I've been getting a ton of emails from people
asking me for my book recommendations.
If you don't know this about me, I am a voracious
reader, so coming up with a top recommended
list was no easy task for me.
But of all of the books that I've read, there's
been only some of them that have really significantly
changed my life, especially helping me through
the difficult phases of my spiritual awakening.
So that's what I put together in this video
for you.
This video is going to have some books that
you've heard of and some that you haven't
heard of, but one thing is certain about this
top 20 that I put together for you.
It's the capacity that these books have to
help you through any difficulties in your
spiritual awakening and to make your spiritual
awakening more peaceful and more joyful.
Are you ready to get to this list?
Let's do this.
Roll trailer.
Hello, beautiful soul.
This is Christina Lopes, the Heart Alchemist,
here to help you open your heart, heal your
past and live with purpose.
If you're new to my videos, click on that
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always notified when I put out new content.
This week I'm bringing a top 20 recommended
book list for you.
This book list has been specifically curated
with books that significantly impacted my
life and helped me through sometimes the challenging
phases of my spiritual awakening.
Spiritual awakenings are beautiful, but they
also have some challenges and these books
helped me through some really rough patches
and helped me kind of stay on track in my
spiritual awakening without freaking out too
much.
So here we go, to the top 20 books that I
recommend to help you through your spiritual
awakening.
Let's get started.
The first book is A New Earth by Eckhart Toley
and A New Earth was an interesting book because
I read it way before my spiritual awakening
and I didn't get it the first time around.
But this book is really and was really transformational
in my life.
Eckhart Toley and Michael Singer, which I'm
going to talk about in this video later on,
are probably my two favorite teachers about
the ego and the mind.
They are wonderful mind and ego teachers.
The New Earth was a beautiful book.
It really helped me transcend and go beyond
the mind, understand the inner workings of
the mind and how it's so many times sabotages
us.
So A New Earth is a perfect place to start.
Sometimes not the place to start because it's
not an easy book at first, but this is a must
have for people who are going through spiritual
awakening and it really was transformational
in my own journey.
Number two is The Self Esteem Prophecy by
James Redfield.
Now this is one of the top spiritual books
I think ever read, and it's a fictional book.
I love to learn about spirituality through
fiction because what fiction does is it kind
of opens your mind to the possibilities that
life can be a little bit different than you
think it is.
The Self Esteem Prophecy is a beautiful story
about a professor that goes to Peru in search
of a lost ancient manuscript, and the whole
story is very beautiful.
James Redfield is a wonderful writer.
The whole story kind of brings in so many
spiritual truths and so many spiritual understanding
and wisdom that you can use in your everyday
life.
So The Self Esteem Prophecy, there's a whole
series of them.
It starts with The Self Esteem Prophecy.
Read the whole series if you want.
I think there are four books in the series,
but The Self Esteem Prophecy is where to start.
And it's a wonderful way for you to come into
your spirituality through storytelling.
Yeah, I love storytelling.
Book number three is The Last Laugh by Arjuna
Ardagh.
This is another great story, kind of like
The Self Esteem Prophecy.
It's another fictional story by a spiritual
teacher.
Arjuna has a lot of other books out I think,
and he's pretty well known in the spiritual
circles.
So he wrote this book, it's a fictional book.
You may not have heard of it because I feel
like this is a kind of a book that isn't out
there a lot.
But in any case, it's a wonderful story again,
and it follows this guy that's about to commit
suicide because his life is just a mess and
he finds a most unlikely guru named Joey.
So the book is kind of, it's kind of this
urban spiritual storytelling and it was wonderful.
I still have quotes from this book that I
use in my everyday life.
That's how great this book is.
So this book is amazing also for the storytelling
capacity.
And it's kind of like The Self Esteem Prophecy,
its capacity to just open you up to the possibilities
of life through storytelling.
So I hope you like this one.
Number four is The Anatomy of Spirit by Carolyn
Myss.
And this book, a little bit change in energy.
So this book isn't fiction.
This is by renowned spiritual teacher and
medical intuitive Carolyn Myss.
And she takes her experience, her decades
long experience in working with people who
have been diagnosed with physical issues or
psychological issues and trying to understand
those issues from the prism of the seven chakras
or the seven energy systems.
And Carolyn Myss has a really unique way of
looking at the chakra system.
I've learned so much through this book.
