What Book Are You Currently Reading ?

[blackraven]

"The Complete Guide to Memory, The Science of Strengthening your mind"
Dr. Richard Restak

[Louisa]

'The Four Tendencies' by Gretchen Rubin. It's about personality types. I didn't really find myself fitting neatly into any category, but it helped me to understand myself and others better and to take advantage of the "questioner" approach to life more.

In the system, there are four types and also mixes of two types. My husband is a questioner and is often unswayed by social norms or "what will people think/feel about him". I tend to be a bit more of the obliger or upholder personality type, worrying about what people will think or feel about me. If they're right, if I'm wrong, even when there's ample evidence to the contrary. Or if it's just one of those subjective things you can't really judge, if find myself swayed by others subjective preferences, moods and expectations, even when it's harmful and pointless to be swayed by them. So this book has helped me step outside the comparison/judgment box. It's given me other insights too.

[Catsquotl]

Reiki. The Transmigration of a Japanese Spiritual Healing Practice
Jonker, J.L.
2016, Dissertation

[Louisa]

A few mental health related books:

This is Your Brain on Food by Uma Naidoo. It talks about foods which are helpful for a really wide range of mental health conditions. I found many things that confirmed my own experience, after years of having a variety of mental health conditions and experimenting with diet. Some of it makes a huge difference in my wellbeing. And there's some new stuff for me to try or to adjust and emphasize certain foods more in my diet, and see (some of what works or not is individual variations, too).

The Awakening by James Gordon. This is about healing from trauma. I already do many of the things in this book, but one that was new to me was the "shaking/dance", which he also gives a demonstration on his site, titled "Breathe Shake Dance". It's a certain kind of dance moving in a certain way, or just shaking in a certain way. And though I've tried it only once so far, it really felt like it could be helpful and I never would have tried dancing in this kind of style/way without reading about it here.

Breathe In, Breathe Out by Stuart Sandeman. This has so many different breathing exercises, for many situations. Not just mental health issues, but it does help with that. I was surprised that the exercise that is supposed to "always clear your nose" really worked for me, when I tried it and my sinuses were badly congested. I will definitely have to try that one more often, since I have severe, recurring allergies.

[DesertRose]

At Heaven's Door by William J. Peters

[PinkFlower]

Hi Louisa,

Thank you for recommending Breathe In, Breathe Out by Stuart Sandeman. I’m really excited to dive into it. Breathwork has become a daily practice for me, even if it’s just for a few minutes each day. Can’t wait to see what new insights this book will bring!

[Louisa]

Hi PinkFlower,

I hope you like the book. I'm enjoying reading it a lot and the exercises in it are really helping me. I find myself half-consciously doing some of them all throughout the day, as needed and it's making a big difference.

[Found Goat]

I'm presently re-reading a book on Flat Earth that is most convincing. It is almost demanded of the reader that it be re-read, as there's quite a bit of (quite dense and technical) information to digest. At over 1000 pages, Edward Hendrie's The Greatest Lie On Earth (expanded edition) has, I think, the power to convert even the most hitherto unwavering of honest-hearted ball-earthers.

Enter (mass) cognitive dissonance. Doubtless for many folks hearing this, the very idea sounds utterly preposterous. Such a dismissive attitude, however counterintuitive, is quite understandable, a to-be-expected conditioned response, a psychological reflex based on years of ingrained cultural programming and scholastic indoctrination. Yet what if we've all been hoodwinked to believe in perhaps the greatest myth of all time? Wise is the person who will at least consider the possibility with a critical yet open mind.

As alluded to in the book, there's been a number of learned men in recent centuries who have questioned the official heliocentric narrative, ranging from land surveyors, geographers, topographers, engineers, etc, long before the so-called 'Space Age' came along to further muddy the waters. These past skeptics and doubters of the Copernican theory were no kooks, were not part of some 'psy-op,' but rather were simply independent thinkers endowed with a sense of logic and unafraid of being labeled a heretic.

As enlightening as this book is, however, there will be readers who will find the author's religious beliefs alone enough of a reason to write off the entire case for flat-earthism as being nothing but benighted and ignorant superstition. Hendrie, despite all the persuasive scientific and non-biblical evidence he provides in support of stationary geocentricism, is in the end a Christian who regards the Bible as the final authority on the subject. My hope is that this potential intellectual obstacle does not prevent the curious non-Christian on the fence from wanting to peruse the publication, regardless.

As to this fringe topic, I used to be an agnostic myself; though ever dubious of NASA Apollo mission claims and subsequent imagery, I still had several questions needing to be resolved; namely, how to explain, from a flat-earth perspective, such things as lunar eclipses, time zones, impact craters, and the like. What is one to make of space satellites, GPS, and the ISS? Appreciatively, all these questions and many more are more than satisfactorily answered in Hendrie's cogently written, mega-mythbuster of a book.

Postscript: One does not become a flat-earther overnight. If I am going out on a limb in my posting of this book recommendation, so be it. As a result of a decades-long pursuit of truth, perhaps this will turn out to be just another corner turn that will end up being nothing more than another roundabout, and yet so clear has my mind become in recent years, and so at peace my heart, where once I was searching for clarity, all the while unknowingly going around in circles, in trying, for example, to make sense of ufology, and the 'ET' and alien abduction phenomenon -- areas of study which I have since come to understand are put in place largely to throw the modern-day truth-seeker way off track, to make him accept unquestioningly an intergalactic universe, instead of one in which Earth is front and center of God's creation.

Even when as a normie so many years ago, I had questioned how it was we humans knew the rotational speed of the planet and other speeds (orbital and galactic) that we were taught in science class. Where did these precise astronomical and seeming arbitrarily invented numbers originate from, if not from a hat?, I wondered.

Could the truth, in fact, be hidden in plain sight, if not right under our noses then at least our feet? Is it perhaps time to read Hendrie's book so as to unlearn everything we've been told about the size, shape, and location of our supposed 'Blue Marble'? If so, then it may just lead some to the God of the Bible, if not to true -- as opposed to inverted -- enlightenment. Or have we bought into heliocentrism hook-line-and-sinker?

[charly233]

Interesting. My feeling is that the earth is both flat and spherical depending on how you look at it.

The earth is a ball when viewed from a ball-like perspective. And it is flat when viewed from a flat earth perspective.

The earth is neither flat nor ball like. And it is both flat and spherical.

The earth, mother Gaia, just IS.