WINTER COMING ON: Books for the Holidays & Beyond

Mini Reviews of Sandra Ingerman, Robert Moss, Ohky Simie Forest, Robert Ryan, Lewis Mehl-Madrona, Peter A. Levine, Adam McLean, Jeffrey Raff, Joseph Campbell, The Green Bible and Rumi.

Even those who excuse themselves from the spending binge of the Holidays are still inclined to partake in some sort of gift giving to the ones nearest and dearest, if not to self. Often this alternative giving seeks resources to help guide and enrich the inner life of mind, heart and soul. Besides being the celebration of triumphant capitalism, the Holidays are prelude to winter coming on with its beckoning introspection, when nature hibernates and a book becomes a welcomed new friend. It is in view of this seasonal approach and the consequent orientation that I am offering this medley of mini-reviews of noteworthy books. May they prove good companions in your quiet times of thought and creative dreaming!

MEDICINE FOR THE EARTH: How to Transform Personal and Environmental Toxins by Sandra Ingerman, Three Rivers Press, Random House, 291pp, paper, $14.00; HOW TO HEAL TOXIC THOUGHTS: Simple Tools for Personal Transformation, Sterling Publishing Company, 120pp, hardcover w/dust jacket, $14.95. Sandra Ingerman will be known to many through her previously popular title SOUL RETRIVAL. The first of the two new books here is an initiating journey into the possibilities of an emerging spiritual ecology through the medium of holistic (alchemical) transmutations. The book is full of exercises and there is herein a gentle, serious guidance expressed in a voice that is deeply reflective and thoroughly experienced. MEDICINE FOR THE EARTH comes with the endorsements of Larry Dossey, Ralph Metzer and Alberto Villoldo. Moreover, a reader can readily appreciate and enjoy this author’s companionship. Ingerman’s second title makes an attractive self-help gift in its pocket size format with dust jacket and an endearing dedication that reads as follows: “To the children of the world now and in the future: May we leave you a healthy and peaceful planet to live on so that you may thrive.” There is wisdom, hope, love and healing on the pages that follow. In both titles the quiet sincerity of Ingerman’s intention readily flows out to her readers.

THE THREE ONLY THINGS: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence & Imagination by Robert Moss, New World Library, 272pp, hardcover, $22.95, Sept. 2007. There is a sense of there being two books in one here, each alternatively infolded into the other. One half provides fascinating overviews and insights into the dream cultures of various societies, religious groups and social epochs. Aside this is a running account of recurrent syncronicity or dream like coincidence occurring in the life and travels of the author. For the Robert Moss enthusiast, this new title and follow up to CONSCIOUS DREAMING will be a welcomed addition.

DREAMING THE COUNCIL WAYS: True Native Teachings from the Red Lodge by Ohky Simie Forest, Samuel Weiser, 329pp, paper, illustrated, $18.95. There is a genuine narrative voice in this nourishing volume that combines Native teachings on a life of balance from Mohawk, Iroquois and Mayan sources. The book is color illustrated and comes from a Mohawk-French woman who is quotable on one of my favorite subjects: “Your dream body, your spirit, sees that everything is equal in this universe. That everything is important or that nothing is important. This sort of wisdom is total attention, for it dwells in complete silence and allows the intent to flow, to touch and to be beyond time conditioning. In its eyes, the world is not linear, but spiraling.” A profound and beautiful expression! And Ohky Simie Forest confidently journeys into tradition and exploration, readily bringing her reader with her on an initiating, healing and empowering pilgrimage with the effortlessness of one truly attuned to the rhythms and cycles of nature.

THE STRONG EYE OF SHAMANISM: a Journey into the Caves of Consciousness by Robert Ryan, Inner Traditions, 302 pp, paper, $19.85. Since the publication of SHAMANISM, Mircea Eliade’s seminal work on the subject and follow ups like Michael Harner’s WAY OF THE SHAMAN and SHAMANIC VOICES by Joan Halifax, shamanism has entered the cultural mainstream and there has been a veritable flood of shamanic titles. Unfortunately many of these books are mere hodge-podges and flights of impractical fantasy, although sometimes humorous because of it. Yet again, occasionally a work comes along that is imaginatively exciting, fresh in approach and still grounded in solid scholarship and anthropological acumen. Such a find is Robert Ryan’s STRONG EYE OF SHAMANISM, a study that ranges from the Paleolithic cave drawings of Europe to the dreamtime visioning of the Australia aborigines. On page 174 Ryan writes: “Eliade was correct in his assessment that the experience upon which shamanism is based is coeval with…the human condition…for the structure of consciousness reflected…on the cave walls beginning more than three hundred centuries ago is strikingly parallel to that which we have been able to discern in diverse shamanic traditions distant in time and location. We can see in these caves a well orchestrated attempt to utilize them to effect a transformation of consciousness leading from the world of peripheral effect to that part of the human mind that experiences itself as continuous with the form-generating power and plenitude of creation. This process follows a typical initiatory pattern…. And it leads us along the path of transformation by exploring the methods traditionally used by shamanic cultures throughout history…to awaken the mind to its depth and achieve deeply meaningful states of altered consciousness.”


