Bazerashvili

A must-read for everyone suffering from psoriasis. It gave me more or less holistic understanding of the disease. It's written for nearly all types of psoriatics and remedies and regimen that Dr. Pagano is talking about is applicable to everyone.

He uses a simple language to explain rather complex stuff like for example spinal adjustments. So, it's not like a college textbook.

The most important takeaway from this book is that I have an idea where and how does a person get psoriasis and what should an individual do in order to cure or lessen the effect of the disease.

Lastly, there are some topics discussed in the book, which wasn't really useful for me, again, spinal adjustments for example. But for people having a severe case of the disease, all the things discussed by Dr. Pagano will be used for curing or at least having a more holistic understanding around the topic.

A great overview of how the Internet works. This book is concise, it should not be used as a reference guide to networking for sure, but gives a nice big picture understanding to those people who don't want to delve into the depths of the subject.

I think this book is especially useful for those web developers who don't know much about networking and want to understand how their applications fit in the big picture of a whole global network.

In short, if you want to know how the Internet works in a nutshell, what are the layers that our digital information goes through when we use Internet services, and what are the models that the architecture is based on, read it.

This book is about the future of the Web, and the supposed trajectory that it will go through. Web 3.0 is the name of the combination of technologies that have been emerging in the last decade or so, including VR / AR interfaces, distributed ledger technologies such as blockchain. Also, IoT, AI, Quantum Computing, etc. Combining all of these should result in something that the authors call the Spatial Web.

Currently, the state of the Web is such that we are interfering with it mainly through our screens. And it still is a technology of transferring pages, and protocols and languages that it uses are limited to that. For example, HTML and HTTP were not designed to accommodate transferring some stuff in Spatial environments. That is the main premise of the book, that in the future we will be having new protocols and languages to implement all the Web 3.0 technologies that I listed above.

Also, the authors argue the importance of blockchain-based decentralized identity and say that to facilitate the possibility of having one giant Web of not only interconnected pages but everything interconnected, including all the physical objects and even us, humans, we need to have a way of identifying something or someone globally, without having separate accounts for each service on the Web.

I see a couple of problems with all these. First of all, it will be a huge distraction from the actuality. The last couple of decades of advancement in technologies caused people to be disconnected from the actual reality around them. We are always doing something, rather than just being. And true fulfillment can not be found in doing, but in just consciously being in the moment. This is what mystical traditions are trying to teach us for the last 5000 years, but we don't listen. Imagine the level of disconnection from reality when VR / AR will become as advanced as this book claims it will. That's scary.

Also, the problem I see is the lack of a centralized arbiter. The problem of decentralization from the dawn of civilization was corruption, ego, and selfishness of humans. That's just the nature of a human being. Without a very deep understanding of that nature, we can not have advanced technology that we'll interface with. Everything that human touches become a tool for his or her selfish motives, and without proper rules and protocols, this selfishness can become disastrous. Hopefully, we'll learn all the lessons that history teaches us about the human ego and build technologies according to correct values and principles.

So, in the end, the book paints a very positive picture of a technological future, which is good. But it's just a vision, not sure how it will unfold in the years to come.

This book is like a manual by the universe to itself. It can be used as a guide and one of the reference books to reach the highest potential that's humanly (and even non-humanly) possible today.

Continually seeing the subject as an object, transcending the current subject, and including it as an object, without addiction and a shadow, is the recipe that Ken Wilber gives us in order to go through all the stages of development.

He defines 6-8 stages, along with 4-5 consciousness states that can be reached, and with multiple lines of intelligence, various types, and 4 quadrants, he merges all of them into a theory and a framework that he calls The Integral Framework, and it truly is the most Integral map of human development that I've seen so far. Basically, it acts as a context machine and really a framework for all the other models and maps, that are by hundreds.

Every major discipline can be mapped with his framework and can be improved to include all aspects of life that the universe entails, including relationships, business, career, health, etc. So, we can use Integral approaches to improve all of that, and that's basically the only way to make our life's different domains inclusive and holistic.

Also, he mentions multiple times that all the states from gross to Unity Consciousness have an ability to view the world from the specific developmental stage that it is in. So, he differentiates Waking Up from Growing Up and says that one can be done independently from another, but they both help each other and facilitate growing to one's fullest potential both state-wise and structurally.

