Inprint - New Books of interest by Jeanne Spiro

Sage-ing While Age-ing by Shirley MacLaine. (Atria Books, $26.00, Hardcover.)

In Sage-ing While Age-ing, Shirly MacLaine invites us to join her on the most powerful, provocative journey of her life. Over the years, she has firmly established herself as a fearless, iconoclastic thinker and seeker of truth. Now, as she confronts the realities and rewards of growing older, she reflects on the greater understanding of her own place in the universe that her experiences have brought to her.

Sparked by the experience of moving into a new house, she is inspired to look back across the remarkable professional and personal milestones she has experienced so far. Surrounded by books, pictures, and the artifacts of a life well lived, she is able to recognize the profound power of synchronicity at work around her, discovering the invisible threads that stitch together the seemingly random events of her days, adding meaning even to the mundane.

Having grown older, MacLaine is increasingly concerned with the potential pitfalls of modern medicine. She shares personal insights into nutrition, acupuncture, homeopathy, and alternative medicine. Practical and bracing, here is advice for anyone looking to expand their understanding of health and well-being.

Moving beyond the physical, MacLaine explores what has always interested her most—those things that are unseen. What is consciousness? What is the purpose of our lives? Are we alone in the universe? And perhaps the greatest mystery of all, what happens to us after death? Filled with wit and candor, this is an inspiring book that will delight and captivate not only her fans, but fellow travelers everywhere.

Don’t Get Lucky, Get Smart: Why Your Love Life Sucks and What You Can Do About It by Alan Cohen (Marlowe & Co., $14.95, Paperback.)

Why do so many relationships begin with fireworks and end in the pits, playing over and over like a bad reprise of the movie Groundhog Day?

So many of us suffer through bad dates and bad relationships, time and time again going through the same painful patterns, attracting what we don’t want and missing what we do. Finally, Alan Cohen gives us a chance to understand why we end up in situations that don’t work, and how we can recognize (and break!) our behavioral patterns for good and start to create lasting successful relationships.

Don’t Get Lucky, Get Smart zeroes in on the most common reasons that dates and relationships tank, offering no-hype, easy-to-follow, practical, poignant, and often hilarious instructions for the romantically challenged. Each chapter begins with a real-life individual or couple who hit painful dating walls, followed by how he or she found the door out. Cohen highlights key dating and relationship errors and provides specific, point-by-point instructions on how to make better connections and sustain lasting, healthy relationships. [See Alan Cohen’s article this issue for an excerpt from Don’t Get Lucky, Get Smart.]

The Three “Only” Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination by Robert Moss. (New World Library, $21.95, Hardcover.)

Only a dream? Only a coincidence? Only your imagination? Robert Moss says that it’s only through dreams, coincidence, and the workings of the imagination that we can journey to the world beyond the obvious one; a world where we awaken to who we are and who we are meant to become. The Three “Only” Things offers practical suggestions for harnessing the life-altering power of the subconscious mind. In clear and lively language, Moss explains the nine powers of dreaming, including solving problems, seeing the future, tapping creativity, and understanding relationships; the nine rules of coincidence, such as things happening together and setbacks offer opportunity; and the seven uses of imagination, including seeing your destination and experiencing a spirit of play.

Moss highlights the lives of several successful business people and celebrities and reveals how these figures have used these tools not only in their everyday lives, but also for the greater good. The Three “Only” Things explains how each of us can achieve this same miraculous level of success in our own lives as we recognize and start to work with the wisdom that is inherent in dreams, coincidence, and imagination. This book is full of fresh and exciting ways we can work with these sources of wisdom to create the lives we truly desire.

The Book of Life Questions and Answers by Dr. M. Erceg. (Author House, $18.49, Paperback.)

Supplying an owner’s manual is standard practice from Tivo to tent pitching, yet blatantly omitted when we are born and arrive here on Earth. We are here now, swimming in a sea of peripheral information, with our most basic questions left unanswered. Who are we? Why are we here? Just as we use a guidebook when visiting a new country for the first time, so too, do we value a guidebook during our stay here.