I have a ton of passages in this book highlighted
of particular interests that I love in this
book is her ability to not only talk about
the chakras and how they impact your life,
not just in terms of physical illness, but
in terms of everything, how the chakras impact
your life and how our evolution of consciousness
is actually occurring chakra by chakra, even
on a cultural and in a world planetary sense.
So this is a great book.
This is a must have book.
It's a bit more technical.
It's a little bit of a slower read, but there
is much wisdom here and I know it will come
in handy for you.
Number five is The Surrender Experiment by
Michael Singer.
This has to be one of my all time favorite
books ever.
But right now in this list and in this recommended
list video, I'm putting The Surrender Experiment
here because this book, Michael Singer and
Tosha Silver, which I'm going to talk about
later on in this video, these are my two favorite
teachers that teach surrender.
So these are by far my two favorite teachers
on the art of surrendering.
Michael Singer, you may have heard of another
book of his that's also on my list here, The
Untethered Soul.
The Surrender Experiment came out really when
I was absolutely needing it.
I was having a difficult time in my spiritual
awakening.
I was having a really hard time letting go
of control.
My ego just wanted to control everything.
I was just a little bit of a mess.
I remember asking the universe, please, I
don't know how to surrender more, show me.
And boom, right there on my social media feed
appears this new book that was at the time,
I think this was in 2015, it was called The
Surrender Experiment and it was Michael Singer's
life story.
This is a biography.
So it's just so cool because when you read
this story, it's mind boggling how Michael
Singer's life has actually turned out and
the things that he's done, it's just mind
boggling.
It's impossible to actually make this stuff
up.
So this is one of my favorite books of all
time.
It teaches you surrender.
It teaches you to just let go.
When I finished reading this book, I remember
I just let out this sigh of relief because
it was like, oh my God, there's this beautiful
universe that I can trust and that loves me
so much.
And if Michael Singer can do it, so can I.
So The Surrender Experiment, a must read.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Number six is Change Me Prayers by Tosha Silver.
I just talked about Tosha Silver as my second
favorite teacher on the art of surrendering.
Change Me Prayers is a really cool little
book.
It's just little chapters or daily meditations
or little daily essays that she writes about
her life.
She's a great writer.
It's really funny.
She's really funny and witty.
What Change Me Prayers is all about is she
just tells stories and within those stories
she comes up with these prayers that help
us surrender to whatever divine will wants
for us.
Each chapter has a different prayer and it's
really cool because I had the same sensation
when I was reading Change Me Prayers.
I would just breathe this deep, deep sigh
of relief because Tosha Silver's life is pretty
extraordinary also, just like Michael Singer's.
And it's through the art of surrender that
they've gotten there, and I really identify
it a lot with surrendering to life because
at the end of the day, the universe, the intelligence
that made you, it's so wise, it's so infinite
and it could bring you so much more than your
mind thinks it wants.
So Change Me Prayers, a great little book
to have on your nightstand so that you can
say certain prayers every day to help you
release control of life, to help you surrender,
surrender to the wisdom of the universe.
There's number six.
Number seven is The Untethered Soul by Michael
Singer also.
So The Untethered Soul was actually the first
Michael Singer book that I read and kind of
Eckhart Toley, I love Michael Singer's teachings
on the ego and the limitations of the mind
and how to go beyond the mind.
But he does this by helping you understand
the nature of the mind, the nature of the
ego, why it builds its sense of identity.
Then it's very good at kind of helping you
go beyond the ruminations of the mind and
to free yourself to have a more free life,
to have a life that's not kind of confined
by the control of the mind.
The Untethered Soul, I'm pretty sure is one
of the top a spiritual books ever out there
with the most read.
I don't know if it's the most read, but I
know it's one of the top books in the spirituality
genre.
So if you haven't read it, grab a copy.
This is a great book.
It's a short book and it'll really help you
kind of start quieting the mind and centering
the ego so you can live a more fulfilling
life.
Number eight is the book The Way to Love by
Anthony de Mello.
Now this book has an interesting story in
my life.
I actually came upon this book when my marriage
had fallen apart and I was sitting in the
waiting room of my psychotherapist in the
US.
My life was a complete mess and I was sitting
there waiting for my psychotherapy session
to start and I looked on the table and there
was this little book called The Way to Love.
I grabbed it and I kind of just opened it
up.
I didn't really read it.
