3 X 5's: Index Card Wisdom from Best of Books

COSMIC Anneloes Smitsman  and  Jean Houston (2022).  Return of the Avatars:                                            The Cosmic Architect Tools of Our Future                                                      Becoming--Book 2 of the Future Humans                                                          Trilogy Smitsman and Houston are both PhD's, visionaries, mystics, and beacons of light in our world. This is a work of fiction describing the heroine journey of Rose that began with her near death experience in Book 1 The Quest of Rose ...

ROSE QUEST Anneloes Smitsman  and  Jean Houston (2021). The Quest of Rose:                                            The Cosmic Keys of Our Future Becoming                                            (Book 1 of the Future Humans Trilogy) Smitsman and Houston are both PhD's, visionaries, mystics, and beacons of light in our world. This is a work of fiction describing the heroine journey of Rose that begins with her near death experience and narrates her evolving journey aided by her wise Grandmother.  The "practices" in the book are guided meditations foreshadowed in Smitsman's previous book Love Letters from Mother Earth . For me, while i see value in the meditations, trying some of them myself, i need something more behavioral, practical...i often felt lo...

MOTHER EARTH Anneloes Smitsman &  Jean Houston (2019). Love Letters from Mother Earth:                                     The Promise of a New Beginning. Smitsman is a PhD and CEO of EARTHwise centre and Jean Houston is also a PhD and long time visionary, writer, mystic, world traveler. The book unfolds as a series of letters from Mother Earth to her children. The book ends with a promise of an upcoming "companion guidebook with practices." Three years later in 2021 the first book in the Future Humans Trilogy (Book 1: The Cosmic Keys of Our Future Becoming) entitled: The Quest of Rose came out with specific practices that read as guided meditations. Overall, without these kinds of practices in the current book, i found myself resonating with many of the ideas, but repeatedly writing in the margin HOW? frustrating to feel into the ideas but not know how to concretely enact them. I ca...

PERSONALCOM John Stewart (2017). Personal communication and racial equity:                                         A humane technology for developing                                                  anti-sterotyping relationships with people who                                    are different from you (2nd ed). Stewart is a PhD in Communication and is also the author of the popular and long running interpersonal communication book, Bridges not walls .  Personalcom uses research, quotes, and author stories to describe a 9-fold process of helping make our communication as personal as possible (as opposed to the US cultural...

DEMONS AND ANGELS Andrew Greeley (1974). The devil you say! Man and his personal                                                devils and angels. Andrew Greeley was a Catholic priest, and prolific sociologist and story writer (novels of G's crazy love for people). In this book, Greeley eloquently describes our personal demons, and their counterparts as angels who assist us in coping with/managing the devils/demons.  According to Greeley, it doesn't matter if the "devil" is a personage or idea, what matters is that demons are in all of us, and that we need to understand them in our daily life struggles, and we need to invoke the assistance of angels (who are also in us) that represent our better selves.  For every devil there is an angel counterpart: envy devil--angel of generosity gnostic--wisdom righteous--humility scapegoat--personal responsibility shame--...

GETTING HIGH James Nester (2009). Get high now without drugs. Nestor does his own "research" on methods of getting high without drugs in experiments with a group of friends dubbed The High Lab who met at his house weekly for 2 months. The format for the getting high methods have a picture, description, warnings, and references for those that want to learn more.  Critique: I found the Book of Highs  much better than Nestor's compilation in this book. I sometimes had difficulty getting through the sarcastic humor and some darker tones--others might not be bothered by this. There also seemed to be a good deal of repetition of visual highs that generally were ineffective for me when i tried them..i simply didn't feel high. Finally, for several of the methods, Nestor cautions against using them because of the dangerous side effects or possibility of death--so why even include these--why put these ideas in people's heads?  There were a few methods of getting high with...

FUNGI KING/QUEENDOM  Merlin Sheldrake (2020). Entangled Life: How Fungi make our                                                             W orlds, Change our Minds, and Shape                                                 our Futures. Sheldrake is a biologist who does field research and interviews with experts to present a well documented account, with many personal stories, of the amazing world of fungi. Fungi are one of life's kingdoms, living mostly underground in vast networks, fruit above ground as mushrooms which produce spores to make more fungi. The amazing part is the fungi are, "...eating rock, making soil, digesting pollutants, nourishing and killing plants, surviving...