Heart Thoughts: A Treasury of Inner Wisdom by Louise L Hay

Louise L Hay is a famous metaphysical lecturer and teacher known for her bestseller ‘You Can Heal Your Life’. She has inspired millions of people to discover the vast treasure that lies within our hearts. She advocates our need to connect to what she calls ‘Inner Self”. 

In the book "Heart Thoughts", she celebrates the power of our own hearts to heal ourselves and adapt to the changes in life. The key idea in the book is the need for responsibility as the ability to respond to life in order to get the best out of it. The first steps in connecting with our inner selves are to get out of the victim mindsets and abandoning the illusion of someone rescuing us from the mess we are in. 

The knowledge of our power to respond creatively to life is liberation and it frees us from our old way of thinking and feeling. This enables us to shed our old beliefs and welcome the new in life. With the release of the past and acceptance of our own selves come the innumerable blessings of life. My favourite thought comes under the title of good health. Good health, according to Hay is “ having no fatigue, having a good appetite, going to sleep and awakening easily, having a good memory, having good humour, having precision in thought and action, and being honest, humble, grateful and loving”. 

Heart Thoughts celebrates change as the rule of life. Dedicated to our own hearts, this collection of meditations about day-to-day issues by Louise L Hay can change our lives or make us aware of the powers that lie within us and thus create richness in our lives. 

be

Ammaykku

It's been years since I started writing. But even now, when I sit down to write, I feel like a schoolboy sitting in the examination hall before an empty page. In my younger days, writing was a hobby. Now, it's a struggle; a prayer to bring about words in the most satisfactory order; an exorcism of memories.(Free Translation) MT VASUDEVAN NAIR

 

In a previous blogpost,I'd written about a revival of my interest in Malayalam literature. This experience was like walking through old familiar paths once again. The best book I read as a result of this renaissance (if I can use it in a very personal sense) was a memoir Ammaykku written by great Malayalam writer M T Vasudevan Nair. In a simple, direct and intimate tone that takes the reader into confidence, he describes his transformation from a voracious reader into a literary phenomenon.

Most writers have evolved out of a life of strife and struggle. Like the pearl out of the oyster, literature is mostly about transformation of rather painful experiences and memories. Here, MT also describes a similar metamorphosis from a schoolboy into a writer overcoming several obstacles and limitations.

The book's title translated as 'To Mother' is meaningful in that it is his memories about his mother and the people who have influenced him considerably in his life. He lovingly recalls several people who influenced him and encouraged him in his literary pursuits. He recounts his intimate bond with the great literary genius, Vaikkom Mohammed Basheer and his brief encounter with madness.

Gentle, honest and memorable, this memoir from a literary genius is a worthy gem in any literature reader's collection. Read a story Oppol  by MT!

Say You're One of Them

One good writer that I have read recently is Uwem Akpan, a Nigerian priest who has an MFA in Creative Writing. His debut collection of short stories Say You’re One of Them won the regional prize for Best First Book from Commonwealth Nations, The five stories in this collection are narrated by children, aged between six and sixteen, in five countries in Africa. They are surrounded by genocide, wars, human trafficking, AIDS, corruption and communal and religious conflicts. The stories show a shocking glimpse of Africa- street life, politics, prostitution and bloodshed. 

The Valkyries

Reading Paulo Coelho is like talking to yourself. The flaws and imperfections of the protagonist are often the flaws that you see in yourself. The wild speed in reading it in 4 or 5 hours could be because of this curiosity that grapples the mind as to what will happen to the protagonist in the story.

His books like The Alchemist, Zahir, The Warrior of the Light, Brida, The Witch of Portbello, Like the Flowing River and the Maktub creates a sense of déjà vu. The Valkyries is no exception. His books refresh the mind and give insight into the flaws of human nature.

There are always several places in the book, where you stop and think, "Where have I read that before?" and then realise that it was not in a book but in your own mind that you created a thought similar to that. Coelho's magic has worked once more. Waiting to read the next book that I can get hold of.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain (1835-1910) was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, one of the greatest writers in American as well as world literature. Famous for his boyhood novels, he is considered a realist, humourist and satirist. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) has been hailed as a joy forever and one of the masterpieces of American and world literature.

The story depicts the life and struggles of Huckleberry Finn, a teenage boy who runs away from his adopted family in Petersburg fearing the attacks of his greedy and drunken father after faking his own death. His companion on the journey across the Mississippi river is Jim, the Negro slave of his adopted family. They travel over a thousand miles on their raft going through a series of adventures that reveal their good luck and practicality.This lovable hero wins hearts not by his nobility or valour but by sheer practicality and lack of hypocrisy.

