A foundational book in helping us understand what’s at the heart of vulnerable & true communication between us in service of conflict resolution.

Key Takeaways and Themes: Observation vs. assessment, understanding language and its power to either distance us or bring us closer to bridging gaps of understanding, expressing actual feelings instead of just what we think - or think others are thinking, and the power of feeling, empathy, and connecting - as well as HOW to access this within ourselves to share with others.

We are profoundly multi-dimensional people - and we have many facets of our personalities that go beyond the one-dimensional persona our culture seems to both peddle to & demand of us in our lives. In ‘No Bad Parts,’ Schwartz presents Internal Family Systems, a concept which uses the metaphor of family members to describe navigating our relationship with varied parts of ourselves through trauma and conflict in one of the most powerful concepts in psychology to date.

Key Takeaways and Themes: Acknowledging the many facets of ourselves and how to alchemize maladaptive protector parts into allies, why our parts become distorted and stuck in childhood traumas and cultural beliefs; exercises for mapping your parts, accessing the Self, working with a challenging protector, identifying each part’s triggers, and more.

Introduced me to the art of Contemplation and its alchemical impact on us as a practice, as well as the framework of the Shadow/Gift/Siddhi within each of our paradigms of behavior & consciousness.

Key Takeaways and Themes: The art of Contemplation; Paradigms of consciousness & behavior, their link to our genetics, and their spectrum of embodiment

There are no wasted words in this book - it speaks clearly and with full intellectual and emotional integrity about the destruction we continue to create via the current economic systems, and describes the paradox of living in an abundant world which we drive to extinction by acting out our greed driven by the illusion of scarcity.

Key Takeaways and Themes: The history of money, the faults in capitalism, and powerful insights on how life can actually be more abundant and fulfilling for us all.

A powerful philosophy book that first showed me we have a positionality - a lens that is biased. We say we want to be free, but our behavior is insistent on others/outside forces being the authority.

Key Takeaways and Themes: Love, Religion, etc - a new perspective and lens on all the ways we fail to understand the paradoxes of life.

This book is simple, straight forward, and foundational to one’s understanding of the real tools and emotional awareness which are imperative to engage in loving and successful relationships, both polyamorous and monogamous.

Key Takeaways and Themes: Full understanding of what polyamory actually is, How attachment needs and trauma are factors to work with in creating loving and healing relationships.

This taught me how my own energy, presence, & power feels; how to meditate and what meditation actually is, and how to explore and understand my anger/the pain body, and what to do to transform my experience.

Key Takeaways and Themes: Ego, Meditation, Pain body; both individual and collective

This book Introduced me to Astrology at 12yrs old, and helped me understand the varied ways that other people may think, process, and display emotions and personality traits differently than me.

Key Takeaways and Themes: “Personology” a term coined by Gary; the mixed study of one’s astrology and psychology. Astrological personality blueprint based on the day you were born.

Heaven and Hell are states of being in one’s own consciousness, rather than destinations. How to better read and understand what’s being shown in my life experiences. If I ever need a re-vamped sense of self and purpose - this is the book to re-read. First Channeled text & most not-religious book with religious terminology I’d ever read.

Key Takeaways and Themes: Expanding the true meaning of oversimplified spiritual truths and biblical spin/cherry-picking. The universe and God are always working for you and what you believe about that is part of the paradox.