Episode 148 - Three Books That Profoundly Changed My Life
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Episode 148 - 3 Books That Profoundly Changed My Life
Hello, beautiful beings, and welcome to come to your senses. So this morning I got to live one of my dreams. When I first started doing this work, more than a decade ago, I had a dream that I would live in a house someday and I would have a big, beautiful bookshelf and I would be preparing content for my listeners, my followers, my students, and that I would just think, hmm, which books would I like to reference in this lesson? And walk in and pluck books from the shelf and go and highlight and prepare. And that's exactly what I did this morning, which just feels like such a blessing. I am so incredibly grateful for your listenership, which is the canvas upon which my creativity gets to paint every week, and this week I am sharing with you a few of the artists who have contributed to the canvas of my own life in sharing some books that have absolutely rocked my world and changed my life, and the flavor of each of these books is reflective of the flavor of everything we do here at Come to your Senses, which is this journey of knowing ourselves and being ourselves, that experience of self-actualization and self-realization, but through a path that is laden with beauty and softness and feminine depth and desire and an approach to power that is rooted in presence, and so, really, I don't have much more to say about introducing these books to you. So we're just gonna slide and glide right into our gems today, and I'm so excited to share these teachers with you. So our first gem, our first book, is a book I talk about unceasingly on this podcast because and the funny thing is I haven't actually even read the whole book. It's such a chewy, nougat-filled, delicious, amazing treasure of a book that I can really only take it one bite at a time, and I haven't read it sequentially. And I've definitely told myself in the past if you really took yourself seriously, you'd just sit down and read the whole book. But anytime my inner dialogue starts sounding like an episode of American Gladiators, I know something's a little fishy, and so I'm very happy to treat this book as the treasure box that it is and pluck one jewel at a time.
03:11
And introducing the book Beauty, the Invisible Embrace, rediscovering the true sources of compassion, serenity and hope by the incredible John O'Donoghue. This book was given to me when I was staying at my friend Lori's house and as I was leaving she lives in New York and New Jersey and I was flying back home and as I was leaving the house to get in a taxi cab, she said, oh Mary. And she just picked it up from her side table in her living room and she said you must, you must read this book. It is an absolute treasure. You will love it. And she really changed my life in that moment because she gave me a sacred text that restored what I already knew in my bones, but where my neural pathways had been diverted from this truth in my bones, which is that beauty is a spiritual practice and beauty is God made visible.
04:25
And I want to share a line with your paragraph with you. It is quite fascinating how beauty touches the mind. No one is immune to beauty, regardless of background, burdens or limitations. When we find ourselves in a place of great beauty, clarity, recognition and excitement awaken in us. It is never a neutral experience. Despite all our disaffection with what can sometimes seem a harsh and cynical world, there is an eternal beckoning at the heart of beauty that touches what is still innocent in us To behold. Beauty dignifies your life, it heals you and calls you out beyond the smallness of your own self-limitation to experience new horizons. To experience beauty is to have your life enlarged. Oh Lord in heaven, I swear to God, just every paragraph could be. I mean, I think about slowly biting into a crisp croissant, letting the butter melt on your tongue and roiling it around your taste buds and following that elegant ecstasy down your esophagus. And that's what it feels like reading beauty, the invisible embrace.