Providence

The Classics of the Macabre by Daphne du Maurier

Though not at all psychic- I have never seen a ghost or dabbled in spiritualism or the occult- I have always been fascinated by the unexplained, the darker side of life. I have a strong sense of the things that lie beyond our day-by-day perception and experience. It is, perhaps, an extension of this feeling that makes me live through the characters that I create.

The Classics of the Macabre(1987) is a collection of scary stories written by the queen of macabre writing, Daphne du Maurier. This book published at her 80th birthday showcases six stories noted for their drama as well as emotional intensity.

In "Don't Look Now" (1970), a couple on holiday meets a pair of twin sisters, who claim that they are psychic. They claim that they can see the couple's recently dead daughter and advises them to go back home. The couple is shocked by the sudden turn of events in which they pay a heavy price for their cynicism.

"The Apple Tree"(1952) is about a man recollecting his dead wife at the sight of an apple tree in his yard. This tree sprang up in the garden after her death and he doesn't like remembering his barren and rather cheerless wife. So he decides to cut down the tree only to put his own life in danger.

"The Blue Lenses" (1952) narrates the story of Marda West who undergoes an eye surgery and has blue lenses temporarily fitted in her eye. To her horror, she can see only animals in the place of her near and dear ones. Her husband and her nurse have changed shape.

"The Birds" (1952) is like a nightmare. Birds come in large numbers and start attacking people. This is the reverse situation of nature attacking human beings.

"The Alibi"(1959) is about a man who is about to kill a family. The woman of the family believes him to be a painter and so he tries his hand at painting. But the evil inside him needs release more than ever.

"Not After Midnight" (1971) is equally scary in that a schoolmaster meets a couple who tell him what happened to the last inhabitant of the place where he lives.

Though most of the stories are scary and unputdownable, the best in this collection are defintely "The Apple Tree" and "The Blue Lenses".

Re-reading "Tintern Abbey" by Wordsworth

Recently, I re-read William Wordsworth's "Composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, On revisiting the Banks of Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798" officially known as "Tintern Abbey" to all literature students. While, I was reading the poem (later teaching it as well), it suddenly occurred to me that the consciousness that Wordsworth talks about in the poem is something that modern people are trying hard to achieve: harmony with nature.

For the poet, nature was a form of escape in his early years. Later she became "all in all" to him- "the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,/The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul/ Of all my moral being". When weighed by the troubles of the world, he could easily think about the beautiful scenes of nature and forget his sorrows.

This habit of storing the sights and sounds of nature in his mind's eye helped him to recollect such sights when he wanted them. Such memories flooded his mind, filled it with tranquility and gave rise to a pleasant frame of mind devoid of all angst. Such a tranquil mood increased in its intensity until the poet was no longer aware of the functions of his body and instead became a living soul that partakes in the mystery of the universe.

Wordsworth describes his hour of ecstasy as:

...that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:--that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,--
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

For the poet, this poem tracks his growth as a mature person from the immature boy he was. It shows the poet as meditating on nature, which is commonly used to calm the monkey mind in meditation.

Note- Read an interesting article about the need for being close to nature from Charity Focus.

The Name of the Rose

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb. This library was perhaps born to save the books it houses, but now it lives to bury them (Eco, 396).

Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose is a historical murder mystery set in a medieval monastery in fourteenth century Italy. What moves the story forward is the attempt of a medieval Benedictine monastery to preserve the aura of knowledge within its boundaries. Such an attempt to keep a work of art hidden, in this case, the second book of Aristotle’s Poetics, is not just for preserving the aura of arcane knowledge but not to destroy the order of the Benedictines. The book, which is believed never to have written or lost is in the library of the monastery but its existence is a secret as the library is not open to outsiders and functions by strange customs of secrecy. There are many secrets related to the library, which nobody know mainly because only the librarian knows about the contents of the library. The monks can only ask for titles but are not allowed in the place where books are kept. The library makes copies of the rare books with the help of illuminators and scribes but then the books are given only for that purpose. Murders happen because of this secret book of the ancients on laughter is lusted after by the scholarly monks. To investigate the murders, a Franciscan monk William of Baskerville arrives at the monastery along with his novice Adso of Melk. This monk, in a very Sherlock Holmes- like fashion deduces the truth of the matter from accidental incidents.