NARRATIVE MEDICINE: The Use of History & Story in the Healing Process by Lewis Mehl-Madrona M.D., Bear & Company/Inner Traditions, 324 pp, paper, $20.00. Lewis Mehl-Madrona is an author with heart and his latest (healing) offering is genuinely heartfelt. Mehl-Madrona, of Cherokee, Scottish and Oglala Sioux ancestry; a western doctor and psychiatrist; is steeped in traditional medicine ways from a variety of indigenous cultures. Suffice it to say that a central purpose behind learning to practice what the author calls narrative medicine is to open other-dimension possibilities within our narrative universe, explore alternatives and create fuller, more integral paradigms for compassionate interlacement, mutuality and balance. Beyond pointing this premise out, it is perhaps best to allow the good man to speak for himself and to listen, receptively, with the life honoring feeling that enlivens his words. As early as page 36 the reader feels the heartbeat of this author: “I came to appreciate that we psychiatrists were in charge of the flotsam and jetsam of rampant capitalism. The side effects of the severe competition characteristic of American life were the ‘losers.’ These were the families who fell apart, the isolated, the homeless, the ‘have nots.’ While the great American myth told us that even the poorest of the poor could grow up to be the president, this was mostly fiction. People born into fragmentation and isolation tend to grow up to live in fragmentation and isolation. They learn this story about life and enact it. Children surrounded by drug and alcohol addiction learn to be drug and alcohol addicted. This is the dominant experiential story and stands in sharp, painful contrast to the television stories played out on prime time every evening. These are the dramas of the ‘have,’ or the police dramas where attractive cops take ugly, scuzzy, bad people off the streets to lock them up and throw away the key.

“In the United States, the impossibility of rising out of poverty and isolation to match the television role models allows another way to be a hero—that of the gang member or criminal. To be a good criminal, drug addict, schizophrenic, or gang member is often more accessible than achieving the American dream. Just as in theater, people adhere to roles or positions in which they become overwhelmingly engrossed. They become completely absorbed in the performance of the part…”

(p. 38) “My conclusion from my foray into American institutional psychiatry was that treatment rarely worked. Instead of seeing the ‘mentally ill’ as bad children who wouldn’t take their medication, I saw them as optimizing adults who didn’t find the benefits worth the side effects. Hallucinations and grandiosity were preferable to the stark reality of living homeless in poverty and isolation. So were cocaine and crystal methamphetamine. These observations are borne out by studies of the healing power of social networks for people with schizophrenia in developing countries.” And so on, from within the center of trauma onward toward more inclusively integral processes of narrative healing: because we do become the stories we tell of who we are, individually and as a people.

Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona is author of COYOTE, HEALING, COYOTE WISDOM and COYOTE MEDICINE, also available from Bear & Company. A future BOOK WORDS will offer a more complete review of NARRATIVE MEDICNE. For the present, let it stand at this: Both NARRATIVE MEDICINE and the following title, WAKING THE TIGER, are important resources for anybody interested in any aspect whatsoever of healing work, and on a scale of 1 to 10 deserving of the highest rating.

WAKING THE TIGER – Healing Trauma by Peter A. Levine, with Ann Frederick, North Atlantic Books, 274pp, paper, $17.95. To my finding, this volume is the best of its kind and definitely deserves a comprehensive review of its own (which at a future date will follow.) For anyone who does not care to wait for my humble, affirming words, please do not hesitate to get for yourself or give to another a copy of Peter Levine’s contribution to trauma healing. WAKING THE TIGER is revolutionary. Unlike the majority of studies addressing this subject, Levine’s work does not exclusively or even primarily focus on what goes on in the head of the traumatized. Rather, the author observes the natural realm of animal healing and uses the mammalian body of humanity as his starting point. The body retains memory at the cellular level and as Paracelsus pointed out some centuries prior, every disease contains within itself the terms of its cure. Dr. Levine does not quote Paracelsus, but he does take us into the awareness field of the living organism in ways that are thoroughly embodied and conscious at the process level of self-apprehension (observing what can be felt and taken in hand). On the back cover of WAKING THE TIGER is printed this remark by Bernie Siegal: “Every life contains difficulties we are not prepared for. Read, learn, and be prepared for life and healing.” The quotation is poignant, much to the point, and furthered by the accompanying recommendation of Mira Rothenberg, Director of the Blueberry Treatment Centers for Disturbed Children, who writes that WAKING THE TIGER is “Amazing! A revolutionary exploration of the effects and causes of trauma!” And for any in need of being reminded of one of the major and most radical challenges collectively before us, yes, we are a nation traumatized and in urgent need of healing from within; not only within the physical body of the traumatic but within the post-trauma body politic as well. And not, as another author (Walter Davis, DEATH’S DREAM KINGDOM: The American Psyche Since 9-11) conscientiously warns, by continuing to avoid the tragedy of trauma by losing our way to healing through aggressive-destructive patterns or the “repetition compulsion” of “evacuation and projection identification.” Peter Levine’s approach reverses this ideology of avoidance of suffering by hiding in death—living as if dead and administrating organized death--by bringing us back to the place where pain first takes up residence and must be engaged in order to be transformed. That is, leading us into the living body, body awareness and the sentient processes of relationships to self and others.