06:04
And I remember being a teenager and I was standing in line to apply for a community college and my dad was with me and I always struggled really hard in school and I started having like a real panic attack and I just was like dad, I can't, I can't do this. And there were other factors going on at the time. But what I knew at that time was that the one place where I felt ecstasy around work and service and career was in my job at Filene's, where I worked at the makeup counter and I would extol the virtues of shimmery forest green eyeshadow and I would place on the hands of countless visitors the acerbic sting of Clinique toner, which I don't recommend side note, it's loaded with alcohol which is not great for your skin. But I just was obsessed with this world of beauty. No-transcript. I went on to go to school to become an esthetician and as someone with some learning differences and some sensory stuff going on in my particular being a nervous system it was so incredibly validating to go from feeling like just a complete dunce, inadequate idiot in high school to then be plunked into this world of soothing mud and delightful aroma and the prayer of filling a basin with flower petals and stones and essential oils and placing it at someone's feet I mean, hello, look at the Bible and the ritual over time of foot washing being a sacred and intimate act. And so I feel so grateful that my dad recognized that spark of passion in me and allowed me to deviate from the traditional path with the money that they, my parents had saved for college and allowed me to pursue my career as an esthetician. And, of course, this is just one sweet little slice, mini slice of the pot, of what the fullness of beauty encapsulates. And what I love about this book is that it allows the visitation of beauty to happen beyond the aesthetic. In my work with clients around body image and really body worship, you know, having reverence for this temple of the flesh that houses our soul, one of the things that we talk about is leaving behind the limitations of prettiness and expanding into the truth of beauty, which is a bit less of a single octave on a piano and a bit more of the full range of a xylophone. I don't really have much experience with the xylophone, but that's just what I picture when I picture the saturation of the essence of beauty, and this book is biblical for those of us who follow the beauty path in our quest for spiritual fulfillment and actualization. So Beauty the Invisible Embrace, by Uncle John O'Donohue.
09:55
Our next gem starts with a story, and this is the story of really the birthplace of my sobriety, to be perfectly honest. So several years ago I was experiencing a lot of difficulty around my finances and earning and making my business solvent and just being in the online business sphere in general, and I called my good friend and mentor, barbara Sanny, who goes by the name Barbara Hussan now that she's remarried and I had taken her course called Sacred Success at a retreat many years ago, and Barbara is such a powerful catalyst for people to awaken the expression or the line work is love made visible Like. If I could describe Barbara in one sentence, it would be the way that she inspires people to embody the love that they are and that they believe in, and the love that is healing for themselves in the world and to bring that into their work, whether that's something creative like being an artist or a coach, or it's something like being an executive at an engineering company. She helps us focus less on what we're doing and more on the love we're doing it with. And I called Barbara because I was struggling and I signed up for some coaching with her and in our first session I Was all ready to take her advice and to be the straight A front of the class student and I had my pen poise for her recommendations and I just decided I'm gonna do everything she tells me to do.
12:06
And I told her what was going on and at this point in my life I was just a few months out of some really significant attachment disruptions, including the loss of a parent and a sudden dissolution of a marriage, and and she listened to me and everything that I shared and she said honey, when I listen to you, I don't hear money problems. What I hear is a lot of unfelt pain, ouch. It was both unsettling and Some of the deepest relief I had ever felt to be seen so clearly in that moment and For somebody to say I see you scuttling around with all these details of life on the surface and what I also see is the bulb of the root that is creating that chaos and who was unwilling to Help me scuttle. And with all of these books. You know, these books are amazing in themselves, but my experience with each of them is that it's not just what I learned in the book, but it's the journey that these books have led me to.
13:30
And Barber's book led me to a journey around sobriety, and my sobriety journey led me to release my old persona that my business used to be called, which is kitty cavalier, which was my burlesque persona, and open up new dimensions of my gifts that I had been burning to offer the world and really come into a state of sacred success where my success Isn't just about what's in my bank account, in my ROI, but it's about my level of personal fulfillment and the energy that I have to do the work that I do and the way in which I feel Intimate with spirit as I'm doing my work and the way that you know, one of the things I love about sacred success is it's called a course in financial miracles and it's a book that's about redefining success from a more feminine perspective, because Barbara works exclusively with women and wrote another book called Secrets of Six Figure Women and started this book by interviewing seven figure women because she wanted to write a new book and discovered this whole new understanding within herself and within the work of redefining success and redefining our relationship with money as just a metaphor for our relationship with personal power. And it is just a chef's kiss of a book and I cannot recommend it highly enough. I cannot recommend Barbara and her work, her private coaching, her in-person classes. She is a pencil in God's hand and Barbara, if you're listening, I know that that's your signature phrase. Thank you so, so much for your work in the world and for your impact on my life.