In short, this book is a must-read for everyone interested in human growth. If you are trying to become a better human being, you should read this. You will understand the importance of Growing Up, Waking Up, Showing Up, and also Cleaning Up that is necessary to do in order to see more and more structures and patterns more holistically, making your current subject an object and moving up in Stages, States and Lines and become one of the few individuals that manage to reap the benefits of the potential that Kosmos and Evolution have to offer today.

This is the book that everyone should read! And I mean it literally, EVERYONE.

This is the most no-bullshit guide to reaching highest states of consciousness that I've ever read.

You will have to read it multiple times to wrap your mind around the concepts that are being spoken in this book. But just reading the book won't be enough. You'll know why after reading it.

Read this book and you'll know what you should do in order to understand things that are beyond your mind, beyond survival, and beyond your self.

A very fun book to read. I didn't know much about Steve or his life but as it turns out he lived his life with a mindset that I try to embody myself, and that is the mindset of a master.

When he was a kid, he was interested in magic and while working in a magic shop in Disneyland, he learned tricks that he would perform in front of customers. That was where his fascination with performing had begun, which continued and eventually bloomed into something much greater.

The most important insight that I've got from Steve's autobiography is the importance of attitude towards one's work. His relationship with comedy and being a comic made him a star. He deliberately practiced to make his performance as best as he could, and after thousands of hours on stage and lots of trial and error, he became one of the best.

I'll always remember the phrase that he said in one of his interviews: “Be so good that they can't ignore you”.

That's the recipe to succeed basically in everything in life, and this book perfectly illustrates how to live a life to become so good that people can't ignore you anymore.

This is a small book, but each page is packed with wisdom. This is the same universal wisdom that can be found in every tradition but presented from the Toltec perspective.

Unconscious agreements that we have with ourselves and with reality are the root of all problems. Changing those and installing new conscious agreements is the way of creating personal heaven instead of hell. This might sound mystical, but it's as practical as it gets.

These ideas are directly connected to how we feel about life in general, how we perceive reality, and ourselves. And as it turns out, changing those is the key to living the best life possible. This book gives insights based on that perspective.

One thing that the book lacked a bit was direct instruction on how to experience and integrate those agreements into our lives. You need additional resources/books to get that, but if you contemplate wisdom nuggets from this book as well, your understanding can deepen.

Mark is one of the biggest advocates of primal style of living, and this book is dedicated to telling us how and why we should also be interested in that.

With his extensive explanations he covers all the domains of life which you can immensely improve with primal approaches. Most of this book is dedicated to explaining how we can eat like our primal ancestors ate, and why is it important to eat that way.

You will understand and foresee the possible scenarios of your health and your life in general, if you continue down the path that conventional wisdom tells you is the right one.

Author talks about the importance of a hormone called insulin, and how it correlates to everything else, including your whole diet and exercise attempts.

And much more...

In short, Mark's work more or less solved one of the biggest puzzles of mine, what can I do to live a healthy life, but there's still lots to find out and experiment with.

My intuition tells me that this book can change your life, if you really consider Mark's advice and implement everything (even part of) what he talks about in your everyday life.

This is a very important book for anyone interested in being satisfied in life. In today's culture, most of us have damaged a so-called pleasure-pain balance with all the easy dopamine-inducing products like social media, junk food, gambling, TikTok, etc. Understanding the mechanism behind our pleasure regulatory system might be one of the keys to achieving a satisfied life, something we all strive towards.

Dopamine is not a thing that only neuroscientists should be concerned about. It is a chemical that's crucial for you to feel pleasure, and if you overstimulate dopamine receptors, you'll have to release more and more of it to keep yourself satisfied in life, so you consume lots of dopamine-producing substances and services, including drugs, junk food, even social media, especially that because today all of the internet is consumed with attention-grabbing economy and every platform is integrating a TikTok style short videos which destroy attention span and flood your system with dopamine, to the point that you aren't even able to read a book for 15 minutes, it doesn't click, can't compete with all the freshness of short 5 second videos that you get on every scroll for hours, you're like hooked on it.

