Books & Thoughts

[12min read] In between weeks where we write longer essays we'll be sharing some of what we're reading and thinking through.

Happy Sunday!

I started an essay for this week’s newsletter, but it just wasn’t coming together quite like I hoped it would, so I decided to shelve it for now. It’s a bit of a family joke at this point, the way I bounce from one idea to another, the things I remember so well and the other things that don’t stand a chance of being remembered (movie plots), and honestly I think that the way my mind functions now is a combination of genetic predisposition combined with 22 years of parenting, when my attention has been pulled on by the needs of one, then two, then three, then five other humans. Not to mention the myriad number of animals we’ve shared our lives with. Lots of plates to keep spinning. And this way of being comes with some real challenges, but it’s also pretty rich and enjoyable for me. The sense of being interested in so many things that I’ll never be bored is so delightful. Reading half a dozen or more books simultaneously may not be efficient, but I love diving into content based on what sounds most compelling at any particular moment in time.

All of that was a roundabout way of saying that what I felt most excited about sharing this week turned out to be the books I’m reading. So with that sufficient amount of ado, here they are…

—Mindy

Tantra Illuminated

Tantra Illuminated by Christopher D. Wallis. David first heard mention of this book at a psychedelics conference in a workshop on something or other. He started reading this book and it was in the vein of things that historically I’ve been more drawn to studying than him (eastern spiritual traditions), so that piqued my interest as well. Curiously, during the time that he was reading the book, I would attempt to open the audiobook and got an error over and over again. Eventually I gave up trying and set it aside. I’ve recently picked it up again and the audiobook has worked great for me, so I guess that’s the universe’s way of telling me now is a good time to engage with this material. 😉 This book has been really impactful on David, so I’m going to let him write up some of his thoughts about it. 

David here: There have been very few books of prose that I’ve read slowly, and deliberately, to savor them; Anti-Fragile by Nasim Taleb, God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herber, The Tin drum by Gunter Grass, and Tantra Illuminated by Christopher D. Walls, a scholar-practitioner focused on non-dual Shiva tantra. Non-dual Shiva Tantra is a spiritual tradition emphasizing the realization that ultimate reality is a singular, indivisible consciousness (Shiva), expressing itself dynamically through all forms and experiences without separation or distinction. I was introduced to Tantra Illuminated by Keely Ann, a Tantric Coach, after she led the audience through a meditative peeling of a clementine. It was so relaxing and sumptuous to be fully engaged with an otherwise forgettable activity. She mentioned the book at the conclusion of her talk/guided meditation, and I decided to read it. It’s a longer book, 512 pages. The audiobook became a frequent companion on long walks. I would listen, pause, mull over ideas, and then sometimes break into a run to practice the ideas covered over the course of a bit over 18 months. I so enjoyed the perspective shared because it was introduced without advocating for belief. I have a rather cantankerous relationship with belief, and I’ve really enjoyed becoming acquainted with practices that deepen my enjoyment of the quotidian through simple practices and reframing. 

Healing Through The Vagus Nerve

Healing Through The Vagus Nerve by Amanda Armstrong This is the third book I’ve picked up about somatic/vagus nerve healing, and this is the one I would heartily recommend to anyone interested in learning more about this. Another book I read recently laid some good foundation, but was a lot more clinical in its approach and because of that didn’t engage me in the same way. This book really starts out by laying a good foundation without getting too “in the weeds” with the research and scientific understanding around the nervous system. The author shares enough of her journey and her experience working with her coaching clients to feel like she really knows the personal challenges involved with coming from a place of dysregulation. And the exercises the book gets to after laying a good foundation of understanding are straightforward and well-explained. If you are more of a podcast person, I’vce listened to several episodes of her podcast as well, and think it’s also a great resource. 

Let Them

The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. I’m not too far into this one, but it’s a library book so I’m hoping I can get through it at a decent pace. I wasn’t familiar with her work before, but am interested now in reading some of her other books. This book focuses on identifying the locus of control that we each have in our relationships with other people. Adopting a “Let them” approach to allow clothes to make their choices (which they will whether we have that mindset or not, she acknowledges) and then coming in with a “let me” perspective that asks what I want to do, given the reality in front of me. I feel like this book is likely to cover a similar territory as The Courage to Be Disliked but from a very different angle. (This seems like a good place to insert that I recommend The Courage to Be Disliked to everyone, and the feedback I get from those who do is 100% positive.)