My psychotherapist called me into the office
and I went about my day, but I never forgot
that book.
And when I got home I downloaded it and I
started reading it.
Now for those of you that don't know, Anthony
de Mello was a Jesuit priest.
He was a really challenging spiritual teacher,
so you may or may not be ready for him depending
on where you are in your spiritual journey.
He was a very challenging teacher, but he
was a very matter of fact teacher.
And The Way to Love is a book about how to
love, really how to love.
I will never forget one of the quotes in that
book.
He says something like, "The only way for
you to love is when you are alone".
I remember that when I read that I actually
put the book down because it irritated me
because I was going through a really difficult
phase in my life and I didn't understand how
you could only love when you were alone.
But the whole book then kind of clarified
things for me.
He was a Jesuit priest.
So this book, there's a lot of passages from
the Bible, but he interprets them in a very
mystical way.
So you don't have to be Christian to love
this book and understand it.
This book is, without question, really the
book that helped me understand unconditional
love and how to live it, how to go beyond
what we think is love and isn't love, what
unconditional love really is and how to live
it.
So The Way to Love from one of my favorite
spiritual teachers, Anthony de Mello.
Number nine is the book Shaman Healer, Sage
by Alberto Villoldo.
This book came into my life because I have
a lot of interest in shamanism.
I have a really strong soul connection with
shamanism, especially from the Inca tradition
of Peru.
This book came to me when I was really needing
to heal from profound childhood trauma from
sexual abuse.
I remember I started reading Alberto Villoldo's
book, Alberto Villoldo is a western anthropologist,
but he was actually trained and he spent decades
working with Shamans in Peru and in South
America, especially in Peru.
So he brings all this knowledge from Shamans
and he puts it on paper.
And this book is amazing.
It helped me heal from significant trauma
that I wasn't able to kind of release on my
own.
So his books were outstanding, especially
this one.
So if you have anything that you need to heal
from, if you have anything, any kind of trauma
that you feel like is still unresolved, that
you haven't been able to really get down deep
into the trauma and let it go and heal it
and let it go finally, this is the book for
you.
Alberto Villoldo is a wonderful, wonderful
teacher.
I love all his books, but this one especially.
Number 10 is The Sacred Science by Nick Polizzi.
So this book, it was a documentary first,
then the book came out and this book is really
extraordinary.
It also follows shamanism but in a really
cool way.
Nick basically took a group of terminally
ill patients from the US and he flew them
down into South America, I think Peru, if
I remember correctly.
What he did was they were immersed with the
Shamans being treated in the traditional shamanic
way for their illnesses that were incurable
back in the US.
So they were all terminally ill or at least
incurable.
The book follows the story of how all of these
souls, how their lives turned out and what
happened in this time that they were in South
America being treated by Shamans.
This is another wonderful book for you to
get an understanding of how trauma affects
us, how we can release trauma and how shamans
and the shamanic traditions deal with disease
and trauma and blocks very differently from
how the West does.
So this is another great read, a wonderful,
wonderful book that that I highlighted a lot
of also.
So this will come in handy for you also if
you have any type of past trauma or pain that
needs to be resolved.
Number 11 is the book Change Your Thoughts,
Change Your Life by Wayne Dyer.
This is my favorite Wayne Dyer Book.
He had so many, so many books out, but this
is my favorite Wayne Dyer book.
It's because I really have an admiration and
appreciation for Taoism coming out of China.
Taoists, the reason that I have such an admiration
and I identify a lot with Taoists is because
of their close connection with nature.
So Taoists almost has this kind of shamanic
of feel to it a little bit.
So that's why I started to have this inclination
to study Taoists more.
And what Wayne Dyer here does is he takes
the Tao Te Ching, I think it's one of the
oldest texts in the world.
And he takes that the 81 verses of the Tao
Te Ching and he not just translates them,
but he interprets them for a Western audience.
I love his interpretation.
I love the way that he explains each verse.
And what's important about this book is that
those 81 simple verses of the Tao Te Ching
can completely transform your life, not just
because of their simplicity, but also because
of the wisdom that they give for everyday
life.
Which sometimes I feel like we really need
a little bit of advice for everyday life because
I feel like sometimes we just wait for things
to completely fall apart to then fix them.
But these books that come out that show us
how to kind of live a more spiritual path
in the little moments of life, I love them
also, and this is by far my favorite Wayne
Dyer book.