This book also discusses that it's a good idea to swing the pendulum towards the side of pain by for example having a strict workout routine even if we don't want it, engaging in cold exposure with cold showers and ice baths, and generally, doing things that are painful at first. With that, the author claims that the pleasure-pain balance will be adjusted so that we'll feel more pleasure after indulging in pain. So as she says, avoiding pain will lead to misery, which I can also see in my experience. When I'm not challenging myself physically or intellectually, I get very dissatisfied.

In summary, the main takeaway from this book for me is to always keep in mind the pleasure-pain balance, and not indulge in behaviors that produce high levels of dopamine. Maybe that turns out to be one of the keys to enjoying life in today's society.

This wonderful little introduction to the history of the world is written primarily for young people but I found it informative enough for me as well, as I was looking for a book which would make it possible to have a bird's eye view of how humans evolved from building tools with just a stone to making an atomic bomb.

With his simple and direct language, the author makes this book very fun to read and with his own subjective analysis and opinions on the events described within, makes it more engaging than those boring textbooks in schools.

For me, personally, it was a great read because lately, I became very interested in history, and I've found that Gombrich's work did a nice job in introducing different periods throughout the history.

Now, I feel that I have a direction to continue my exploration of historical events, cultures and periods which were the most interesting to me, like Ancient Egypt and their culture, Life in Babylon, the history of Jews from ancient to present times, The Greek and Roman cultures, figures such as the Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and also the New Age of adventurous and exciting explorations, the age of Enlightenment, the French and American Revolutions, WW1 and WW2, etc.

So, there are so many topics to explore after reading this book, which just makes you more interested and excited to dive into the history of humanity and study it from other sources as well, but, as I've already mentioned, Gombrich's work is a great introduction to all of that.

This is an amazing book by Ken Wilber, a modern-day mystic, who gives us a comprehensive map of the development of consciousness in very practical terms. What I like the most in his teachings and writings, is his style, which encompasses models that create a sense of big-picture understanding and a bird-eye view over the psychological and spiritual planes of humankind.

He claims that there are no boundaries in the universe and tells us that all the boundaries are being created by us in every moment of our being. The boundary creates a battle between two opposites, for example: bad vs good, white vs black, rational vs irrational, etc. All of these boundaries are conceptual in their nature and therefore they are not fundamentally real, meaning that they are not found in the fabric of reality itself.

Then he gives us a comprehensive model of human development, starting with persona level all the way to the unity consciousness. According to him, to go through the spiral of consciousness means dissolving more boundaries, surrendering resistance and unifying and merging together aspects of the psyche, then the body, and finally all of the reality.

Also, I like his multi-perspective approach. He mentions Freud, Jung, many western or eastern sages, mystics and saints, founders of quantum physics, etc. He quotes many of them in order to give us many points of view. This is great because it gives me the possibility to further research workings of those people and find many other sources of reliable insights.

He also gives us practical techniques to go through each of step on the spiral, and that is very useful after identifying your place on it. Then it becomes clear what should you be doing in order to increase your awareness and frustrate your resistances, as he tells us is important for each stage.

Also, if techniques provided by him is not enough, he made a list of recommended books and authors at the end of each developmental stage. That list of book is really useful for me because I might use it as a map to navigate the field of psychology and spirituality much easier.

In short, if you are interested in psychology, consciousness, mysticism, metaphysics, spirituality, enlightenment, meditation, shadow work, eastern vs western philosophy and much more, this is a must-read.

A very inspiring and insightful story of a young man, who wanted to know the Truth of existence.

Siddhartha was a son of Brahman, but haven't found the Truth in following his father's teachings and doing rituals.

Then he became a Samana but discovered that living as an ascetic doesn't mean much. The Truth was not found in asceticism.

After that, he became a merchant, a gambler, a lover, a father and played many other roles, that he thought was necessary to go through after talking with Gautama the Buddha when he was still a Samana wandering through the world with his friend Govinda. He got lost in the content of his materialistic life and lost the connection with Being, that he developed in his early years of living.

He was desperate until he started living with the ferryman Vasudeva, which symbolizes a possibility of finding out the Absolute Truth without teachings, rituals, gurus, etc.

