Top 30 Books to Accelerate a Spiritual Journey

Many people appreciate a guide for their own awakening or spiritual journey.  While every path is unique, it is reassuring to know that many books exist to empower you to allow a new world to appear through your own eyes and subtle senses. 

There’s a big difference between people that read loads of books, and people who integrate spirituality into their lives. Being Spiritual is about living with mindfulness, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, and engaging in practices that help you listen deeply and live in greater harmony. Otherwise, you simply add to a mental knowledge base.  Living through the head cannot open the heart, change your energy vibration or transform your life from inside out.

So, empower yourself. Choose one or more of these books below—as they all offer timless wisdom.  Make a point of reflecting on the food for the senses.  Some include journal exercise or you can buy accompanying workbooks.  Read passages slowly.  Breathe deeply.  Allow yourself some quality time and watch what arises within you.  As you find authors whose words resonate with you, find other books and online talks or events that enable you to grow further.  After all, this is a choose-your-own-adventure and you are the protagonist.

In Transform Your Life: 730 inspirations, I offer glimpses of individuals who have directly or indirectly helped me see myself and the world differently. The following is a list of 30 books to help you awaken, appreciate life differently and accelerate your spiritual journey.  Some of these are included in recommendations for further reading in my new Mastering Time book. I invite comments from readers about books that help expand their perception and change their lives. 

1. Whatever Arises, Love That by Matt Kahn

2. The Leap: The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening  by Steve Taylor & Eckhart Tolle

3. The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer

4. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

5. Proof of Heaven by Dr. Eben Alexander

6. Hero by Rhonda Byrne

7. What God Said: the 25 Core Messages of Convesations with God that will change your life and the world by Neale Donald Walsch

8.  Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda

9.  A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson

10. The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield

11. Awaken Your Third Eye by Susan Shumsky

12. Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

13. The Empath's Survival Guide: Life Strategies for Sensitive People by Judith Orloff 

14. Mini Habits (Smaller Habits, Bigger Results) by Stephen Guise

15. Defy Gravity by Caroline Myss

16. A Course in Miracles by Helen Schucman (Foundation for Inner Peace)

17. Being Mortal  by Atul Gawande

18. The Essence of the Upanishads by Eknath Easwaran

19. The Power of Now & A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

20. Energy Medicine by Donna Eden

21. Be Love Now (& Be Here Now) by Ram Dass

22. The Healing Self by Deepak Chopra and Rudolph Tanzi

23.  The Serpent of Light Beyond 2012 by Drunvalo Mechizedeck

24. Journeys in to the Heart by Drunvalo Mechizedeck and Daniel Mittel

25. Isira (Autobiography) and Awakening You by Isira

26. The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

27. The Mastery of Self by Don Miguel Ruiz Jr.

28. The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh

29. Gifts of Imperfection & Daring Greatly by Brene Brown

30. Altruism by Matthieu Ricard

Direct experience is here

As a human you are conditioned from birth to structure your life around ideas, beliefs, and attitudes. You develop an identity based on perceived memories of the past.  This is what grounds you and acts as a reference for a sense of direction to or away from.  Yet, what are you really telling yourself about reality, fulfillment and direction?

As you allow the conditioned mind to control your attention, you are unconscious, sort of asleep at the wheel, not noticing signs that you pass by on the road.  When mind is already thinking about what is around the corner, you do not see potholes as you traverse them.  If you focus on the future, you are not present.  Wake up out of the idea that you must awaken.

To be awake is to take responsibility for and transcend selective awareness of the present moment. Its as if you recognize conditioned impulses to avoid or fear and let this dissolve in an instant. To sense power of vibration is to feel something within simply clicks.  No need arises to explain or understand it.  Needs are figments of the mind or imagination.

From a pure state of being, you allow yourself to notice what is obvious.  This is being open to direct experience.  Awareness is who you are. Awareness organizes the self. Who is the person who responds, "me" or "I"?Regardless of what you read or hear about, direct experience speaks for itself.  What you call love is God, it is here and now. To focus on this moment is to stop seeking.  You relax in your being.  This is not a concept.  It is not personal yet everything is contained within it.

Direct knowing is here

You dare to see for yourself what the world inspires you to explore.  You do not have to embrace one possibility at the exclusion of another.  No experience invalidates another.  None is lesser or greater. They are all equal.  Only the inner judge invites you to create hierarchies or tune into a disharmonious frequency.  This blocks direct knowing.  The energy radiating through your form simply invites you to see and experience life in different ways.  How you respond is up to you.  

The truth and the way it manifests is completely unique for each person.   The truth is a pointer to seeing itself.  Seeing does not see illusion.  As you simply see experience, you are in a state of natural balance, harmony, equality. It is a state of fearlessness that is ever-present and accessible when you do not look away.  Look more deeply into experience to see which aspects of self do not change in time and which parts of you are in no way limited or obscured by experience.  Everything invites you to discover the reality of love. This arises as you see clearly, without conditions, through the divine lens of equality. If you are tempted to see through mental filters, shift focus.  Look again.

To be free of all forms of understanding is the end of inner doubt, the end of the need to understand.  Everything you discover about yourself is an ally or a doorway into a true aspect of inner being.  Notice what doubt invites you to do.  Doubt is an opportunity to face the most vulnerable parts of yourself.  The flip side of doubt is the innocence within that reaches out to be loved and accepted.  Do not fear losing what you give, or losing what you let in or being rejected.  Love without question.  Being true to yourself is attuning to that which you cannot explain and letting go of all resistance.

"The final freedom is freedom from the need for certainty." - Matt Kahn