Books like Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm

I have often considered what spirituality meant for my ancestors of long ago, when lifeways were aligned with local subsistence patterns through gathering and hunting.

For inspiration, I turn to the Bushman (San) cultures of southern Africa, who hold one of the most ancient living spiritual traditions on the planet; this book offers a window into their enduring cosmovision, woven close to the fabric of the Earth.

The Bushman story of First and Second Creation immediately caught my attention as a primary teaching about unity consciousness (First Creation) and the mind’s tendency to trick itself into believing its own projections (Second Creation) – an important reminder to step back into the moment and not take ourselves too seriously in the midst of our spiritual life journey.

Because much of my work is about bridging connections with nature into the modern experience, as a reader, I appreciate Nabhan’s insightful reflections of participation in cultures close to the Earth; his stories show how deeply people can live into balanced connections with our local environments.

Simple, everyday activities like gathering firewood for grandma and grandpa can become openings into deeper relationships with our local ecosystems, if we gift ourselves some time to explore and become curious about the world around us along the way.

That possibility gives me inspiration for my own family’s nature connection journey and helps me think creatively when I work with clients who want to deepen their sense of place.

Reading this book in my teen years changed my life.

Instinctually, I had always known there was a deeper layer of reality beyond the veneer of modern experience, waiting for me to connect. Tom’s meditations were part of a larger awakening process that opened my eyes to the spiritual world.

These true stories inspired me to get outside and make real connections with animals and ecosystems of my place, and with the spirit-that-moves-through-all-things. Through this practice, I found renewed hope and motivation and began building my own experiential understanding of nature’s mysteries.

Ultimately, this book sent me on a journey that continues to this day, thirty years later! Thank you, Tom.

After years of practicing yogic-based meditation and qigong, I felt called to seek out spiritual Earth connection practices from my own European ancestral lineages.

This book stood out to me because it opens a path directly to the deep consciousness of the Earth, through journeys based on Celtic and pre-Celtic symbols. Each exploration has opened new insights and transformations, leaving me feeling a greater attunement with nature and with my own being.

There is a deep-time metaphysics underlying this book, connected to the ancient mysteries yet without the heavy trappings of elaborate outer ritual. This bare-bones simplicity makes the practice accessible in the midst of a full life.

This ground-breaking book, written in the 1970’s, is still essential reading for anyone wishing to explore dreams as a creative resource rather than interpret them in the traditional Western psychological way. I started recalling and recording dreams in therapy nearly fifty years ago and had reached the conclusion that trying to interpret them was confusing and potentially misleading. Then I chanced on this collection of studies of different dream traditions from other parts of the world. It changed everything. If you think of dreams in a purely psychological way, this book could give you whole new perspectives. 

The world of The Changeling is strange and exhilarating. At first we are presented with what seems like a mundane NYC, but then the edges start to bleed as a more fantastical, deliciously disturbing world seeps into and disrupts the ordinary.

At the core of the story is a family and the lengths they go to protect each other. There are so many reasons this book resonated with me, but particularly for this reason—the idea that if only you pay close attention, you will see that a more fantastical world dwells at the edge of our own.

This is an idea I tackle in my own book, where myths and legends, and fairytales come to life. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I highly recommend it. Everyone who reads The Changeling will be… changed.

Elizabeth Knox is a world-class writer with an exceptional imagination and her fantasy novel, Dreamhunter, is a great introduction to her work. Set in an alternative past, dreamhunters harvest dreams which are transmitted to the public for entertainment and therapy – or worse. Fifteen-year-old Laura Hame must enter The Place of Dreams to uncover what happened to her missing dreamhunter father and in the process reveals how the government has used dreams to control an ever-growing population of convicts and political dissenters. Those who love Philip Pullman or Garth Nix won’t be disappointed.

The book tells the story of a man who believes that his dreams influence reality. I loved it because it was strange and intriguing, mind-bending and surreal. Nothing was permanent, and even reality itself was questionable.

Ursula Le Guin explores the issues of climate change and overpopulation, pollution and the destruction of the environment though the characters’ personal experiences. She tackles racism and shows how one's life experiences shape their personality. The question of whether the end justifies the means keeps recurring in the narrative.

The Dream Master was originally published in Amazing (Jan/Feb 1965) titled, He Who Shapes. The novella won Roger Zelazny a Nebula Award in 1966. I have re-read this novel several times over the years, and subconsciously I think it influenced the premise for Dream Phaze. Some of the tech is a little outdated by today’s terms, but the overall idea is still fresh.

I picked Dream Work because it is “one-stop shopping” meaning it is a comprehensive and thorough review of many different approaches to dream interpretation. I particularly like the quick tips he offers if you don’t want to delve into theory. For example, he recommends you create a title for a dream which is effective in increasing your insight quickly. He also has guidance for working with fragments of dreams and offers a powerful case study of how one small dream fragment of remembering “pastel” colors opened up a new career direction for a dreamer. While many dreamers find dream fragments to be frustrating he shows how these can be condensed and edited “telegrams.” Other quick tips he offers are asking questions about a dream such as “What might happen if I did this in the real world?”