The Self-Help/Spirituality books that made mine obsolete

[Encephalon]

https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Spirituality-Central-Practices-Awaken/dp/0471392162/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1590621617&sr=8-1

This was written in 1999, well before I was anywhere near "awake," or at least cognizant of the level of my negative unconscious conditioning.  Besides being best friends with Ken Wilber,  he's a walking, talking encyclopeadia of spiritual development and a professor of psychiatry who writes in an extremely accessible style and it feels like you're getting a course in comparative religion as well. Taoism and Buddhism get a lot of attention here but there are plenty of Western corollaries.  Had I read the book 20 years ago, my spiritual evolution would have likely been advanced.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/0143127748/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1590621992&sr=8-1

What can I say that could do this work justice?  For anyone who's been wrestling with pernicious and destructive forms of negative conditioning, those of us who aspire to be better but seem unconsciously programmed to self-destruct in slow motion, here's the bible of getting free.  Trauma, and particularly early childhood developmental trauma, is so rampant in America it easily explains much of the sociopathology we are drowning in as a culture.  I wept tears of relief for weeks after reading this. 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Sober-Truth-Debunking-Programs-Industry/dp/0807035874/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= 

For the fellow Bums who took the on-ramp into addiction and found 12-Step programs antiquated, moralistic, and just plain antiscientific, this work will blow you away with possibilities for healing and put to rest any lingering worries that abandoning AA meetings will sentence you to the pit of Hell.

 

I could probably add 4 or 5 more titles if I expanded the criteria but these three form a profoundly accessible resource for those of us who don't have access to expensive treatment or proper mental health care.  I can't imagine how my nei kung practice would have advanced had the information in these three been internalzied first,  but the practice feels even more satisfying now. `