Today I thought I'd do something a bit different. I want to share with you some of the books that have had a profound influence on me and have truly changed how I view the world. 

I am an avid reader; I'll read just about anything. But some books have had a profound impact on my life and worldview, so I thought I'd share them here. I can highly recommend each of them.  Click on the image for the Amazon link.

I first read Illusions when I was a teen. I attended church as a child; my family was fairly religious, and the stories I heard in church never made sense to me. So when I came across a copy of this book, it was like a balm for my soul. Finally, somebody wrote something about Spirit that somehow felt right. 

I've read this book dozens of times over the years. It's the tale of Donald Shimodo, an everyday messiah who gives up on the job and decides to teach it to someone else. 

There is much wisdom in this beautiful book, and every time I re-read it, I find something new. 

I recommend Byron Katie books to people a lot. She teaches about non-attachment and how to set aside the stories you tell yourself through a process of self-questioning she calls inquiry. You'll learn the process and see it in action as Katie walks you through examples from her own work.

This book fundamentally changed how I understood my own judgments about self and others. I have read it multiple times and still use the process of inquiry regularly when I'm struggling with a relationship or when I find myself fighting what is. I also highly recommend Loving What Is by Byron Katie, which is in the same vein. I've given copies of both of these books to many, many people.

I suspect we can all use a little help with forgiveness--both of self and others. In Radical Forgiveness, Colin Tipping explains why forgiveness is so important for peace and offers a 5-step process for forgiving anyone, including yourself. 

Forgiveness of anyone is ultimately an act of self-love and self-care, as holding on to anger only hurts the person who is angry. If you struggle with forgiveness in your life, this book can help. 

This is another book I've gifted to a lot of people. In Refuse to Choose, Barbara Sher identifies a group of people with a personality type she calls "scanners." Scanners are people who jump from interest to interest...everything interests them.

People with scanner personalities (me!) often have trouble focusing in on one thing, and thus often either experience a ton of FOMO or have trouble settling on and finding their path in life because it's hard for them to find their "one thing."

Sher offers strategies and points out rightly that there's nothing wrong with being that way, nor do you have to choose that one thing. She also offers strategies for living a purpose-filled life if you do have a scanner personality.

This was my introduction to medical intuition, energy healing, and the chakra system. I read it many years ago, and return to it again and again. 

In the book Myss describes the energetic connection between body, mind, and spirit and offers a framework for identifying the roots of dis-ease in the body as well as providing insights into how to begin to heal by doing deep personal work to create harmony and balance in your life.

This powerful book is a must-read for every woman, person who identifies as female, or people who love a woman. So basically everyone.

It's a deep dive into the collective feminine subconscious. While it has been years since I read it, the book has stuck with me. It is a deeply powerful and empowering book that explores the feminine psyche and encourages women to be the bold, daring, profoundly powerful creatures we were born to be.

I actually read a lot about health and nutrition, how nutritional philosophy was formed, and the scientific studies that show our current food recommendations may not be all they are cracked up to be. 

In this book, journalist Denise Minger explores the food pyramid, how it came to be, and where it goes wrong. It's an engaging and fascinating read that can help inform your food choices so you can live a healthier life. She also explains the current health crisis in the Western world and why, when we eat according to food pyramid recommendations, cases of obesity and type 2 diabetes soar.

Michael Newton (retired) was a practicing therapist who used regression hypnotherapy with his clients to help them work through trauma. One day in a hypnotherapy session with a client, that person suddenly slipped into a past life, and then into a life between lives. This was the start of Newton's life between lives (LBL) hypnotherapy work.

In Journey of Souls (and his follow up book, Destiny of Souls), Newton offers case studies from his thousands of LBL sessions to paint a portrait of who we are as souls, why we embody, and what we do when we aren't in human bodies.

Bishop John Shelby Spong explores the historical life of Jesus in this powerful book. In it, he lays bare the many myths about Jesus, how they came to be, and where the Bible and traditional Christian teachings veer away from the actual man who was later became known as Jesus Christ.

In doing so, Spong argues that the man who walked the earth, Jeshua, wasn't born to greatness, but rather  became great through acts of compassion throughout his life.