Number 12 is The Magic Shop by James Doddy.
Now you'll notice this is another storytelling
book.
I love storytelling and this book is about
James.
This is a biography.
This is a memoir about James Doddy's life
and how he met a spiritual guru when he was
a teenager and how this woman, the spiritual
guru that he met in his hometown, how she
shaped his life, but then how he kind of temporarily
forgot all her teachings.
He went on to become a rich surgeon and his
whole life fell apart and then he kind of
had to come back to her teachings.
This is such a beautiful book with so much
wisdom in it, so much wisdom, and again in
the form of storytelling.
James Doddy's life is incredible also, so
you'll love this read.
It's a fast read and there's so much wisdom
there for your everyday life also.
Number 13 is Conversations With God by Neale
Donald Walsch.
This book I think is also one of the most
read spiritual books on the planet.
I read this book, the most significant thing
that this book did for me, basically this
book is about Neale Donald Walsch's conversations
with divine energy and what he was able to
channel through from those conversations.
What I love the most about this book is its
ability.
It really throws the definition of God or
an understanding of God on its head from what
we've been taught in religious prisms.
So if you come from a religious background,
but even if you don't, you may have still
religious templating on you of understanding
God to be a judgemental, punishing entity,
dude with a white beard that's up there judging
you for your sins.
What Neale Donald Walsch does in this book
is gives a completely different of what source
energy is.
This really helped free me, not only to understand
source energy in a pure sense, but also understand
myself in this whole grand prism of things.
So Conversations With God, another great read
that will change your life.
Number 14 is the book Many Lives, Many Masters
by Brian Weiss.
This book is all about reincarnation, past
lives and it's about Brian Weiss's story of
being a traditionally trained psychotherapist
and how his whole life changed when he met
a patient that was having so much trouble
in her life.
She couldn't get out of the blocks that she
was in.
And finally in one therapy session she kind
of spontaneously regressed to a past life
and started telling him about past life experiences
and Brian Weiss's life completely changed.
Many Lives, Many Masters is a great book for
you to really learn about how we are on this
soul journey, a multi lifetime soul journey.
It came into my life when I really needed
to understand.
I was having some issues with actually, I
was remembering past life episodes and it
was really jarring.
This was in a particular difficult time in
my spiritual awakening.
I was having spontaneous remembering episodes.
So this book really helped me understand the
whole past life trajectory and helped me heal
and work with those memories as they were
coming up.
So this is a great book if you have any interest
in learning about past lives and how our souls
kind of move and evolve lifetime after lifetime,
and maybe unlocking some issues that you may
bring from past lives that you're not aware
of.
Another great read.
Number 15 is the book Kundalini and the Chakras
by Genevieve Paulson.
This book came to me totally randomly right
after I had a spontaneous Kundalini awakening.
I didn't even know what the heck Kundalini
was when I had a spontaneous awakening.
If you don't know what Kundalini is, I'm going
to be shooting a video on that.
But this book was kind of a miracle in my
life because I went through a horrible, a
very difficult Kundalini awakening, and this
book was literally lifesaving to me.
I think I found it spontaneously online, I
don't really remember.
But this book is a great resource if you feel
like you're maybe going through a Kundalini
awakening.
Kundalini awakenings happen sometimes during
a spiritual awakening, sometimes spiritual
awakenings trigger Kundalini awakenings.
So this is the book to have if you're going
through, or if you think you're going through
a Kundalini awakening or if you are going
through a Kundalini awakening.
So this was a must have in my library at the
time and really helped me.
Number 16 is the Field of Love by Martin Bartella.
And this book is actually, an exercise in
this book is what triggered my Kundalini awakening.
So this book was pretty amazing in my life.
It came to me randomly also.
Martin is the husband of my first meditation
teacher, Sarah McLean, and so I kind of found
him through her.
I started reading this book.
I came on one of the exercises that he recommends
in the book.
I did it.
I didn't even know it could awaken your Kundalini
at the time that I read it, but it did.
So my whole story of Kundalini awakening started
there.
But this book is wonderful.
It's his story of kind of the journeys that
he takes in life in order to find the divine
source energy.
And it's a great storytelling book also, and
it has some great resources and exercises
in it like the one that I did for the Kundalini
awakening.
So this is another great read that you may
have never heard of.
Number 17 is the book Buddha by Deepak Chopra.