Finally, with the help of the old ferryman, Siddharta realized what he was searching his entire life. It was the Truth of Om. Om was the sound of the river. It was the only thing that there was. The river taught him that everything was perfect as it was. The stone was worth loving not because it had a potential of becoming an animal, a person, or the Buddha, but because it already was everything. It already contained every possible thing in it.

Love, according to Siddharta, was above all the words, thoughts and teachings. It was the foundation of all the things. The ability to love everything equally was the ability that was gained after his Enlightenment.

I think that with the story of Siddharta, the author wanted to tell us that searching for the Truth can't be done with books, teachings, or even communicating with the realized beings. The path can be long and full of traps and obstacles, but from the absolute perspective, as Siddharta told to Govinda in the end, there really is no path, there isn't even a Nirvana because passing the gateless gate, as Zen people like to say, reveals the Oneness of all the dualities...

I've heard about Wim in the past, I've also practiced his breathing method a bit, and reading this book was a great way for me to find more about him and his method.

Wim discovered his inner potential on his own, and he's been teaching it for many years now. In the beginning, people didn't believe in him, but after scientific experiments that was done on him, most of the sceptics became believers.

He describes his method as a combination of cold exposure, breathing practices and mindset trainings, and claims that those can change our biochemistry in a matter of days. Practices like those aren't new. It's been known for thousands of years in certain eastern traditions. But Wim Hof is one of the first persons that voluntarily started to merge those practices into modern science and western society, which is very valuable for us because eastern teachings tend to be a bit mystical and not attractive for western folks. But with the help of people like Wim, we're being given techniques that can improve and even save many lives around the world.

It's been a few days that I've started taking cold showers and doing breathing exercises, and I already see some of the benefits.

Also, if you practice any form of meditation, the breathing practice that Wim suggests will put you in a perfect state for any meditative practice, so try it.

I've been experimenting with Digital Minimalism for the last couple of years, especially for the last year, when I significantly reduced the usage of social media, seeing them as platforms designed to hook our attention as best as they can. Cal's book helped me to solidify the ideas that were motivating me to restrict the usage of some of the services, and it was a very interesting read since I've already had many references to all the negative aspects of unrestricted social media usage that he talks about.

With all the books he's written so far, Cal advocates living a deep life without distractions and full of meaning. That is impossible if you spend multiple hours a day scrolling social media feeds and justifying to yourself that this is your choice. No, it's the attention economy, the roots of which can be found in the 1830s. It's the idea that when you don't pay for the product, you are the product. That's especially clear when you start observing just how all the social media applications try to lure you in with their slot-machine-like mechanisms that hook you and make it impossible to spend your time in much more meaningful ways.

If you think that you don't have time for your hobbies, for reading books, meditation, or exercise, and meanwhile you spend multiple hours a day scrolling Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok like a zombie, read this book as soon as possible.

Books like this are the reasons why I love autobiographies so much. You get to read first-hand about some of the most unbelievable stories that you can find. It's not your average self-help book. This is real shit, as the author would like to point out.

David is a remarkable guy. He had a terrible upbringing because of his environment and family. But there was always this voice inside his head that told him that he could become much more. He was being beaten up, bullied, laughed at and even got death threats in school because of the color of his skin.

In short, he was a very fucked up kid.

But what is so amazing is that he took all of those and turned his life around completely. He looked at those sufferings as opportunities to improve himself and to not become the slave of his mind. And he did that. He didn't become the slave of his mind. He recognized the voice inside his head, a different from the one mentioned above, and he didn't believe what it said.

His relationship with his mind is what I like the most. Basically, the dialogue inside our skull is the thing that stands between ourselves and our full potential. The path towards recognizing the illusory nature of the content of our thoughts is the path towards liberation from our limitations. David recognized that his mind was creating his limitations and discovered that they were not real, by pushing himself and suffering.

One of the most important lessons that I learned from David is that I must not be a victim, in whatever situation I might be in life. All that victim mentality is in our mind really, and nobody is coming to save you from your misery other than yourself. It's just you. Taking complete responsibility is crucial in achieving something meaningful in life, and David's accountability mirror is also a good idea to stay real and honest every day.

In conclusion, there are lots of other things I want to say, but the most important takeaway from here is that there are people out there who changed their life and did things that most of us think are impossible. That fact tells me many things about human nature and blurs the line between the duality of impossible vs possible.

