The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire by Deepak Chopra

During the week, I read Deepak Chopra's The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence. I've read several of his other books -- The Path to Love: Spiritual Strategies for Healing, How to Know God: the soul’s journey into the mystery of mysteries, and The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: a practical guide to the fulfillment of your dreams -- and generally found them soothing.

And after reading Lynne McTaggart's The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World and re-reading Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, I was particularly interested to learn Chopra's views on essentially the same topic -- being in tune with oneself.

Here is the table of contents:

Acknowledgments 14
Introduction 17

Part One: The Promise of Unlimited Potential
1 Matter, Mind, and Spirit 13
2 Synchronicity in Nature 59
3 The Nature of the Soul 75
4 Intention 93
5 The Role of Coincidence 119
6 Desires and Archetypes 147

Part Two: Paving Destiny's Path
7 Meditation and Mantras 167
8 The First Principle, You Are a Ripple in the Fabric of the Cosmos 181
9 The Second Principle: Through the Mirror of Relationships I Discover My Nonlocal Self 187
10 The Third Principle: Master Your Inner Dialogue 199
11 The Fourth Principle: Intent Weaves the Tapestry of the Universe 207
12 The Fifth Principle: Harness Your Emotional Turbulence 219
13 The Sixth Principle: Celebrate the Dance of the Cosmos 237
14 The Seventh Principle: Accusing the Conspiracy of Improbabilities 243
15 Living Synchrodestiny 251

Epilogue 263
Selected References on Nonlocality 269
Appendix A 279
Appendix B 289
Index 294

Click here to read an excerpt.

The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World by Lynne McTaggart

Last weekend I finished reading The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World by Lynne McTaggart. This book and McTaggart's The Field Updated Ed: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe were first recommended to me about a year ago and I'm glad to finally read it.

I liked this book initially but I felt that it dragged on a bit too long like all too many books.

The scientific evidence provided was interesting, but I will have to research McTaggart's sources to be convinced fully of the validity of the studies described.

Also, McTaggart's instructions for using intention in one's own life seems useful. I may paste them into an entry sometime.

Click here to view the table of contents or click here to read an excerpt.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Last week I re-read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, one of my all-time favorite books.

If you haven't read this beautiful inspirational novel, first published in the early 1990s in Portuguese, you are missing out.

It is a simple book that reminds us to listen to our hearts.

If you loved Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, you will love this book too.

Interestingly, before coming across an old copy of The Alchemist and re-reading it, I started reading Lynne McTaggart's The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World; both remind me of the importance of being in tune with yourself, something I need to be reminded of about once a year.

Which is why I like to re-read The Alchemist and Ishmael at least once every two years. I think I last read the former in 2002 and the latter in 2004 so it's been some time now. I will have to make time to re-read Ishmael in 2009.

Each time I read my favorite books, I also feel like they teach me different things. The quote that stood out to me from this re-reading is this (supposedly a proverb): "Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time."


Click here to read an excerpt.