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

DOWSING Elizabeth Brown (2010). Dowsing:                                                    The Ultimate Guide for the 21st Century. Brown has been dowsing for over 20 years, and has clients in over 20 countries that employ her services...her specialty is health and wellness. The assumptions of dowsing are that everything in the universe vibrates with energy and information, that everything has consciousness, and that human beings are antennas that pick up energy and information which is translated subconsciously through a downing instrument via our attention and intention.  Field dowsing is used to find something (e.g., water, lost object) whereas remote dowsing is used to map an area or obtain information. There is a British and an American Society of Dowsers. There is not much empirical research on testing dowsers, generally d...

ENERGY Sue Morter (2019). The Energy Codes:                                          A 7-Step System to Awaken Your Spirit,                                          Heal Your Body, and Live Your Best Life Morter is a chiropractor who learned about healing from her Dad, then she developed her own system called the "energy codes." the big idea is to facilitate a quantum flip, from a narrow protective personality to a soulful self (i like to think of this as reorienting from the little s of self to the big S of Self--actually, it's both, we don't loose the little s, it gets integrated into the big S, but i'm not sure she would agree with me). the core practice combines breathing with squeezing different parts of the body in a central chann...

MUSIC Derek Sivers (2020). Your Music and People:                                            Creative and Considerate Fame Sivers is a professional musician, and creator of the online business CD Baby which he sold for 22 mill after 10 years. He provides concrete advice in 2-3 pages per chapter with a story for each. Some of his advice: prove yourself first before you go to someone to ask for money make friends with people, keep a contact list with dates to stay in touch, see how you can help/serve them be creative with your business, unique, diff, remarkable...play to the 1% of people that vibe with you and ignore the other 99%!! share your success with others, lift them up have a 1 sentence description of your purpose give WILD answers to people to make them ask questions he has a good series of short videos that break down the advice...i  find him re...

PURPOSE & HAPPINESS Matthew McKay, Sean O'Laoire, and Ralph Met (2013).  WHY?  What your life is telling you about who you are and why you're here. I got turned on to Sean O'Laoire's message about life through a batgap.com interview: https://batgap.com/page/2/ (scroll down the page for the interview)...O'Laoire's spirituality challenges some of my beliefs, but i find his perspective refreshing, holistic, and well thought out. I wanted to read something by him, and this book seemed like a good start even though he is one of three authors. Real happiness and joy is living your purpose, even in the midst of pain...grabbing more pleasure and avoiding pain won't bring real happiness and joy...our body is a space suit while we live on earth, and the consciousness that resides in our body will outlive your body...our primary mission is LOVE...to see the other, be kind, protect, find worth, seek intuitive wisdom... For me my purpose is to first LOVE everyone and...

FENG SHUI Jes T. Yl. Lim (2017). A Guide To High Vitality. Grandmaster Lim founded a Feng Shui center in the 1980s, a Feng Shui institute in the 1990s, and taught courses in Feng Shui in 15 countries...he proposed this book as the first of 12 book, but my search on the Amazon shows that he never wrote another book! Instead he has a website, courses, and consults. Much of the "science" of Lim's claims about Feng Shui benefits are based on kinesiology muscle testing of qi energy...i'm not sure how replicable this is, but the proof is in the results, if it helps people, then good. Feng Shui started with a sage's vision of a horse and turtle coming out of the Ho river with markings on their backs which became the basis of the I Ching and Feng Shui. The emperors of old China practiced Feng Shui in secret before Feng Shui filtered down to the common with the people. Feng Shui includes 12 disciplines. The book covers the first 5. Topics covered include qi energy, yin and...

GOD WITHIN Jon M. Sweeney (Ed.) (2001). God Within:                                                            Future as Told by Today's New Adults How dated the phrase "today's new adults" seems in 2023...22 years after the publication of the book...those "new adults" of 18-20 are now 40-42 years old! and the current "younger generation" is a digital one that Marc Prensky talks about in his book EMPOWERED. Time aside, there are still lessons to be gleaned from this collection of stories. It seems that most of these "young adult stories" (told by the young adults and not Sweeney) struggle with the term "religion" as beliefs and rituals and yearn for a spiritually that is real, felt, and meaningful...i would guess that's still true of youth today.  The stories as a whole show youth that are honest in their stru...

COM HEALTH CARE Margaret Willis (2009)(ed). Communicating Spirituality                                               in Health Care. this is a collection of articles written by communication scholars on spirituality and health care...my big beef with the book is that it is long on description and explanation but short on how to help anyone in any kind of pragmatic way...what good does it do to have all these theories and studies if we can't help relieve anyone's suffering? i was attracted to the book because one of the articles was written by a former classmate in graduate school Roxanne Parrot... of all the articles, the closest that gets at something practical is the chapter on Richard Schulze's natural cure for right eating, elimination, and positive thinking to boost the immune system, but again, short on the "how to"...i would recommend a different book for the pr...