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

7 LEVELS OF LISTENING Victor Pierau (2020). Leadership in listening:                                             The 7 Levels of Listening for Professionals. Pierau was an auditor, psychotherapist, and trainer in the Netherlands, spending 7 years researching listening and another 3 years writing this book.  Listening is ingesting and digesting signals, including objective vibrations and subjective meanings. There are 3 orientations in listening :  1.I (ego parts) 2.You (personality) 3. It (the essence, big picture, spirit) There are 7 levels of listening :  1.self-focused (managing one's energy: physical, mental, emotional, and essence/spiritual) 2.dual focused (self and others) 3.seletive (focused on needs) 4.empathic (focused on emotions) 5.cognitive (focused on beliefs) 6.synergetic (co-creating with others) 7.silent (essence, intu...

HEART  Steven Pressfield (2022). Put your Ass                                           (Where your Heart wants to be). By "ass" Pressfiled means our physical body, and by "heart" he means what we feel called to do in service of humanity (our passion, our dream, the Japanese use the term "ikigai"-our reason for being). The central advice is to put your physical body in the place where your dream is most likely to happen, where other people are already in the process of realizing the dream...by physically moving to this place, we show commitment, magic happens...we meet co-dreamers, friends who are interested in and willing to support our dream because it is their dream too...we find our tribe and are able to actualize our dream. Even if we can't move physically, we can put our minds where our hearts want to be AND we can create a sacred space to work without interruption fo...

GENIUS LIFE Max Lugavere (2020). The Genius Life:                                       Heal your Mind, Strengthen your Body,                                       and Become Extraordinary. Max is a journalist and begins the book with an emotionally moving story of his mom's illness and early death which inspired him to engage in serious and long term health research. His ideas are squarely based in science and modern medicine...this isn't a religious/spiritual book...he also has a podcast on the "Genius life" with over 260 episodes as of 11/12/2022:https://www.maxlugavere.com/podcast-1 Many of the ideas he suggests i already do (to my great relief)...here are some: 1)NATURE sunshine, fresh air, and exercise in the am 2)DIET whole organic nonprocessed plant based diet with occasional organi...

MINDFUL TECH David Levy (2016). Mindful Tech:                                  How to Bring Balance to Our Digital Lives. Levy is a professor that performed many digital tech experiments (described below) first with his students and then with others over many years...this book is a pragmatic summary of his learnings and an invitation to practice mindful tech experiments. The basic format for the experiments are: engage intentionally for a certain period of time with a particular digital technology (e.g. email, facebook, youtube). Observe yourself periodically as you do this with a "mindful check in", how's your: 1.breathing--slow/fast, shallow/deep,  2.body/posture--slumped/upright, tense/relaxed,  3.emotions--dread, tired, guilt, angry, frustrated, joyful, satisfied, in the flow, and  4.quality of attention--sharp/dull, clear/fuzzy, one-pointed/open). Journal about your observations over...

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...