Highly recommended! And also watch his videos on YouTube. Some of the most inspiring speeches are there, and get your ass inspired (which will fade pretty easily, so listen to David if you want to know what to do when you don't have the motivation anymore)

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

These are the words that I don't want to ever forget. This is the book and the story that I want to always bear in my mind because here I've read that concentration camps are the ultimate test for human psychology, which makes people into pigs or into saints. It's just unimaginable to read what these people had to go through on a daily basis.

The meaning of life, the question that a human being has been trying to answer for hundreds of years, as Viktor Frankl found out, becomes something that can save man's life in his toughest moments. He has seen people who were dying just because they had lost hope and, most importantly, meaning and reason to continue living. And also people who saved their life literally by having a purpose to endure suffering and to find meaning in the suffering itself.

Viktor wants us to understand that the meaning can be found even in suffering. Everything can be taken away from you but the willingness to find meaning and take responsibility for your life even in the most unimaginably cruel and unfair situations, where all you have left is your naked body and you find it hard to even identify yourself as an individual human being.

Just thinking about the problems that you think you have, and comparing those to the problems people had in concentration camps changes your perspective on many things.

When I'm dealing with my day to day problems, I wish I could always remember to imagine what it felt like to stand in front of a gas chamber knowing that your life was over for no reason at all. Or when I'm complaining about the food I eat, I wish to picture those people who ate a little piece of bread and a cup of watery soup once a day while doing lots of physical labor. And also facts of cannibalism in concentration camps.

Regular people, just like us, did things that they never thought was possible for them to do. Some became cannibals, some became saints.

So, in short, Viktor Frankl says that it's all about the meaning and purpose you find for your life. Live for something other than yourself. That was the way to get through one of the toughest sufferings that mankind has ever seen.

This is a very unique book about the OBE phenomenon, known as Astral Projection, written by Robert Monroe, a very normal businessman, who, in his early forties, began to have unusual experiences, in which he would find himself disassociated from his physical body into what he calls the Second Body.

Despite what modern science tells us, a phenomenon of going out of a physical body was known for many centuries to those who were interested. The Buddha himself taught his followers that there was such a thing. It is found in Christian and Hindu traditions. It is also mentioned in the ancient writings of Egyptians, Chinese and Amazonian cultures.

Today, as far as I'm aware, we don't have many books such as this one, because, what Robert Monroe did was very unique. He documented his 20 years of experiences in the astral realms and carefully studied them. His approach was scientific. He wanted to explore the possibilities of his unusual journeys. His no-bullshit and detailed reports make you question many things. What if he is right? The ramifications of that will be huge.

His work is also very important for people like him, who have spontaneous OBEs and don't know what to do. I think that this book makes a great guide for them.

So, in the end, there's only one way to find out whether astral realms, such as Locale I, II and III, as Monroe calls them, really exist or not. And that is by putting our money where our mouth is. There is no point in criticizing him because that won't solve anything.

To me, this guy seems to be telling the truth. The possibilities and experiences that he talks about excites me and makes reality more mystical and unknown. Somehow that feels better than telling to myself that he is full of shit, just because some scientists said that OBEs are not possible.

What if they are?

A great book about an ego mind which the author calls the Gremlin that lives inside of us.

What I liked the most are the approaches that Rick presents as coping mechanisms to our Gremlins' behaviors. Mindfulness is encouraged and simply noticing is said to be the first step of taming the Voice. And, if you ask me, one of the most important takeaways from this book is that if we even begin to argue with our Gremlin, he has already won.

The non-judgemental and mindful approach is necessary to break the illusion of imagination being a reality.

“I free myself not by trying to be free, but by simply noticing how I am imprisoning myself in the very moment I am imprisoning myself”

The author also reminded me of the things I can do after simply noticing my Gremlin. Centering oneself is necessary to create a space from which to observe the toxic (or non-toxic, but nonetheless illusory) dialogue of one's ego-mind. As well as deep-breathing and simply appreciating the reality around.

