Five Books that Changed My Life

Reading has always been a great love...i started to really enjoy books for the sheer pleasure when i began picking up my grandmothers book club books...left lying beside her bed or in the living on the side tables...i would spend hours sitting with feet under me in an over sized armchair...i was well into my teens by this time...nowhere to go and time on my hands...i began devouring book after book...reading became a form of healing therapy...it became a companion that i could count on...i would lose hours...only lifting my head to smell something cooking in the kitchen or to listen to some raucous argument happening in the basement where my uncles spent most of their time tinkering with their DJ equipment...this is how it began...

Many years passed and many different tastes in books came and went...but i can remember it like it was yesterday...i came across the book "The Road Less Traveled"...i was living in NYC by this time...spending days on end by myself combing the bookstores for something that could fill the emptiness that swallowed me whole...i can't tell you how i came to read the book...i believe that books find you...you don't find them...like when the student is ready the teacher will appear type of thing...there were so many topics in the book that stirred my senses and as i read more... the emptiness i felt began making sense...the empty began to fill up...and questions found a few answers...i was on the right path...

The Alchemist was next...i was out of work and living in NJ at the time...i really really didn't like living there and everything in my life felt heavy...then another book found me...i think i might have read it in one sitting...(i can also say that all of Paulo Coehlos' books have left indelible impressions on me)...anyway when The Alchemist found me i was still searching outside of myself for answers...after reading the book i would find a few of the answers i was searching for both in the book and in my heart...i would come to find comfort in Paulo Coehlos words...words that i bought in the paper back version of The Alchemist from a street vendor on 6th avenue just below 23rd street...NYC...with a sandwich bag full of dimes i carried with me that particular day...purposely...to buy myself a book...

I was back on my feet and working as a personal trainer and living a pretty carefree life by the time "Conversations with God" found me...it lifted me on high and made me think of things i had never, up until that point, even considered part of my thought process...my connection to the whole was awakening...my soul found expression in my everyday...i was moving through the pain of life like a surfer gliding across a wave on the ocean...Conversations with God opened me up to the concept of truth both universal and individual...yes i was connected...for the first time...to something grander than physical existence...

"The Master Key System" found me easily...it was a gift to my husband from a friend of his...it sat on the book shelf for quite sometime before it whispered to me that it needed my attention...i have read the book several times...i keep a copy on my i-phone...The Master Key System took me on a journey even further into myself and the concept of being more than just human...it guided me toward the concept that my life is created by me...

And finally... "The Game of Life and How to Play It" actually found me...playing in the game of life...this book and all of Florence Scovel Shinns books acted like my life coach...keeping me strong, positive and open to a powerful existence...

There are many more than five books that have nudged me to reach higher...challenging me to become more in tune with the source...The above mentioned five books have led me to so many more...and for that i am grateful...reading inspires writing...reading is a true treasure...writers are a gift...and life is a journey with books as signposts along the way...

At every turn and with every book...i find more revelation about both the inner and outer world...the physical and the spiritual...as if best friends...both worlds collide in some of the best writing...reading and writing make me happy and fill part of my day with so much energy and creativity...