Useful books for self-development

A Separate reality:

Carlos Casteneda – in the plethora of books Carlos wrote, (he changes his name when he goes across to Mexico) – he meets up with a Yaqui Warrior a man of knowledge Don Juan Matus, the beginnings of a discovering of a path leading to a journey of unbelievable happenings into the world of the Shamen.

The most memorable book I read was A Separate Reality.

The book revolves around the humorous side of Carlos Kasten leaders ego and his non-flexibility about how to look at life differently. He is so ensconced in his own western view of life that Don Juan Matus thanks the Mickey out of him on several occasions to destroy his ego and his very fixed way of looking at life.

In the book Castaneda continues his description of his apprenticeship under the tutelage of Don Juan, from which he had withdrawn in 1965. As in his previous book, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, Castaneda describes the experiences he has with Don Juan while under the influence of the psychotropic plants that Don Juan offered him, peyote (Lophophora williamsii) and a smokable mixture of what Castaneda believed to be, among other plants, dried mushroom of the genus Psilocybe. The main focus of the book centered around Don Juan’s attempts at getting Carlos to See, a practice best described as, in Castaneda’s own words, “perceiving energy directly as it flows through the universe”.

As the books flow into the years, the drug references fade out more and more, seemingly to depict that when Carlos loses his old ways of thinking and being, he no longer needs a crutch to separate realities.

Quantum Healing

by Deepak Chopra.

This is an incredible book for therapists and practitioners out there who want a different view of how health and healing work inside the mind and inside the body. Deepak Chopra was a pioneer in how the mind and body are physically connected. He showed the way and succeeded to show scientists that neurotransmitter not only belong to the mind but bathed every single cell within the body. That literally, every cell is listening into every word we announce.

The books gives references to his work as a GP into how long the body can take to repair itself and has many good stories to enlighten those of us who don’t have a medical background but still work with some medical issues in clients.

Using Your Brain For a Change

by Richard Bandler:

Although this is classed as a book it is more of a documentary by Richard Bandler from one of his seminars. You get all the documentary from Richard, and all the comments from the audience too. Yet found it more interesting than most NLP books out there. Mostly because it has the ‘colour’ of someone doing something live and real – working with submodalities mostly. You can learn a lot when you see and hear a good practitioner at work, and such is the case with this book. You can find all these books on Amazon or Ebay.

I have found all these useful books for self development: