Living a Life of Contentment: What Contemporary Self-Help Gurus Say Are the Keys to Successful Living.

“Be Here Now”

Author: Ram Dass

Publisher: Lama Foundation, 1971

Pages: 121+

Wisdom is Timeless

How many can recall the 1970’s transformation of Richard Alpert into Baba Ram Dass? If you were on acid or took psilocybin (mushrooms) as often as Richard and his collegiate cohort Timothy Leary did during the 70’s, you may not recall a lot but, those LSD trips produced a craving for enlightenment within Alpert that could not be satiated by psychedelics. Alpert subsequently left Leary behind. Leary took on the American Medical Association in an attempt to legalize LSD. He failed, but Alpert, making his way through India, met his Guru Shri Neem Karoli Baba,whom he called Maharaji, and transformed himself in one of the most revered contemporary Gurus of our time, Ram Dass.

His 1971 best seller, “Be Here Now” has sold over a million copies and is still in print. It journals Alpert’s transition from successful Harvard Professor, academic scholar/writer and lecturer with a Ph. D in Psychology, through disillusioned drug user and seeker of truth and enlightenment. The book chronicles the journey and early life of this unforgettable and influencial Pundit. With its classic cover to cover 1970 artwork, brown paper bag pages and hand-look typesetting, the books pulls the reader back into the thick of the Age of Aquarius, free love, drug experimentation and the postmodernist's search for truth. Each page is designed to be read with abandonment; from a place of pure spiritual desire. Its message is rooted deep in the collective consciousness of a North American, counter culture youth who demanded social change, and although it is circa 1970, it contains pure contemporary relevance.

Ram Dass stumbled through the door of enlightenment a few times while on psychedelics and was ushered right back out again when he came down, but he manages to establish a reality-based, drugs-optional road map for others to follow. “Be Here Now” is a transcendental classic. To boot, he includes a Q&A with the Maharaji, Yoga exercises, quotes from many well known teachers, mantras, a cornucopia of advice, and a cook book that rivals any grass-roots vegetarian recipe anthology. Plus he throws in a list of “Books to Visit Now and Then” that’ll keep any Seeker fed for years. You’ll want to be high just to enjoy the read more or, if you’re like me you’ll get a contact high from holding the book in your hands! Either way, at the end of this book, transformation is not an option.

“You Can Heal Your Life”

Author: Louisa L Hay

Publisher: Hay House Publishing, 1984

Taking Control of Life’s Direction

In the recent movie based on her best selling book “You Can Heal Your Life”, eighty plus year old Louisa Hay sits basking in an almost tangible glow of success recounting for us a life of extremely humble beginnings. Beginning with her childhood, Hay recounts for us the physical and sexual abuse by her step-father, an adolescent rape by a neighbour, dropping out of school and leaving home a young teen, a teen-age pregnancy and giving the child up for adoption, and the end of her 27 year marriage. After relating these tragedies, she then takes us on a new trajectory – one of tremendous success.

Hay attributes her success to a turning point in her life involving a visit to a local church (The First Church of Religious Science) where, for the first time, she heard “If you change the way you think, you can change your life.” This alone set Hay off on the path to becoming one of the foremost self-help gurus of the 21 century. Convinced she had hit upon an important, life altering message, Hay successfully transforms her life through affirmations. With the blessing of her church, she sets up shop as a counselor and sets out to transform the lives of others using the same method. From here Hay, trusting in her message, writes her first book “Heal Your Body” in 1976, self-publishing 5000 copies – all sold within 2 years.

When the AIDs crisis hits New York (her town) Hay is requested to talk to a small number of sufferers. The group would quickly expand into the hundreds. From this event, people began to get on the ‘Hay Wagon’ and ride the wave of achievement with her. Her most popular book, “You Can Heal You’re your Life”, published in 1984, made it to the New York times ‘Best Seller’ list and contributed greatly to the credibility and acceptance of her simple message: You can change the way you think through the application of repetitious, positive, purposefully constructed affirmations and, if you can change the way you think, you can change your life.

Is she right? The Buddha would agree: “All that we are is the result of what we have thought” (Buddha).

“Evolve Your Brain”

Author: Joe Dispensa

Publisher: Health Communications Inc., 2007

510 pages

Personal Transformation on a Biological Level

Joe Dispenza is fairly new to the self-help genre. The message he conveys in his book, “Evolve Your Brain” is mainly the avocation of a biological shift – one anchored in science and occurring in the brain. Aptly put forward in the Acknowledgements, Joe Dispenza’s book is about knowing “. . . that the only terrain we are overcoming is our limited view of ourselves.” (xi). A California licensed Chiropractor and certified Hypnotherapist cum neurological layman, Dispenza began his trek into the relationship between consciousness and brain biology following a motor vehicle accident that threw him from his bicycle and left him in hospital with “multiple compression fractures of the thoracic spine” (17). Before him lay the choice between radical surgery to implant rods in his severely damaged spine or, not, and Dispenza choose the later.He began the long road to recovery with the help of family and friends, and it was along that road he discovered his message: that an “. . . innate intelligence runs through the central nervous system from the midbrain and the other lower subcordial regions of the brain to the body. This,” Dispenza contends, “happens all day, every day, and that process had already been healing me.” (22).

Dispenza teaches that the brain is pliable; that we are able to change patterns of behavior (the kind that don’t benefit us) by changing our brain’s neuronet structure. He contends that, through repetitive thought we “hard wire” our brain and this in effects directs subsequent responses patterned after the same old thought that in turn produce the same old actions/responses – a vicious cycle. The only way out of this cycle, Dispenza says, is to “. . . break habits of common thinking that have become the permanent, long-lasting circuits we have reinforced daily.” (248). His book offers practical advice on how to do this.

Dispenza’s book, although based on the science of the brain, is not difficult to comprehend. He gives the sense that he has done his homework, knows what he is talking about and has, with success, personally applied his ideas in his own healing process. His message: Changing your brain’s rewiring through applied thought or “mental rehearsal” can change your life experiences. Einstein agrees. He was quoted as saying, “Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Dispenza teaches how to get the ‘results’ we want in life.

“The Secret”

Author: Rhonda Byrne

Publisher: Atria Books and Beyond, 2006

198 Pages

The Law of Attraction

Rhonda Byrne went from nobody to somebody, and rags to riches in sixty seconds flat all on account of her little book “The Secret”. Now through her message, Byrne want her readers to follow in her footsteps and live the life of their dreams. She believes whole-heartedly that she has unearthed an age old universal law, one that can be applied to life with astounding results, one called the Law of Attraction.

Byrne’s revelation came amid personal upheaval and the deconstruction of her life. Her father had just died and her life had “collapsed around her.” Then, serendipitously, and out of her “greatest despair was to come the greatest gift . . . a glimpse of a Great Secret - The Secret to life.” (ix).

The book focuses on a simple message: “Everything that’s coming into your life you are attracting into your life . . . Whatever is going on in your mind you are attracting to you.” (Bob Proctor, 4). She makes a solid argument backed by many similar minded, popular, contemporary pundits, and she wraps it nicely in an easy, thought provoking read. Her book, although small in volume and dimension (only198 pg), is full practical advice on walking out the process of creating a perfect life. This process is powered by the contention that we are all in the driver’s seat of our individual lives; responsibility and power for change rests on our use of this universal, unchanging Law.

Why haven’t you heard of the ancient truth of the ‘Law of Attraction’ before? Byrne says it is because people in power (past and present) don’t want you to partake in the possibilities available, nor do they want to share the accompanying wealth - thus the name of the book “The Secret”.

Don’t have time to read? This is one instance when the movie may be better than the book. It can be found under the same title on DVD (at the library), or downloaded from the website for about $5.

“What the Bleep Do We Know!?: Discovering the Endless Possibilities for Altering Your Everyday Reality”

Authors: William Arntz, Betsy Chase, and Mark Vincente

Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 2007

Pages: 273+

Science + Consciousness = Reality

“What the Bleep Do We Know” is an investigation into the relationship between science and consciousness – a very successful investigation. The book is a slice of fresh, new conventions of thought, lightly toasted with spirituality and heavily layered with scientific knowledge (mostly from the field of quantum physics/mechanics). It has to be one of the best reads for spiritual skeptics; those who find their logic is always getting in the way of there desire to know the intangible side of life. Can a scientific method of measurement be applied to human consciousness? The authors make a pretty convincing case in favour of the possibility.

The gist: It is the interaction of human consciousness/observation on universal pre-matter energy that creates reality. Put another way, what we see, what is around us and constitutes our material world/reality is a product of our consciousness acting in collaboration with the energy that constitutes the essence of all matter. Quantum scientists are discovering that our world is essentially energy not subject to the laws of space and time and that the very act of observing, or the force of individual consciousness against it, “collapses” that energy it into what we term “our life”, or current realty. Essentially, we are the creators of our reality and the universe is the canvas upon which we paint the portrait of our lives.

To temper the heavy reliance on empirical evidence, the authors included wisdom from Ramtha (a 35000 spiritual being channeled through an American JZ Knight), and temper it does. It may be hard to believe that this could increase acceptance of the theory, but the channeled records jive with what the science is now saying.

The book’s premise is corroborated by so many talented, popular, contemporary scientific thinkers (like Candice Pert who, in the 70’s, discoverer of the brain’s opiate receptor). The follow-up to this book (and movie), “Down the Rabbit Hole” – 15 more hours on 6 DVDs of supportive information - will boot any skeptic off the fence.

Just a side note: This is one of the few times a movie has been adapted into a book, and it’s hard to determine which medium was the better medium for conveyance of this message.