You’re On An Airplane

You’re On An Airplane by Parker Posey. This is a loose memoir, and by that I mean it is some bits of her life combined with a lot of reflection and rambling thoughts. It’s enjoyable, especially since she reads the audiobook. I think the memoirs I read last summer that our daughter Zion recommended have sparked a new appreciation of memoirs for me at this point in my life. As David and I continue to work on evolving our relationship into something richer and more enjoyable, I feel like I see more and more plainly how even though we’ve been together for half our lives, our experiences of that time have been very different. I’m fascinated by the way that we bring our history and personality with us everywhere, shaping what we notice, see, experience, and remember. What we focus on and lay claim to becomes the substance of how we define ourselves, the story of us and the basis for our ego identity.  At this point, I don’t really believe that much of anything has any inherent meaning, but I think we must create meaning to find a solid enough place in the world to stand among the ever shifting sands of reality.

Recollections of My Life as a Woman

Recollections of My Life as a Woman by Diane di Prima. Another memoir, one of Zion’s favorites. I am only a few pages in and already I am in love with the way she writes about her life.  A couple of passages that I’ve reread a half dozen times already:

My grandfather was regarded somewhat as the family treasure: a powerful and erratic kind of lightning generator, a kind of Tesla experiment, we for some reason kept in the house. It was clear to me that he was as good as it got. My father, a sullen man with a smoldering temper, was easily as demanding as Grandpa, but did not bring these endearing qualities of excitement and idealism, this demand for something more than we already had or knew, into our lives. It was like tending a furnace in which the fire had gone out.

……….

Antoinette was always busy, but there was a way in which she communicated the basic all-rightness of things. I loved to watch her hands. As I think about it now, I realize that as a little person I was not separated from the old: the sight and feel of soft, dry wrinkled skin was associated with the sight and feel of love. Of those who had the time to listen, to tell a story. I learned to love the smells and feel of old flesh—I loved to put my round child's cheek up against her wrinkled one.

Her hands always smelled of garlic and onions, beeswax and lemons and a thousand herbs. There was that sense of cleanness and the good smells of the world. A sense of the things that went on. In the turbulent 1930s into which I was born, my grandmother taught me that the things of woman go on: that they are the very basis and ground of human life. Babies are born and raised, the food is cooked. The world is cleaned and mended and kept in order. Kept sane. That one could live with dignity and joy even in poverty. That even tragedy and shock and loss require this basis of loving attendance.

And that men were peripheral to all this. They were dear, they brought excitement, they sought to bring change. Printed newspapers, made speeches, tried to bring that taste of sanity and order into the larger world.

But they were fragile somehow. In their excitement they would forget to watch the clock and turn the oven off. I grew up thinking them a luxury.

Waking the Witch

Waking the Witch by Pam Grossman This book was part autobiographical, part historical, part socio-cultural exploration, and part entertainment. As a person who has enjoyed leaning in to “witchy” things, I quite enjoyed this book. Living as a woman in a world that has been overwhelmingly patriarchal throughout recorded history is interesting, to say the least. Looking at ideas around female independence and power through the lens of the witch made for an engaging and thought provoking read. 

The Tattooist of Auschwitz

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris. This is historical fiction based on 95% true events (per the author). I have read quite a few books about Jews during the Holocaust, so I didn’t go into reading this with much besides a feeling of “Well this is going to be heavy.” It was a book selected for our neighborhood book club, so that’s how it came across my radar. I listened to it quickly, over a period of three days, and while it was heavy, it is one that I felt added to my conceptual understanding and increased the breadth of my knowledge about the experience of the Jews and others imprisoned by the Nazis in camps during WWII. What I especially appreciated about this book was the picture it gave of daily life for those imprisoned, the ways they tried to eke out a sense of normalcy as best they could. The friendships and love affairs they had, the ways they tried to help each other, the small things they did to try and claim a bit of autonomy and hold on to their own humanity, when the efforts to deprive them of those aspects were so intense. I had the chance to visit Auschwitz in college while on a study abroad, and that added an additional layer to my experience reading this book. 