I can connect the dots and see how most of the stuff that Rick talks about must be true and it is true in fact. If you really want to live a good life, you have to “tame your Gremlin”, in other words, you have to realize on a day-to-day basis that your ego-mind plays numerous tricks on you and is limiting your potential second-by-second by installing habits and behavioral patterns that suits its survival strategies the most.

The work described within this book is one of the most difficult ones to undertake but is the only one that leads to a life of real fulfillment.

Living with an untamed Gremlin is living in Hell. Taming your Gremlin is a doorway to Heaven.

So, in short, this book helps you to navigate yourself towards the doorway to Heaven, where the real work of improving oneself begins.

A wonderful book for anyone who wants to learn how to meditate.

I think that Om Swami is one of the best people to learn meditation from. His insights and realizations are coming from the direct experience and the skillset that he developed during his sadhana. He spent thousands of hours meditating, alone in the Himalayan wilderness, among the wild animals and insects.

He became one with the divine, and in this book, he tells us what he did to accomplish that, including his 18 to 22 hours of deep intense meditation every single day for 7 months, eating snow in the middle of the night when there was nothing else to eat, living in a small rotten wooden shack, where there was only a little bed, a tiny mirror and after a while the only nice thing among the rats, spiders, scorpions and those extreme conditions in the winter, was his empty and peaceful mind, which, as a matter of fact, was enough to recontextualize everything in his experience.

He tells us a couple of types of meditation, including concentrative meditation, contemplative meditation, mantra meditation, etc. He talks about the posture, environment, correct mindset and many obstacles that come in the way of the meditator, especially the beginner one, and gives us instructions on how to overcome them, especially restlessness and dullness.

Also, he emphasizes the concentration aspect. Concentration is the most important part of walking the meditation path. If one has a poor concentration ability, meditation will be a weak one. A strong concentration is the foundation of good meditation, thats why it is suggested that we should exercise our concentrating abilities separately and he tells us exactly how to do that.

He also touches upon the topics of being alone, silence, listening and gives us examples from his own life.

Om swami has a wonderful sense of humor too, so the book is full of amusing stories, and jokes that make this book very fun to read.

In short, I think this is a must-read for everyone who tries to learn how to meditate.

The material in this book needs to be contemplated very deeply. It's clear that Rupert talks about this stuff from his direct experience, but doesn't make much sense for someone without the same living experience.

He claims that a separate self is just a thought. In fact, he says that it is not even an entity, but something that we do actively. It is an activity of avoiding and seeking and tells us that we can stop doing it. But what is lacking from this book, is the instructions for how to actually do it, how to actually stop thinking ourselves into existence.

He also tells what happiness is from a nondual perspective. It is supposed to be our natural state, beneath all the resisting and seeking that goes on and on. What if real happiness comes after we stop seeking it in the future, embrace the present moment fully and surrender everything. Sounds paradoxical, doesn't it?

To really appreciate the material in this book, I think that one should have an ego-death. That is what Rupert Spira didn't say and what I would add to his beautiful phrasings and smart metaphors. The Presence, our real identity, as he calls it, reveals itself after lots of contemplation on the nature of existence. This is a serious spiritual practice, that requires discipline and hard work, at least from my perspective.

In short, I think that Rupert Spira did a great job communicating his nondual teachings in his unique and non-mystical way.

After reading this book, I now think of all the ramifications of the things the author talks about, even if half of it is true, not to say all of it. But what if they are actually true?

Radical open-mindedness was required while reading this one. This book contains hundreds of paradigm-shifting cases across all the spiritual phenomena that have been happening throughout the history of mankind, and are still happening today.

He talks about paranormal phenomena, such as telekinesis, OBEs, NDEs, materializations, time travel, UFOs, clairvoyance, healing, auras, energy fields and much more, and merges them together into a theory, according to which the universe is a hologram, that gives a proper context for all those new-age sounding terms.

Michael Talbot did a great work at gathering dozens of studies, quotes, stories, and combining them with his personal experience, which makes this book very fascinating to read. It covers a very broad range of spiritual phenomena, and I think is a must-read for everyone who tries to understand and make sense of all the spiritual, paranormal, mystical or mythical occurrences that there are in the world.

He not only presents all the stuff mentioned above but wraps them in the context of quantum physics and psychology. He tries to give a proper context to all the mystical stuff with David Bohm's theory of the holographic universe and implicit and explicit orders of reality.