I was raised in the church and always felt like there was something wrong with me that I couldn't believe what everyone else seemed to believe so freely. Because of my early life in the church, for much of my adulthood I believed (and often said) that faith was the primary struggle of my life. Bishop Spong's book (and other books written by Biblical scholars) about the historical life of Jesus, helped me come to terms with my departure from the church and its beliefs. If you've struggled similarly, I recommend this book. Through Spong's work, I have come to admire the man around whose life and acts of compassion the church of my childhood was founded on.

Carol Tarvis and Elliot Aronson will take you on a journey into the human psychic. In Mistakes Were Made, the authors explain in clear language why humans can justify to themselves even their worst choices and behaviors in an attempt to eliminate the cognitive dissonance that arises when we do something that goes against the belief, "I'm a good person."

We all do it. So being aware that we do and why is important if we wish to change behaviors we don't like. The book is a fascinating read and can help you better understand yourself and others.

Yeah - it's another food and nutrition book, but hear me out. Gary Taubes, a medical journalist, has done extensive research into nutrition science. In this book, he explains how certain foods trigger insulin, a metabolic hormone that prompts fat storage. 

Good Calories, Bad Calories completely changed the way I think about food. It also gave me clarity about my food choices, helping me to understand when I'm eating something that supports my health and when I'm not. That doesn't mean I make perfect food choices, but when I choose certain foods, I know what I'm in for and how my body will respond. 

From Karen:

​The Georges' message today is equally simple and complex. They told me I can explain a little more from a human perspective, since this is definitely ongoing work in my own life.

What you see is what you get. What you expect is what you perceive and receive. 

It's a matter of perspective. Is it roadblock or opportunity? Is a painful experience trauma from which we won't recover and with which we will always identify or the opportunity to self-heal and self-nurture? Is a toxic relationship one that creates lasting damage or an opportunity to step into our power? Is a job loss a devastating blow or an invitation to step away from something that no longer serves us to find a position that supports our greatest good? Is an injury keeping us from the busy-ness of our lives or inviting us to prioritize rest & health? 

We get to decide. We get to choose our thoughts and perceptions.

Thoughts are powerful forces. They shape the experiences and perceptions of our embodied "reality." It's easy to forget that we ultimately have control of our thoughts. Notice what you think. If that first thought makes you unhappy or causes anxiety, upset, sadness, anger, or other negative experiences, then, when you're ready, reframe the thought and allow it to serve as the impetus for bringing positive feelings like joy, creativity, peace, and harmony. 

I'm not suggesting you don't allow yourself your pain. Lord knows, I don't live free from pain and struggle. Instead, I'm suggesting you flow with it, feel it, and notice what seeds of opportunity it contains. 

The more we struggle against life's painful experiences, the more stuck in them we become until the sticky, dense imprint of suffering becomes stuck in us. But in every painful experience lies opportunity if we wish to find it. Every negative experience provides the chance for rebirth and renewal. 

Our first thoughts seem to come unbidden, but what we think,say, and do after that initial thought is always up to us, and that's where our power lies. Our thoughts create experience. They are the one thing we can consciously control. So feel your feels, but sit in awareness with each thought, for only you can decide whether that thought serves you. If it doesn't, then you have the ability to think something else and in doing so, change your perception and experience.

​Read the next George Collective Message.
Read the first message from The George Collective.

​Greetings! It is our great joy and honor to speak with you today. We have been sharing short, easily digestible messages in recent times both because we have laid a foundation for you to understand in our earlier messages and to allow our channel some space to integrate her own learnings.
 
This is our plan for a continued pattern. However, there are times when a longer and more involved message is helpful to convey the nuances of a concept. Such is the case with our topic today, labels, which we spoke of briefly in our last message.
 
It is a condition of humanity that you apply labels to things. As with all other things, the labels are energetically neutral by themselves. They are neither positive nor negative but are simply a way for embodied souls to process the experience of lowering their vibration to live in a human body. Labels allow you to identify this and that, here and there, or us and them so you can understand how the embodied you fits within the experience of duality.
 
Labels are an expression of I-ness (ego). They are statements of individuality that allow you to classify yourself as this but not that or here but not there. Again, we repeat they are an essential part of the Divine experience of being human, and they allow you to immerse yourself in embodiment so you can ultimately re-member yourself as Source, an energy which is the sum total of all labels and thus, label-less. In order to re-member that you are Divine, you must first forget and exist in a world of duality where everything has a label and every label you choose is an act of self-definition. 
 