THE ALCHEMICAL MANDALA by Adam McLean, Phanes Press (available through Red Wheel/Weiser), 143pp, paper, illustrated, $17.00. Initially I wish to say that I like this book! Having been a life long avid reader, it is a joy at this stage to find work that is both engaging and sufficiently porous to allow the reader’s imagination to become involved and independently creative under inspiring guidance. THE ALCHEMICAL MANDALA is an inviting companion for the artist and dreamer in us all. The book is rich with illustrations from a variety of alchemical texts interfacing with accessible meditation or guided visualization exercises. Clearly McLean wants you to evolve, but on your terms, not his! Hence, the book ventures deep without the jargon of psychoanalysis.

JUNG AND THE ALCHEMICAL IMAGINATION by Jeffrey Raff, Nicholas-Hays (distributed by Red Wheel/Weiser), 277pp, paper, illustrated, $18.95. The author is a practicing Jungian analyst, a student of both shamanism and alchemy, who here combines Jung’s teachings on active imagination with his personally developed spiritual alchemy. Like the previous title by Adam McLean, Raff’s book is rich with original alchemic illustrations and guided exercises intended to assist the individuating process. Along with a substantial Introduction and Conclusion, the volume is divided into five chapters as follows: Jung As A Spiritual Tradition (an interesting suggestion!), The Alchemical Imagination, The Creation Of The Self, The Process Of Inner Alchemy and The Nature Of Spiritual Alchemy. Learned yet accessible the book is a good second level read for the alchemic investigator and comes to the reader with recommendations from Clarissa Pinkola Estes and Arnold Mindell.

THOU ART THAT: Transforming Religious Metaphors by Joseph Campbell, New World Library, 136 pp, hardcover w/dust jacket, $20.00. In my lifetime, Joseph Campbell has risen to amazing popularity twice, promoting Newsweek to once write that “Campbell has become the rarest of intellectuals in American life: a serious thinker who has been embraced by popular culture.” The first wave of this exceptional popularity occurred in the 1960’s among dissent students and intellectuals who read Campbell side by side with Eliade, RD Lang and Alan Watts. The second wave, more extensive in its sweep and extending influence through the last years of the late 1980’s and into the late 90’s, was generated by the interviews conducted by Bill Moyers and aired through PBS. Both times, however, Campbell’s popularity was largely confined to the reading of THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES and his monumental four volume study, THE MASKS OF GOD. Since Joseph Campbell’s death in 1987 a series of less known volumes have slowly found there way onto the desks and bookshelves of Campbell devotees, including several titles from New World Library complied from lectures and earlier interviews. One such book is THOU ART THAT: Transforming Religious Metaphors. The title is derived from the popular phrase of Hindu piety, “Tat tvam asi,” an encapsulating expression of the universal exchange and pathetic interconnectedness of all creation. This little volume of Campbell lectures, title notwithstanding, brings into focus the great scholar’s perspective of metaphoric interpretation applied to the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. Campbell was an apostate Catholic who again embraced the faith of his childhood on his death bed. THOU ART THAT is a good gift book in durable hardcover and with an attractive dust jacket depicting a segment of Michelangelo’s masterwork in the Sistine Chapel.

THE GREEN BIBLE, edited by Stephen Bede Scharper & Hilary Cunningham, Lantern Books, 142pp, paper, illustrated, $15.00. For the spiritually dedicated environmental advocate, activist, and eco-poet, this is an excellent collection of meditative and inspirational reflections. Pocket sized; a handy fit into the backpack; THE GREEN BIBLE is organized into seven chapters, each thematically opened by a borrowing from “THE” BIBLE, followed by memorable and moving quotations ranging from Vandana Shiva and the Dali Lama to Edward Abby, Aldo Leopold and David Suzuki; from Meister Eckhart and St. Francis to Rachel Carson, Thomas Berry, Pablo Neruda and Brian Swimme. THE GEEEN BIBLE is a good book to carry around and take to heart. After all, as creation spirituality theologian Matthew Fox has declared, “The Gospel of the 21th century is Ecology, Ecology, Ecology!”

ONE SONG, A New Illuminated Rumi by Michael Greem, Running Press, Perseus Books, hardcover with dust jacket, color illustrated, with poetry & music CD by the Illumination Band, $35.00. There is a lesson to be learned here and the astute observer will not miss the irony that while the governments of the United States and Iran continue to exchange bellicose threats and warnings, the 13th century Persian mystic poet, Rumi, has become the most popular poet of our time. Not only a poet of profound while yet earthy spiritual insight and wisdom, but one of the world’s great truth dreamers, Rumi has now entered the lives of many through the translations of Coleman Barks and others. Readers will already be familiar with the illustrated Rumi calendars from Brush Dance by Michael Green and therefore readily enchanted by this new book of poetry and images. ONE SONG is a true gift of peace and a beautifully presented recall to a perennial sanity in a world too often nightmare-mired in raging fanaticisms and the bloodlust of war.