Seth Speaks

Seth Speaks by Jane Roberts. Seth is a “personality” channeled by medium Jane Roberts. I’ve read the Emmanuel books which are also written by a channeled personality and found them to be so lovely, inspiring, and hopeful. My personal cosmology makes room for the existence of such beings, so I don’t find it too difficult to take the information they present at face value, willing to judge it on its merit and see whether or not it resonates with me just as I do any other ideas brought about by more traditional means. But I can imagine that for many people it would be a tough sell. Happily I have a friend who finds this stuff as juicy as I do, and we are doing an asynchronous book club via Marco Polo with this book, which is proving to be very enjoyable. 

The Book

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts. This is the current selection for my Bodhicitta Book Club. It’s rather short, only six chapters, so we will tackle it two chapters at a time over three sessions. I have read a few of Watts’ books, and listened to dozens of his lectures. I have found his work to be incredibly rich and delicious. He’s a brilliant thinker and was a deep student of Zen Buddhism. My experience with his work is that he captures my thinking mind and carries it all the way to a breaking point, at which time I can begin to glimpse the absurdity of the game, along with its incredible beauty. 

In the first chapter, Watts lays out an extended metaphor, or as he calls it, a “myth” to describe his own cosmology, which he says he employs when children ask him those “fundamental metaphysical questions which come some readily to their minds.” I think it is very lovely, so I’m going to include it in its entirety here.  

There was never a time when the world began, because it goes round and round like a circle, and there is no place on a circle where it begins. Look at my watch, which tells the time; it goes round, and so the world repeats itself again and again. But just as the hour-hand of the watch goes up to twelve and down to six, so, too, there is day and night, waking and sleeping, living and dying, summer and winter. You can’t have any one of these without the other, because you wouldn’t be able to know what black is unless you had seen it side-by-side with white, or white unless side-by-side with black. 

In the same way, there are times when the world is, and times when it isn’t, for if the world went on and on without rest for ever and ever, it would get horribly tired of itself. It comes and it goes. Now you see it; now you don’t. So because it doesn’t get tired of itself, it always comes back again after it disappears. It’s like your breath: it goes in and out, in and out, and if you try to hold it in all the time you feel terrible. It’s also like the game of hide-and-seek, because it’s always fun to find new ways of hiding, and to seek for someone who doesn’t always hide in the same place. 

God also likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear. 

Now when God plays hide and pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself. But that’s the whole fun of it—just what he wanted to do. He doesn’t want to find himself too quickly, for that would spoil the game. That is why it is so difficult for you and me to find out that we are God in disguise, pretending not to be himself. But when the game has gone on long enough, all of us will wake up, stop pretending, and remember that we are all one single Self—the God who is all that there is and who lives for ever and ever. 

Of course, you must remember that God isn’t shaped like a person. People have skins and there is always something outside our skins. If there weren’t, we wouldn’t know the difference between what is inside and outside our bodies. But God has no skin and no shape because there isn’t any outside to him. [With a sufficiently intelligent child, I illustrate this with a Möbius strip—a ring of paper tape twisted once in such a way that it has only one side and one edge.] The inside and the outside of God are the same. And though I have been talking about God as ‘he’ and not ‘she,’ God isn’t a man or a woman. I didn’t say ‘it’ because we usually say ‘it’ for things that aren’t alive. 

God is the Self of the world, but you can’t see God for the same reason that, without a mirror, you can’t see your own eyes, and you certainly can’t bite your own teeth or look inside your head. Your self is that cleverly hidden because it is God hiding. 

You may ask why God sometimes hides in the form of horrible people, or pretends to be people who suffer great disease and pain. Remember, first, that he isn’t really doing this to anyone but himself. Remember, too, that in almost all the stories you enjoy there have to be bad people as well as good people, for the thrill of the tale is to find out how the good people will get the better of the bad. It’s the same as when we play cards. At the beginning of the game we shuffle them all into a mess, which is like the bad things in the world, but the point of the game is to put the mess into good order, and the one who does it best is the winner. Then we shuffle the cards once more and play again, and so it goes with the world.

Océan rouge 🎶

I came across this song recently, and it is a new favorite. The whole album is fantastic. I hope you enjoy it.

I hope some of these spark your interest and that you enjoyed the excerpts. Happy reading!

-Mindy

PARTING

WORDS

PIC

It’s baby owl season at the wildlife rescue where Mindy volunteers.

That’s all for this week! If you’re into this, share this newsletter with all your friends. Connecting with new subscribers is magical! 🧚🏻‍♀️

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DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice.