Buddha took some Autumn leaves
In his hand and asked
Ananda if these were all
The red leaves there were.
Ananda answered that it
Was autumn and leaves
Were falling all about them,
More than could ever
be numbered. So Buddha said,
"I have given you
A handful of truths. Besides
These there are many
Thousands of other truths, more
Than can ever be numbered."

From "The City of the Moon” by Kenneth Rexroth

"If you had a different concept of yourself, everything would be different. You are what you are, so everything is as it is. The events  which you observe are determined by the concept you have of yourself.  If you change your concept of yourself, the events ahead of you in time are altered, but, thus altered, they form a deterministic sequence starting from the moment of this changed concept.  You are a being with powers of intervention, which enable you, by a change of consciousness, to alter the course of observed events--in fact, to change your future."  

I believe that my own life is a demonstration of an ongoing attempt at using these principles, moment-by-moment.  It was my hope that in so demonstrating the possibility of living well I would exemplify at least at some time some portion of the nature of God in such a way as to serve as some kind of road sign pointing to the experience of the mystical connection to the Divine that I have grown accustomed to in my life.  I hope that others see  a chance to find the good within themselves, as we have, and to begin to intervene in their own lives inspired by what they have seen in us.  These are books that aided me in pursuing life of creative spirituality:

Some say that my teaching is nonsense.
Others call it lofty but impractical.
But to those who have looked inside themselves,
This nonsense makes perfect sense.
And to those who put it into practice,
This loftiness has roots that go deep.

I have just three things to teach:
Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
You return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
You accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
You reconcile all beings in the world.

  

  
2.      The Dhammapada, The Buddha

"The thought manifests as the word. The word manifests as the deed. The deed develops into habit. And the habit hardens into character.  So watch the thought and its ways with care.  And let it spring from love,  born out of concern for all beings."

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought; it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts.”

In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his 1842 lecture The Transcendentalist:

"The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy. He wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered to demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applications to the state of man, without the admission of anything unspiritual; that is, anything positive, dogmatic, personal. Thus, the spiritual measure of inspiration is the depth of the thought, and never, who said it! And so he resists all attempts to palm other rules and measures on the spirit than its own...."

  

4.      Awakening: A Sufi Experience, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

"To be creative means not to be limited by what we've inherited from the past, but to be something new, to be yourself, to affirm something that has never been done in the past."

5.     The Bhagavad Gita, here is a portion of which I find very instructive:

“Merit? Merit? Brother, who told thee I have merit?
Merit have I none, nor ever did I have.
What merit hath a straw?
The weaver shapes a basket with it.
If the basket be fair it is not the merit of the straw;
It is his skill who maketh it.
I am that straw which once lay at the great Weaver’s feet.
But God, the Compassionate, took it in God’s sacred hands and fashioned it.
Now I cherish this basket of God’s fashioning.
To gather God’s blessing.
Humility, unostentatiousness, non-injury, forgiveness, simplicity,
purity, steadfastness, self-control; this is declared to be wisdom.
What is opposed to this is ignorance.”

  

  
6.     The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle

"Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body's reaction to your mind — or you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body" - Page 20

7.     100 Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez.  This book taught me so much about what great writing really is, particularly that chronological order does not have to be the dominant direction of how to tell a story.

  

Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin.  This book helped me through a difficult divorce and taught me about love from a masculine point of view.  Wonderful fantasy and great insight.

  

9.    On the Way to Language, Martin Heidegger.  All about the importance of language.  One of the most difficult books I ever read, but so important to thinking and writing for me.

  

10.