I’ve probably read at least 200 books, and my reading was all over the map, and as I grew spiritually, I read deeper works. So a complete list of what I’ve read wouldn’t be productive. When this process began for me, I didn’t even know about the concept of “energy,” and had a difficult time with my ingrained idea of “God,” so I began reading new thought authors from channeled material, books on healing (like those of Barbara Brennen), books on different religions, to best selling authors including most books of Deepak Chopra (who had a strong influence on me) and Caroline Myss’s Anatomy of the Spirit. I loved Sue Monk Kidd’s, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter though my own awakening was just the opposite of hers. One thing I had seen several years before was the PBS special on Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth (which I highly recommend); it opened a door to metaphorically understand the religion into which I was born.
Then I moved into what might be termed spiritual psychology reading Dancing in the Flames (the dark goddess and black Madonna) by Marion Woodman, Unfolding Self by Ralph Metzer, The Highly Sensitive Person by Aron, Owning Your Own Shadow by Robert Johnson, Please Understand Me (Meyer-Briggs temperament and character test based on Jung) by Keinsey and Bates and tons of other such books. (The Myer-Briggs and Aron books help with compassion and understanding of differing personality types.) Ken Wilbur’s A Brief History of Everything might be termed spiritual psychology/philosophy as would Michael Washburn’s The Ego and The Dynamic Ground which I really liked.
I read supportive science books like From Science to God by Peter Russell, and those bound to a particular religion: Catholic saints and mystics; Jewish, Sufi, Tao and Buddhist literature. I looked into books on kundalini and discovered Gopi Krishna’s Living with Kundalini and Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy of Man, Muktananda’s Kundalini: The Science of Life, Dr Lee Sannella’s, The Kundalini Experience, Philip St Romain’s, Kudalini Energy and Christian Spirituality and books and videos by/about, The Peace Pilgrim. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention The Mystical I and The Art of Spiritual Healing by Joel S. Goldsmith, a Christian mystic of the late 1950’s. (By the way, Gene Kieffer, who knew and promoted Gopi Krishna and founded The Kundalini Research Foundation, was instrumental in confirming I had had a kundalini experience. It was two years before I knew there was even a name for my experience!).
Your best guide is internal — books that come to you, or to which you are drawn at any booksellers. Also consider those that are listed in bibliographies at the back of any books you read and like. Many of the authors I mention also have websites that you can Google.
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I’m only going to list a few links also because your best source is Google. For instance, Google “kundalini” and “spiritual awakening” and add your particular path or religion to those words if you like, and you’ll come up with varying sources. New sites are being made so often that it behooves you to do this monthly. I know when I first began looking a number of years ago, I barely found a few links. Now there are hundreds.
For those of you interested in non-duality, I will mention www.nonduality.com and www.adyashanti.org. The first site lists a ton of books, links and information about its subject; the second refers to a young man, now called, Adyashanti, who studied Zen and then “woke up out of Zen,” as he says. He lives in the state of non-duality and speaks about in relatively plain terms. Eckhart Tolle’s book, The Power of Now, is another good source on the subject. You might also want to go to www.noeticsciences.org, a worldwide organization in the forefront of the science of energetics and the like and was formed by one of our astronauts. They have chapters in most major cities throughout the US and the world.There are many magazines from What’s Enlightenment and Parabola to pop psychology/spirituality that you can find. You might also check out www.soundstrue.com for a catalogue of books, workshop CDs and the like on all things spiritual.