In short, many things can be said about this book, but one thing is clear: there are lots of stuff that's going on and has been going on for thousands of years in the world that tells us that reality may not be something material and objective, as we've been taught at school, but rather something mystical and basically unknown to a human mind at this point. So, as much as your materialistic and scientific mind will want to close and throw away this book, my advice is to keep at it and stay open-minded.

Like his previews one, Cal Newport managed to write an amazing book about the skill that's super valuable in today's society. Deep Work, as he calls it, is the ability to work on something with full attention and concentration over long periods of time.

In our current times, with all the technology around us, in the midst of social networks and numerous other tools for distraction, one who develops an ability to work on something with undivided attention and focus will be rewarded with things that just aren't possible to have otherwise.

Nearly all the great people throughout the history, who have created something meaningful and valuable, worked deeply in one way or another. Craftsmen mindset and deep work abilities are essential to living non-distracted and growth-oriented life. According to Cal, your abilities to produce meaningful work will skyrocket, as did his, after implementing the strategies and techniques that this book talks about.

There are numerous case studies and stories told here which seem to be reasonable arguments to embody this new (or rather, quite old if one thinks about it) philosophy.

This book will make you think about your everyday working habits and the potential of optimizing them. Also, it will inspire you and make you see the possibilities of what you can achieve if you simply undertake the process of making your work deeper. I believe that nobody will want to return to distracted and unconcentrated lifestyle, after tasting the results of making one's work deeper.

Adya gives this lectures for advanced practitioners. But his insights are hugely beneficial for those of us who don't practice much but are willing to follow the path sooner or later.

He differentiates two types of awakening, abiding and non-abiding ones. The main difference between them is that if someone awakes for just a brief period of time, he calls it non-abiding awakening. If ego structure doesn't reassemble itself, which usually does, the awakening is abiding.

But, he also tells us that it's not that simple either. We can't conceptualize awakening by any means. The most important thing is to stay sincere in this work and generally to be vigilant and honest in our lives.

He also talks about the difficulties that come after the first couple of non-abiding awakenings and how to deal with them.

In short, reading Adya's book gave me a better conceptual understanding of what all this is about. I don't know, maybe having a solid conceptual framework isn't helpful in this work at all, but nevertheless, Adya does a great job of communicating the difficulties and interesting facets of life during and after awakening experiences.

A fascinating semi-fictional story of a young Dan Millman, a champion in gymnastics, who became a student of an awakened gas station attendant, which he called Socrates.

The amazing thing about this book is that it gives us a sneak peek of an enlightened way of life. Soc's approaches were always fascinating to Dan, as well as to me. Their relationship is a perfect example to see how different an ego mind's attitudes, habits and ways of being are from a person who has gone beyond himself.

Dan has gone through lots of emotional and physical labor during his training as a warrior, as Socrates called a person doing it. He was also helped by Joy, a mysterious young girl, a friend of Socrates. He tapped into the unknown feelings and sensations and learned a lot about his body with a help of his new white-bearded teacher.

Eventually, after years of lots of struggling, making mistakes, searching and failing, he had his enlightenment, after which he died, but realized that he was never a character that he played. He was something that existed forever before his character was even born, and it would exist forever. That was a realization that Socrates wanted him to have from the night when he attracted his attention with jumping on a roof.

I think that Dan Millman's story can inspire us to search our Socrates within us, even though he says that there really was a Socrates in his life, and this book is based on mostly true events. But nevertheless, this book is full of metaphysical and existential wisdom, as well as stories and experiences that many of us will find relatable.

Read this and you will understand how does a peaceful warrior, an enlightened person lives his life. But be careful about making a caricature stereotypes out of it. This is about the way of being, a wisdom that can guide us, just like how it guided Dan to find his peace of mind.

One of the most inspiring books that I've ever read! Read this if you want to know what does it take to go beyond yourself!

This is the book which made me think of what am I doing with my life and what if there is something beyond the materialistic appearances...

Also, his story will shock you if you tried meditation and complained that you can't sit still for 20 minutes. Imagine sitting like that 24/7, for months.

These kinds of stories and biographies put many things into a proper perspective, that's why they are so powerful.