The Book of Life Questions and Answers takes us on an inspiring, compelling behind-the-scenes tour of the world, navigating the mentality giving rise to the sectors of society including parenting, relationships, education, medicine, and politics. By tying together the threads comprising these sectors in a way we can all understand, we begin to make sense of why we relate to each other as we do, why friction persists at the cost of global peace, and grasp solutions along the way. The shrouded, seemingly complex reasoning driving our human actions is finally untangled and quite beautifully unraveled, plainly revealing how we have unconsciously created the framework of society as we know it today.

Iboga: The Visionary Root of African Shamanism by Vincent Ravalec, Mallendi, and Agnès Paicheler. (Park Street Press, 18.95, Paperback.)

Iboga, spiritual ally of African shamans since antiquity, yields ibogaine, a powerful psychotropic substance. It is used mainly in Gabon and Cameroon in a secret, initiatory tradition called bwiti-ngenza, in which physical and psychological illnesses can be rooted out and cured. Intense psychological conditioning that includes the rites of confession, contacting and honoring one’s ancestors, and construction of an in-depth psychological inventory are all part of the initiate’s encounter with this sacred root.

Like many visionary and initiatory plants, iboga is a key that gives access to other modes of being and consciousness. Despite its suppression by the FDA since the 1960s, and more recently by the DEA, researchers have shown that ibogaine provides a powerful adjunct to psychology due to its miraculous ability to break addictions—most notably to heroin. To the followers of the Bwiti religion, ibogaine is the indispensable means by which humans can truly communicate with the deepest reaches of their soul and with the spirits of their ancestors. This book details the traditions and techniques of iboga’s use by African shamans and the essential role it occupies in that community in order to preserve this knowledge and show how ibogaine may have an important role to play in our modern world.

The Art of Conscious Creation: How you Can Transform the World by Jacki Lapin. (Elebate, $15.99, Paperback.)

Jackie Lapin shares techniques to consciously create a happier, more fulfilling, and prosperous life. She examines the physics of human thought and the ways in which we can transform ourselves and the world through becoming high frequency flyers. She looks at the way people have unconsciously contributed to the world today and what we must do to begin a transformation to manifest a world of peace, abundance, health, and love for all. She begins by exploring the energetic importance of love, kindness, and compassion, and reviews the 25 Universal Guiding Principles that explain how the universe works. These principles are all considered on a spiritual level, on an energetic level, and on a global level, guiding us to ways that we can apply the lessons personally and toward world betterment.

The Art of Conscious Creation offers specific steps for creating visioning experiences. It also offers 17 Visions for a Better World for use in visioning or meditating. They include visions for peace, for leadership, for an abundant world, for health, for human rights, for compassion, for the natural world, and humanity. Lapin encourages motivated people to join with other like-minded conscious creators in United World Healing, an international organization she founded that is committed to uniting people for worldwide, simultaneous, synchronized visions to create a healthier and more compassionate world.

The Acupressure Atlas by Bernard C. Kolster, M.D. and Astrid Waskowiak, M.D. (Healing Arts Press, $24.95, Oversize Paperback.)

The Acupressure Atlas is a fully illustrated and comprehensive reference guide that demonstrates how acupressure techniques activate and accelerate the body’s self-healing powers to alleviate many health problems, including even the common cold. Sensory ailments such as trouble sleeping, sensitive stomach, headaches, joint problems, and allergies have been steadily increasing in the West for decades. Acupressure can effectively prevent and treat all of these disorders, and more. It is suited to self-treatment, the treatment of a partner, and the treatment of children.

Acupressure, which is a component of traditional Chinese medicine, prevents disorder from arising by harmonizing and balancing the body’s energies. It is based on the model that sees qi (life energy) circulating throughout the human body along a series of channels, or energy meridians. When qi can move freely along these channels, we experience good health and a sense of well-being. When our life energy is restricted or blocked through stress, injury, poor diet, lack of exercise, or overwork, we experience pain and the symptoms of illness. Lined up along the meridians like pearls on a string are sensitive points called acupressure points. It is at these points that the meridians connect to the surface of the body. By massaging the acupressure points on the body’s surface, we can release internal energy blockages and allow the health-giving energy to move freely once again.

Along with an introduction to the origins and principles of traditional Chinese medicine, The Acupressure Atlas provides the most important basic techniques as well as step-by-step instructions, illustrated in full color, of the practical and specific information needed to put the healing techniques of acupressure at your fingertips. An illustrated appendix providing a detailed overview of every point discussed in the book is an invaluable reference.