15:31
And the final book that I want to share with you also comes with a story, and this is a story about rediscovering the joy and pleasure and wonder of reading. So when I was a kid I think it was third grade we were assigned a list of books to read over the summer and one of them was the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which is not the book I'm about to talk about, but I remember at that point. You know, I loved reading but I had never like gotten into a book. And little old I don't know, nine year old me, seven year old me, however old you are, in the third grade. I remember starting that book and it was the first time in my life. I stayed up through the middle of the night to read. I was just so incredibly taken. I can feel the wonder in my body right now and my mouth is watering for Turkish delight. If you've read the book, you know what I mean. And then when I went on to school and high school, you know school and academia can really just suckle the pleasure of reading. And with all the obligatory reading one month's due when one is in school, I had just so lost my passion for reading.
17:02
And when I was about 19, my two friends at the time, becca and Roxanne, were in college and they were reading this book that they were just crazy about, and so I wanted to be like them and so I was like okay, I'm going to read it too. It's called In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez and it's a historical fiction novel, but it's based on the lives of Las Mariposas, which are the four butterflies. Who are these figures of freedom and liberation in the Dominican Republic who were resistance fighters against the dictator Rafael Trujillo, and it tells the story of De De and Patria, and Minerva and Maria Teresa. And even though it's historical fiction, you know, it's based on these very real figures in history and it tells not only the story of their resistance efforts but each woman's subtle flavor of her variety of resistance. So the one who is the more heroic revolutionary, all the way to the sister whose efforts were rooted in her love of religion and her children and being a mother, and the writing is just so hypnotically gorgeous and the depth of the heartfelt descriptions, my goddess. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
18:50
It caused me to fall in love with reading all over again and with storytelling, and I have never looked back. And so if you are looking for a book to fall in love with reading, to fall in love with the feminine spirit, to fall in love with liberation and its many facets, check out In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez and my loves. That brings our gems for today to a close. But if reading and being uplifted by what you read is something that you crave, I also want to let you know that I created a beautiful series of about 10 love letters, and these are letters straight to you, straight to your heart and your body and your mind, that help to open up the essence of what I think ties all of these books together, which is awakening that seed of what we might call our true or authentic or empowered self, through the joy of beauty, the wisdom of the body, the warmth of meaningful connection and the wonder of the senses.
20:10
And so, if you would like more radiance in your inbox, head tohttps://schoolofsensualliving.com/love , and there will be a place to sign up to receive these weekly love notes that will arrive for about 10 weeks. It is totally free and it is my gift to you as a gratitude for being a listener. So, https://schoolofsensualliving.com/love, and if you would like to send some gratitude our way for this episode and for the podcast in general, I would be so delighted and so grateful if you would go to iTunes to leave a review or hit the five star button wherever you get your podcasts. There are links for all of these things below this episode. And with that, that brings today's collection of gems to a close. So grateful to be here with you. I hope you have a wonderful week and I'll see you in our next episode.
Do you find books to be your close companions? Have you ever discovered profound wisdom in an unlikely place?
My literary pilgrimage has led me through landscapes of the soul, redefining my sense of self and purpose. Today, I'm sharing a glimpse of that journey with you, with Three Books That Profoundly Changed My Life.
You'll discover gems on:
A book that explores the depths of beauty beyond the surface, helping you embrace beauty's spiritual essence and its power to dignify and heal
A book that broadens your understanding of success, gives the pursuit of wealth a deeply spiritual heartbeat
A heart-shaping story of four sisters who seduced the world with their tender hearted passion for justice, and a rediscovery of the resilience of the human spirit
Come celebrate these extraordinary books with the power to transform, enrich, and truly meet our soul's yearning, right where we need them.