I love this book because I really resonate
with the story of Buddha.
His life story really resonates with me.
I have a pull for certain aspects of Buddhism.
So I loved reading this book.
Deepak did a great job of storytelling and
kind of letting us understand how Siddhartha
became Buddha, how a prince that was, he was
in line for the throne became the Buddha.
It follows the very human aspects of Buddha,
which I love to read about.
I love to read about the human aspects of
spiritual teachers because their lives aren't
all fun and dandy.
Sometimes you read about spiritual teachers
after their enlightenment, but I'm more interested
in learning about spiritual teachers before
their enlightenment because that's where the
meat is.
And so Buddha is a great book.
It's a great, great storytelling by Deepak
and it really gives you an understanding of
the very human aspects of awakening and enlightenment.
It's a great read that I recommend for everyone.
Number 18 is another book that you may have
never heard of and it's called The Diving
Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby.
And this book is first of all a tear jerker.
I read this book initially, it had nothing
to do with my spiritual awakening.
I read this book when I was in grad school
because this book is the story, the very real
and tragic story of Jean-Dominique Bauby.
He was an editor of Elle in France and he
had a massive stroke that caused what's called
Locked In Syndrome.
So he couldn't move literally except the blinking
of one eye.
This was a required reading.
I was in Grad School, becoming a physical
therapist.
And so this was required reading for us to
learn as clinicians, how to look at a patient
with this kind of condition and how to kind
of help patients cope with their illnesses.
I read this in Grad school, but this is such
a beautiful book and it's actually been made
into a movie that's also great.
Why do I identify with this book?
Because books like this that show the resilience
of the human soul, I have another one coming
up next that also shows the resilience of
the human soul.
I love to read real life stories about people
that have transcended and have overcome almost
what seems like insurmountable odds.
I love and really deeply connect with people
that share their stories because what it does
is it helps me understand the resilience of
the human soul and our capacity to not only
survive but to thrive after horrible things
happen to us.
So this is a wonderful read, a beautiful book,
Jean-Dominique Bauby actually dictated this
book with the blink of an eye.
That's how extraordinary this book is.
So you got to read it.
It really helps you understand the resilience
of the human soul and just the love that exists
for us and from us.
Another great read.
Number 19 is the book Night by Elie Wiesel.
This is another one that like the previous
book, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, this
book is also about another extraordinary soul
and his journey through Nazi concentration
camps.
So Night is a short book.
It's a beautifully written book and again
it gives you an understanding of the resilience
of the human soul and our capacity to survive
and to thrive after horrible things can happen
to us in life and how we have within us this
strengthen this capacity to overcome and to
thrive and to be joyful even after atrocities
can happen to us.
So another beautiful read that completely
changed my life.
It kind of opened my heart.
I became more tender and understanding of
humanity as a whole through this book, Night
by Elie Wiesel.
Number 20 we are going to end on a lighter
note.
Number 20 is called Sacred Success by Barbara
Stanny.
This book is all about money.
It's about money, specifically how women have
a hard time being abundant and welcoming financial
abundance in their life because of guilt and
shame and so many other things that women
are templated with.
So this book was amazing.
I love it so much.
It really helps women understand how to shift
their focus and how to become open to the
abundance, how to become open to financial
wealth and to financial abundance, how to
be open to that without guilt or without shame,
without thinking that money is dirty without
thinking that money is evil.
Barbara really does a great job of helping
us get through all of the money blocks that
a lot of women have.
She uses a lot of quotes.
This book is based on A Course in Miracles,
which I didn't recommend in this video.
And it's because A Course in Miracles is a
really complex book that takes a really long
time to read.
And I just, on this first video on my recommended
books, I didn't want to give you a book that
takes a while to read and maybe isn't the
best first book to get in your spiritual awakening.
So this one, Sacred Success, Barbara Stanny,
goes into how to overcome your money blocks
and welcome abundance by using the lessons
of the Course in Miracle.
It's a great read.
It's a great story.
And so I leave you with sacred success as
the book number 20.
Now I want to hear from you.
What spiritual books have changed your life?
Let me know in the comments below.
And don't forget to subscribe to my channel
here, head over to my website to take my heart
quiz, see if your heart is blocked and what
you can do to open it.
And if you enjoyed this video, check it out.
There are more videos over here coming up
for you.
I love you beautiful soul.
I am out.
