“A good book is the precious life-bloodof a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.” - John Milton
In recent years, I have become quite the avid reader. Luckily I have grown up surrounded by people who share this love of reading and I was exposed and encouraged to read books about various subjects and stories.
I cant say I have a favorite ‘type’ of book as I love books based on fiction, non-fiction, history, and ones of the mind, body and spirit nature. Heck, lately I read about environmental and earth sciences! They all feed and satisfy my curiosity, and there is always more to learn and read up on.
I love it when you are told about a specific book by a friend or acquaintance, and then you are just randomly wandering about and you either see the book staring back at you. Or when you are in the bookstore or library, just browsing, and low and behold, there is the book! I’ts like once the title or story reaches your ears, it travels with you until the moment it all come back knocking on your conscious memory when the time is right. Its not just about the book, it’s about the exchange and sharing of knowledge.
Maybe that is why people get excited when they have both read a fantastic book – like we are sharing a universal book clubbers secret.
Books can connect and reach us in many ways, it can strike a cord within our very souls, without even trying to. It can take us to lands and worlds we never dreamt or imagine could exist, authors take us to the depths of their own imaginations.
If you have ever read the Harry Potter books, you will know what I am talking about. It is as if J.K Rowling casts her very own spell upon your mind and your eyes are immediately fixated and totally locked onto the pages that lead you right into Hogwarts. And you become addicted!
So I will share with you my most recent literary discoveries, and please feel free to do the same.
I have listed “The Invitation” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, “The Time Travellers Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger, and “Empress Orchid” by Anchee Min. I loved all these books for various reasons, mostly because they made me smile, laugh (and even cry!) and left me with a happy glow :)
The Invitation - by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
"It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.It doesn’t interest me how old you are.I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade itor fix it.I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes.”
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keepin the empty moments.”
The poem is a challenge to us and in this accessible and inspiring book Oriah Mountain Dreamer tells us how to meet that challenge.
The Invitation is more than just a poem. It is a profound invitation to a life that is more fulfilling and passionate, with greater integrity. She (Oriah Mountain Dreamer) invites readers to get a life instead of buying into a lifestyle. This book is a word-of-mouth sensation, whose truths have resonated with people all over the world.
She has created a pathway beyond the comfortable and the mundane into that which challenges and repels you. By addressing the edges of your personality and sensitivities, you can build on and extend your awareness and your reality in honest ways that better fit your inner self. The book is propelled from the author's emotionally intense vision of her life as expressed in this question: "Did I love well?"
Although her personal examples are simply there to help your own journey, their poignancy touched me deeply. If you are like me, you will admire the honesty and openness of her sharing. She has had two failed marriage and many failed relationships. She has had friends who experienced horrible personal setbacks. You will be seared by the pain, the truth, and the beauty in these experiences. And you will be the better for the vicarious experience.
The book is broken down into the statement of her invitation to follow her spiritual path by dealing with longing, fear, sorrow, joy, betrayal, beauty, failure, commitment, and fire to develop the deep sustenance to allows you to go to your true inner home. Each section contains personal experiences of her point, and ends with valuable meditation exercises to help you find your own "truth" in these areas.
Although the book sounds like another New Age tract, it is actually anti-New Age in many ways . . . especially in favoring emotional and physical reality over spiritual vagueness.
Here is a little of what she has to say on these subjects:
Accepting the Invitation: " . . .[You will experience, not just read about, the ache, the sorrow, the joy, the courage, the peace . . . ."
The Longing: "This is what I ask for: intimacy with myself, others, and the world . . . ."
The Fear: "We are afraid we will not be enough." " . . . Desire . . . brings the ecstasy of falling more deeply in love with my own life every day . . . ."
The Sorrow: "If we are strong enough to be weak enough, we are given a wound that never heals." "That wound is the gift that keeps the heart open."
The Joy: "The enemy of joy is the litany of 'not good enough' . . . ."
The Betrayal: "Sometimes, to choose life, we must break agreements; sometimes we must keep them although they are hard to keep."
The Beauty: " . . . Gratitude expands my ability to receive beauty." "It is what pulls us towards life."
The Failure: " . . . Often an attempt to avoid the paralysis of shame."
The Fire: "Difficult to keep our hearts open, to feel the fear and pain."
Finding Our Way Home: "Are you willing to meet yourself and not turn away from what you are?"
After you have finished your spiritual journey with this book as a guide, I suggest that you write out your own examples to match these topics from your own experience. This will make the material more accessible, especially if loving well is not your core reason for being.
Above all, this book is a call to have courage, courage to go beyond the comfortable into the important.
The Time Travelers Wife – by Audrey Niffenegger
This extraordinary, magical novel is the story of Clare and Henry who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty.
Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. His disappearances are spontaneous and his experiences are alternately harrowing and amusing. Their struggle to lead normal lives in the face of a force they can neither prevent nor control is intensely moving and entirely unforgettable.
The Time Traveler's Wife depicts the effects of time travel on Henry and Clare's passionate love for each other with grace and humour. Henry travels from the future where most of us are traveling from our pasts. The book and indeed the story itself, may be a metaphor that we are all time traveling anyway, every moment we're bringing baggage from the past, but with Henry, he is bringing baggage from the future.
Above all this story celebrates the importance of love, and its ability to transcend its biggest barrier of all – time.
The Empress Orchid – by Anchee Min
This book tells us the mesmerising story of Orchid, and begins when she is just seventeen. To rescue her family from poverty and avoid marrying her cousin, Orchid competes to be one of the Emperor's wives. When she is chosen as a lower-ranking concubine she enters the erotically charged and ritualised Forbidden City.
But beneath its immaculate facade lie whispers of murders and ghosts, and the thousands of concubines will go to any lengths to bear the Emperor's son. Orchid trains herself in the art of pleasuring a man, bribes her way into the royal bed, and seduces the monarch, drawing the attention of dangerous foes. Little does she know that China will collapse around her, and that she will be its last Empress.
Wonderful detail and characterisation. I particularly liked the way author wove in the historical events in such a way that I didn't skip them as I tend to do. I was gripped by the opulence and customs of the old Empire.
This book is so readable and the story flows beautifully. This novel is full of intricate detail, which really makes the world come alive. It's such a complex, yet readable story, that you can't help but get sucked in right from the start. It is breathtaking, from the first page you are transported into Orchid’s world, you feel her happiness and her pain (there are even points you dare not turn the page as you do not want to find out her fate). You feel every moment with her.
Extract from the book:
“The truth is that I have never been the mastermind of anything. I laugh when I hear people say that it was my desire to rule China from an early age. My life was shaped by forces at work before I was born. The dynasty's conspiracies were old, and men and women were caught up in cut-throat rivalries long before I entered the Forbidden City and became a concubine. My dynasty, the Ch'ing, has been beyond saving ever since we lost Opium Wars to Great Britain and its allies. My world has been inside my head. Not a day has gone by when I haven't felt like a mouse escaping one more trap. For half a century, I participated in the elaborate etiquette of the court in all its meticulous detail. While the men at court sought to impress each other with their intelligence, I hid mine I am like a painting from the Imperial portrait gallery. When I sit on the throne my appearance is gracious, pleasant and placid.”
Many Chinese history books have painted the last empress as cunning and cruel, but in a world that was ruled by men, this was the picture they created of her to hide their own failures and incompetence in resurrecting the empire of Chine back to its full glory.
Through Orchid’s eyes you witness how her dynasty has exhausted its essence as well as the collapse not only of her son, the last emperor, but of China itself.
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