How You Can Talk with God

This is a booklet by Yogananda of Self Realization Fellowship (SRF).

It offers a good perspective, and I recommend it highly. I know that I need the type of encouragement and gentle scolding such as in this booklet to keep me on track on my meditation. It is always rather a surprise at first, then rather hard to admit later on as to how this is needed. OK, I'll only speak for myself, but according to the booklet, it is a common problem. Still strange to me, even though I experience it.

I think the main message is that one has to be sincere for a relationship with God, not just wanting fringe benefits, and must stick to it to prove that one is sincere.

Today, I wondered if a reason for diffculty in sticking with it so to speak is due to fear of the unknown or that one will miss out on something in the here and now. I am not saying this very well, but it is hard to put into words. It is sort of like wondering about what comes after finding Nirvana - the then what question? Does one get bored and have to start all over? Maybe I just don't understand the concept well enough yet. If you do, please explain.

Let me know what you think.

Pain, Sex and Time

This is a book by Gerald Heard. The subtitle is: A New Outlook on Evolution and the Future of Man.

Catchy title, no?

The book starts off rather well. It proposes that man must make the next step in evolution - mental/expanded consciousness - or degenerate or destroy himself. Note that Heard wrote this around the start of WWII.

The pain and sex in the title has to do with excess energy present for doing this next step that we are failing at doing, hence problems with these. The time part is that it is an illusion - not much done with this that I noticed. He seems to say that when we are intellectually occupied, we are less worried about sex, have less sensitivity to pain and are not as aware of time - he may be on to something here.

Heard then reviews history (including evolutionary history of life) to shown that his points have merit. There are some interesting items here.

Things get a little sketchy and hard to follow near the end - even his sentence structure gets hard to follow - when he starts talking about how to achieve the next step. His method is hard to explain, but it based on explicit effort in special communities. Apparently, he even attempted to found one in California in the 1940's which did not catch on - this is not to say that his ideas were wrong.

Heard was a rather interesting character - see the biographical information in the book. He was friends with Huxley and involved in the Vedanta Society. Meditation was very important to him in later life.

Worth a read, but be prepared to trudge through some rough spots, especially towards the end. The summary at the very end is fairly informative about the book as a whole.

If you read it, let me know if you think I missed anything. I had very high hopes when I started it, but kind of lost them in many respects as I finished it.

100th Posting

I just noticed my next posting would be my 100th, so decided to use it to look back.

It has been almost 3 years since my first posting. So much has changed since then. It was and still is a confusing period for me. There seems to be some light (finally) and an end to this tunnel. I hope it is what I have been waiting for for so long.

My blog has developed into mostly a place where I review what I have been reading. Have done a lot of that in these nearly three years, and I have learned a lot in the process. I hope that readers have gotten something useful out of this too. Let me know on that.

I plan to continue. Wonder what I'll be reading for the next 50 postings. Stay tuned.

Intuition: Soul-Guidance for Life's Decisions

This is a book(let) by Sri Daya Mata of the Self Realization Fellowship (SRF) based on the teachings of Yogananda of the same organization.

I recommend reading the book(let) yourself in its entirety - it is not long at all - less than 70 small pages. A great deal of useful insight can be gained here.

Perhaps the book(let) can be best summarized as suggesting to all of us to look into our hearts when we need to make a decision and make connection with God there. Ask for the real answer and wait for it - and do not accept something that you are only imagining just because it pleases you/is what you want to hear, as opposed to what is best. All this takes some practice.

Give it a try.

Villa of Reduced Circumstances

This is the third in the German Professor series by Alexander McCall Smith.

As in all the other books in the series, the Professor gets into all sorts of mischief, including a revolution in Colombia. This one is different in that the Professor decides to do the nice thing more than he has been known to do in the past.

A lot happened in this book in only about 100 pages. Might leave you a little exhausted.

I wonder if there will be a fourth?

Midlife Tune Up

This is a book by Tim Burns on dealing with a midlife crisis.

Mr. Burns is from the New Orleans area and uses some local color to illustrate many of his points. Overall, a good book!

I lived in New Orleans many years and went to high school there, so I can relate well to many of Mr. Burns' stories, but I think they are universal in their basics.

It is hard to do the book justice in a short space, so I will just say that you should give it a try if the subject is of interest. Gave me much food for thought.

A House Divided

This is the third book in The Good Earth trilogy by Pearl S. Buck.

When I read The Good Earth, I had no idea there were two sequels. I found out by accident several years later. I liked the second of these sequels better than this last one and the first of the trilogy best of all.

This third book follows the life of a grandson of Wang Lung of the first book. He has to deal with the China going through the struggles of around the 1920's and 1930's. Part of the time, he is in the USA at college. Things are seen from a Chinese viewpoint, so do not expect Westerners to look too good here.

There are many good sections in the book, but it gets a little too long and drawn out for my taste in several places. I recommend it to those who want to see how life for some of the characters in earlier books turns out - often not too well.