VOICE of the SPIRIT WORLD, for example, she uses narrative to bind her “lectures” and lessons…those which even the most skeptical will understand and appreciate at some level.
Spiritual Books by Marianne Williamson
Based on the Course in Miracles, many of Williamson’s books offer a supportive yet grab-you by-the-collar realism that is stunning in its profound simplicity. For instance in her two spiritual books, A RETURN to LOVE and A RETURN to LOVE: REFLECTIONS on the PRINCIPLES of “A Course in Miracles,” the words remind readers of self-empowerment that is a given, not as something one hopes to get from people who will not give it. That is, she says, if you act as if you expect to be treated in [X] manner, you will be.
Spiritual Books by James Redfield
By way of narrative, which furthers the lessons of the human condition, Redfield presents a chronology of “prophecies,” each of which he delivers by designing the prophecy around the personalities in the books. For example, in THE CELESTINE PROPHECY, Redfield determines people who are “energy suckers”, what we might know as takers but who are people taking not necessarily money or material valuables: they take our energy; they drain us; they suck good energy, out of the air around us, even. By the time you get through a prophecy in his spiritual books, you will feel the energies and spiritual phenomena of which he writes so skillfully and insightfully.
There are dozens of so-called spiritual books. Deciding which to read, or which to read first is challenging, but if you start with the three authors above, then move to the works of, say, Iyanla Van Zant (pragmatic and healing at once), Shakti Gawain (stunning connections), and even Gary Sukav (heady, brilliant), you will be part of the heightening awareness that we are more than just work, eat, and sleep creatures.
