Come check out Metaphysical Sundays, this June 3, 2018, at Coyote Ridge Books. We’ll have all our self-selected self-actualizing books, and intro sessions of yoga throughout the day.
Self-Actualization Sundays: A Book List Curated by Coyote Ridge Books
Anyone’s list of transformative books will be highly individual, informed by their taste and personality. But a common thread of great books seems to be that we are taught indirectly through shocks in understanding.
We’ve included all different types of books, old, new, fiction and non.
A note: we do not recommend magical thinking unless tempered by realism. We often learn in negative ways, too late, and in retrospect. The truth ain’t often super pretty, but getting over needing it to be, is priceless.
Meta + physical
I’ve take Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a guide. Along his continuum of needs, we find a helpful delineation of basic, social, and spiritual needs that I’d describe as Darwin+.
Basic needs are those necessary for mere survival—like food, shelter, warmth and sleep. Then there’s psychosocial needs (love, companionship, goals, rewards). Finally there are self-esteem needs, and the final orientation of personality towards self-actualization—roughly speaking the lack of conflict, lack of arbitrary limitations and self-defeating behaviors, and in a more active sense, the ability to go your own way, and to commit to your life and self.
You could be working on any level of the hierarchy in any type of conflict—with self, society, or nature. But many authors tend to stick to their bloodlines. Dickens’ books always illustrate a conflict with society, and with belonging. Stephen King: Conflict with self with a dash of (super)nature, and like much horror, parables of lost masculinity and fear of commitment/engulfing.
The conflict within the self exists even in a pure revenge story like The Count of Monte Cristo, making it all the more affecting to the reader. For its diametrical opposite, see Hamlet for the perils of rumination and cost of indecision.
The List
- Physiological needs (conflict with nature)
To Build a Fire, Jack London
Into the Wild, Chris McCandless
If you have scarcity fears at the bedrock, a good education in cooking, building, gardening, and meditation for relaxation can be a baseline for emotional security needs. If you want to stir up your physiological security issues to work on them, go hiking in the desert; this brings up scarcity issues right quick.
- Security Needs (conflict with nature, others)
Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
Lord of the Flies, William Golding
Fear of Freedom / Escape from Freedom, Eric Fromm
The Lottery, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson
Your Money or Your Life, Vicki Robin
You Can Heal Your Life, Louise Hay
- Love / Social Needs (conflict with self, others, society)
Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman
Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
Jealousy, Alain Robbe-Grillet
Watership Down, Richard Adams
How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie
Nature, Man and Woman, Alan Watts (all books, also see archive on YouTube)
- Esteem/ Accomplishment: (conflict with self, society, others)
The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz
Far From the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
The Outsider, Colin Wilson
Fight Club, Chuck Pulahniak
Anything by Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, The Watchmen)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson
The Gate, Francois Bizot
Don Juan books, Carlos Castaneda
- Self-Actualization (marked by lack of conflict/mastery of self)
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell
Mastery, George Leonard
Man and His Symbols, C.G. Jung
A New Earth, Power of Now Eckhart Tolle
The Road Less Travelled, M. Scott Peck
Julian of Norwich “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” (See St. Teresa of Avila too)
Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Chogyam Trungpa
Mind Illuminated, John Yates (Culadasa) a thorough, practical meditation manual
**
Though we work steadily through the lower to higher levels, we’re almost never working on just one as an adult. Still, it can be useful to get really clear on the baseline of your present conflict. You could be working on esteem, but trying to force it into a love thing. Or you could be confusing basic security needs while missing the psychological security point.
We can spend our lives trying to be free of the connection and responsibility we have toward others, but “no man is an island” (John Donne). Getting caught up in self-help can blind us to the roles we have chosen to play in the world. There is no script, and we all have different talents. All I’ve learned tells me we are here to commit and take responsibility for our lives and our relationship to the places and people with whom we dwell.
To that end, as a palate cleanser, check out Doing Nothing: Coming to the End of the Spiritual Search.
P.S. Yoga Sutras (all levels)
The positive effects of yoga: yoga works on the microcosm, but hits all the levels mentioned above. One minute it’s purely physical and physiological work, then it’s emotional response, awareness of others, one’s place and one’s practice from an outer view, and then an all-consuming silence signaling a self-transcendant moment.
Working in concert with mindbody we practice effective action and responsiveness. Committed action leads to cause-effect recognition leading to experience, realism, confidence, effectiveness, and true self-actualization on all levels, as you become aware of shifting patterns and recognize how you are buffeted by prevailing winds.
–EMJ