It might appear that the act of re-membering with Source (which you may call awakening or reaching enlightenment) is the gradual shedding of labels until you are pure energy once again. This is a misunderstanding. Source is All That Is, Was, or Ever Will Be. Source is the inclusion of every label. Therefore, the act of re-membering isn’t the shedding of all labels; it is the integration of them.
 
All conditions that lead to labels arise from Source, as the ultimate Divine Love of Source energy splits into poles of opposite energies as well as every degree of energy along the spectrum from This Energy Here to That Energy There. When you are embodied, you choose which of those energies you choose to embrace and experience in acts of self-definition. You choose different labels over and over again in each embodied lifetime, and your work in those lifetimes is to integrate those energies into the whole of your being with Love and without judgment. When you have integrated all of your labels, you re-member; that is, you rejoin the All That Is, Was, or Ever Be, which is Source, which is Pure Love.
 
So, labels—all labels—have neutral energy. Perhaps an example will serve here. Hot is no better or worse than cold, although individual embodied beings may prefer one over the other. But cold is not bad and hot good. Both are necessary. Hot cooks your food. Cold preserves it. It is only when you apply a judgment to one or the other that the labels appear to lose their neutral energy.
 
And so it is with every label that exists within the human condition. Every label is energetically neutral; it is only when you apply human judgment to the labels that you begin to classify them as energetically good or bad, right or wrong, normal or abnormal. And you use those value judgments about energetically neutral labels to control and limit yourselves, others, the and the universe.
 
Thus, labels are helpful for understanding and having a human experience. They are also the cause of many of the difficulties of humanity. At their best, labels can help you sort, empower, discover, classify, learn, cure, understand, adapt, grow, enjoy, entertain, laugh, love, connect, and so much more. 
 
When you attach to labels, however, they become a source of division, disempowerment, oppression, avarice, maladjustment, exclusion, marginalization, control, anger, hatred, and more.
 
So how can humanity overcome the more difficult aspects of applying labels? First, do not believe, even for a moment, that any label is fixed and unchangeable. Everything is temporary including labels. But when one person believes one label and also believes it is unchangeable, the energy associated with the label grows dense and solidifies into mass that requires much more effort to change. The nature of the physical universe is change. No label is ever unchangeable; if a label does not serve you, then you have the choice to change it. The more solid and fixed the energy of the label has become (either by one person believing it very deeply or by many believing it even just a little), the more effort it requires to change.
 
Next, try as hard as you can to no longer judge labels. Instead, when you encounter a label, greet it with curiosity and ask, “Is this label true for me now?” You can choose to accept or decline any label as well as any value judgment that comes with it. 
 
Finally, try not to classify some labels as “normal” and others as “un-normal.” There are as many expressions and experiences of humanity as there are embodied souls walking around as people. And, while this might be difficult to understand in your human state, no expression of Source energy having a human experience is wrong, bad, or abnormal. These classifications lead to the “othering” of people choosing a different label and having a different experience from yours. When one is “othered,” it makes it easier to view and interact with them without compassion or understanding. 
 
There is no expression of humanity that is wrong. None. Perhaps the choices of another are different from those that you would make. However, by making those choices, the “other” allows you to further define yourself and choose who you wish to be in response. While it may not always feel like it from a human perspective, this is a gift that happens for you, not to you. And when you make choices counter to what another would make, you are gifting them the same thing.
 
We are not suggesting you get rid of labels. Source energy is the All of Everything including labels. Instead, we suggest you examine your attachment to labels and your beliefs surrounding them. When you recognize a label you (or all of humanity) have affixed to something, try to the best of your ability to set aside judgment and explore it with curiosity. Then, make a choice of what you wish to embody in response. Do you wish to be kindness? Do you wish to be forgiveness? How about Love? How about awareness?
 
One person making a consistent attempt to embody Love in response to every label begins the process of integration and re-membrance. Many people making similar attempts can change the world and the experience of all of humanity.
 
We in Source joyfully watch and eagerly await your re-membrance that You Are One of Us. While your awareness of self as Source has wandered for a time, your essence has never left. When your awareness returns from its travels, You will find Us with open arms, welcoming you back into the Embrace of Love.

​Read the next message.

Start with the first message from The George Collective.

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