The reviews in this section are intended to recommend books that we think you’ll find interesting and helpful. They will typically relate to Energy Medicine, NLP, or spirituality in one way or another or otherwise provide information we think you’ll find useful and/or interesting. To add your own comments to the reviews listed here (or to any of the reviews posted on the SCS Web site), send a message to Joel, including your name, the title of the book, and your comments on it or the review of it.

Austin, A. T. (2007). The Rainbow Machine: Tales from a Neurolinguist’s Journal. Boulder, CO: Real People Press.

The Rainbow Machine is one of the best books available on NLP. It is in the spirit of—and follows the model of—such early classics as Frogs into Princes, Use Your Brain for a Change, and Change Your Mind and Keep the Change. It manages to be easy to read, entertaining, and informative at the same time.

Austin is a Registered Nurse, hypnotherapist, and NLP practitioner who has had ample opportunity to practice his skills in both clinical settings and in private practice. His stories about encounters with patients and clients are fascinating and instructive and illustrate the value of flexibility in therapeutic encounters. What can you do when the tried-and-true NLP technique doesn’t work? Something else, as Austin demonstrates. Austin has been called “the British Milton Erickson,” but in terms of attitude and sense of humor (or humour), I would say that he is more of a British Richard Bandler.

Austin does an excellent job of illustrating the limitations of standard psychiatric reliance on pharmaceuticals and tendency to blame patients for their failure to respond to standard interventions. With his background in nursing, he is able to describe the effects of psychotropic drugs on brains and behavior.

The book is replete with “teaching tales” that illustrate the need for practitioner flexibility—requisite variety—and do an excellent job of installing the attitudinal adjustments necessary to ensure behavioral change. For this reason alone, The Rainbow Machine is must-reading for NLP practitioners, as well as for those who simply want to be more effective in their interpersonal relationships. In brief: Read this book. You’ll be glad you did.

Gilbert, D. (2006). Stumbling on Happiness New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Lyubomirsky, S. (2007). The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want. New York: The Penguin Press.

Gilbert and Lybomirsky are both academics in departments of psychology. Gilbert is at Harvard, and Lybomirsky earned her Ph.D. at Stanford and is on the faculty of the University of California at Riverside. Their books are interesting and informative and worth reading. As helpful as they might be in providing clues about happiness, however, these books overlook what seems to me (Joel) a critical factor: being “happy” is not the same as being “joyful.”

Happiness is, practically by definition, ephemeral. Joy is deeper and more substantial. A person cannot be happy and sad at the same time, for example, but it is perfectly possible to be sad and joyful at the same time. This is the reason that the SCS program is Seeing the Divine in Everyday Life: Seven Keys to More Joyful Living rather than “How to Be Happy All the Time.”

As Gilbert emphasizes, the things we think will make us happy don’t always do so, and—when they do—we quickly adjust to them, and our happiness diminishes. Lyubomirsky refers to this as the “set point” for happiness and says that it is genetically determined and can’t be changed. This is undoubtedly true owing to the superficial and temporary nature of happiness. As Gilbert says, we stumble on happiness. When we deliberately seek it, we find it elusive. When we do find it, it fades quickly. A new car or new love provides short-term happiness, but as things and relationships age, the happy feelings fade.

The desirable goal, it seems to me (Joel) is an abiding sense of joy. While you won’t find the "how to" for joy in either of these books, those who read carefully will find clues pointing the way. For that reason, both books are worth reading.

Wilber, K. (2000). Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber. Boston: Shambala

Grace and Grit is a remarkably powerful book for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that we know from the start how it is going to end for Treya, and we (readers in general) learn to love her along the way. The book is a combination of Treya’s journal entries and Ken’s commentary, starting from the time they met through her discovery of breast cancer, treatments—both conventional and alternative—the cancer’s metastasis, and her death. In doing so, it also chronicles their spiritual partnership.

The book also does a wonderful job of presenting the philosophy underpinning the discipline known as Transpersonal Psychology. Wilber is not only one of the premier living philosophers, but also a prolific writer. In some ways, Grace and Grit is his most accessible book, as the story line helps readers not accustomed to reading philosophy moving forward, and Wilber gives readers who might struggle with the philosophy permission to skip Chapter 11, which focuses primarily on the philosophical aspects of Transpersonal Psychology.

Both Ken and Treya are intensely spiritual and spend a great deal of time in meditation. For that reason, the book serves as a wake-up call for those steeped in “New Age” assumptions that those who follow the right spiritual practice and stick to the right diet will have Divine protection from cancer and other serious maladies.

The relationship between Ken and Treya is a quintessential spiritual partnership. They are drawn to each other magnetically and experience both the agony and the ecstasy of relations at their best—and their worst. Wilber is relentless in the honesty of his presentation, and Treya was writing what she assumed would be private journals. We see their humanity as naked and raw and the beauty of their soul essences at the same time.

Grace and Grit is must-reading for those interested in Transpersonal Psychology, the dynamics of spiritual partnerships, or the interactions between oncologists and their patients.

Debra’s addendum: From the moment I read a quotation from it in The Simple Feeling of Being, by Ken Wilber, I had the sense that Grace and Grit was going to be life-changing for me. There is no denying that reading Treya’s story, including the intimate details of the completion of her transition, took me back to the many significant moments I have been honored to share with family, friends, and clients along their journey with cancer.

Ken and Treya’s compelling sense of spiritual partnership (she called it love at first touch) resonates with my sense of being that connected to Joel. We have described our coming together as fated, no-choice, destined. Add to this, Ken and Treya’s powerful and succinct expressions of the Truths (capital “T”)—the perennial wisdom found woven throughout the mystical teachings of the world’s religions.

If you work with others in any capacity (whether Western medicine or complimentary or alternative healing therapies) this is another must-read book. It is not something you will get over quickly, for as Ken says about this beloved Treya “any one of us can meet Treya again, any time we wish to do so, by acting with honesty, integrity, and fearlessness—for therein lies the heart and soul of Treya (p. xiv).