Vicki Woodyard tells about her experiences, feelings, friends, teachers, and spiritual realizations during her husband Bob's nearly five year struggle with the cancer known as multiple myeloma.

Vicki says on page one, "I just want you to have an experience."

This book IS an experience. You're going to take Vicki's approach:

"Oh God, I am not strong enough. I can write, I can joke, but I cannot cure my own heartache. The irony is that I know that nothing will take it away. I would choose insanity if I could, but choice has nothing to do with things like that. My teacher [Vernon Howard] said, `When you are carrying your cross up Crucifixion Hill, offer no resistance whatever.'"

You're going to walk the chemo halls with Vicki, yes, but you'll also share a table with her and the Buddha at the Waffle House. More buttah? More wisdom that brokenness brings?

While experiencing these stories of struggle and humor, and while being brought as low as one human spirit can go, you somehow rise to an experience of rich wholeness and the truth of being human.

How is that done? By facing pain and suffering so that you see it in fullness, which is its abidance within a peaceful energy field.

Regardless of what Vicki went through in the loss of her husband, the loss of her seven year old daughter to cancer, the losses of close friends to cancer, there was never a severing from inherent wholeness, nor, as Vicki says, can there be. "The eye of wholeness doesn't cry."

This book is often hard-going, sometimes light, deeply loving and humanitarian. It requires the reader to face pain and suffering. This is a powerful, cleansing, truth-talking book. No other nonduality book has the texture, the quality of writing, the points of focus as Life With A Hole In It. It is an extremely worthwhile addition to one's nonduality education.

"Contemplative prayer is simply a wordless, trusting opening of self to the divine presence." ... "If you begin to walk this path your heart will love it," writes Wesley Lachman.

Wesley Lachman is a retired minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and still teaches spirituality in the Church. He is a student at the Center for Sacred Sciences in Eugene, Oregon. He is a father and grandfather.

About a hundred pages in length, The Shortest Way Home is a smooth read. The chapters are short; at the end of each one is a contemplative exercise allowing the reader to practice what was read. The table of contents has a consistent structure, each chapter featuring a duality: Suffering and Happiness, Belief and Experience, Existence and Impermanence, and so on. The author seamlessly includes quotations. In this example is revealed the point of the book:

"It is a path that must be walked or practiced, and yet it leads to where you already are. `It is a journey from a place we have never been to a place we have never left.' It can begin with some rational description such as found in this text, but the mystery of God is its true end." The quotation-within-the-quotation is from John W. Groff, Jr. All quotations are referenced. The bibliography is carefully selected and annotated.

The first third of the book considers the experience of the world. Lachman says, "Trust your own direct experience of life." He shows how everything is dissolving moment by moment including what we assume of ourselves and God. "How did we ever delude ourselves into thinking we could find lasting happiness in our possessions when we are losing every one of them?" He asks; we contemplate, remembering to trust our experience and to open to divine presence.

In the next two-thirds of the book he considers the experience of our self: "If I really possess nothing at all, then what or who is this self?" Lachman exposes the story of I, showing that one's true nature is the space of divine presence in which the story of I apparently manifests and dissolves. Who we are is that divine presence, that space, awareness, consciousness. Not our thoughts. Not our story of I.

This is the nondual confession beautifully expressed within Christian contemplative context, full of experiential opportunities, and serving beginners to the contemplative path and to nonduality itself.

Our true nature is known as beginninglessness, the cloudless empty sky. Suffering is experienced as a long haul, scars, and weariness.

Lachman says, "The first step on the contemplative path is just to acknowledge our desire not to suffer, our yearning for something better. The second step is to begin to experiment with drawing closer to our God, our Happiness, by exploring someone made in God's image: us!"

The Shortest Way Home easily draws you into the quiet atmosphere of the contemplative challenge and toward the realization of what you actually are.

I thoroughly enjoyed these stories written for young people ages 6-10 and up. The stories are character driven and literary. Each story communicates a teaching of nondual spirituality, as imparted by Uncle E to his young niece and other children.

The young people in the book may get the teaching, they may not totally get it, but it is never excessively spelled out. Rather, the teaching unfolds with each story.

In the end, you can't help but align with the character Uncle E who is a person with a heart and humor and an ability to reach and teach children, like the one or two great teachers you may have been fortunate enough to know in your life.

True, Uncle E is a family outcast because he lives a raw, artful, and natural life. Hence he is looked upon as a little crazy. However, the truth is that he is an adult teaching the kids things that will make them mature adults. You absolutely cannot go wrong buying this book. Get it for yourself AND for a young one and invite Uncle E into your household, even if he is kinda crazy. There's no better crazy, ya know.

I like how your book begins with an explanation of duality along with a pointing toward nonduality and advice on how to pursue nonduality. You then assert that the pursuit is dependent on an understanding of the mind, thereby providing various ways to turn the mind toward its source, toward the nondual, along with some interesting and practical diversions along the way.

The reader will learn how to realign the mind through affirmations, visualizations, gratitude, desire, and positive thoughts. Practical gains from proper mental positioning include health, money, love, and inner peace. The purpose of this heightened mental awareness is something deeper than the practical, and you make that clear. The purpose of mental preparation is to make the pursuit of enlightenment feasible.

This book is a fine guide and reminder for people who are wandering in the garden of spiritual and mental delights and who intuit and need to pursue something deeper, known as source, God, soul, enlightenment, or nonduality. Readers will be pleased to see serious reference to some well-known, and not so well-known names: Edgar Cayce, John Van Auken, Rev. Simeon Stefanidakis, Andrew Cohen and Eckhart Tolle, among others.

I also like the resource links denoted within the book, allowing the reader to expand the book at multiple points within the texts

Jonathan Harrison's presentation of the teaching of nonduality is crisp, concise, and clear. Instruction on dealing with the habitual, addictive mind -- the ego-self -- gives this book more traction than the purely confessional books of new nonduality (neo-advaita). Love, karma, death, meditation, suffering, compassion, the mind, separateness, and the soul (a rarely seen theme in nonduality and a welcome carry-over from Harrison's first book), are topics that bridge mainstream spirituality with nonduality, or naked being. Read Naked Being and cross the bridge.

Quoting Andre van den Brink in the Nonduality Highlights #3676:

"Paul Brunton left 1200 pages of single spaced type written notes from his period with V.S.Iyer. Iyer was an Advaitin teacher behind the scenes of the Ramakrishna Mission in the 40's. Guru of Swami Siddeshwarananda and Swami Nikhilananda and the Maharaja of Mysore. The notes are available at [...] publications/#vsiyer. Out of that material I compiled the paragraphs I thought were the best, most concise and to the point. I had them on the website for years and then someone studied the material and asked to publish the compilation."

This book reads like notes taken in a university course, really good notes from a great teacher! Hence, there's a sense of disjointedness, even though the paragraphs are related and logical. No one is questioning the accuracy of the notes or the correctness of the teacher, just saying that the book reads like notes that were taken. For example, here are four paragraphs in the order they appear in the book. Remember, this stuff was written in the 30s and 40s:

"Emotion cannot be killed, but it must be brought under the control and check of reason. Reason must be kept on top, as emotion often leads the truth-seeker astray.

"That which dupes 99% of people is taking satisfaction for truth. Beware of that which satsifies your feelings.

"If you do not take away the ego, the `me', no proper inquiry into philosophical truth is possible, but only into religion.

"The ego magnifies what it prefers or desires, thus distorting outlook and incapacitating it for truth."

Some paragraphs are longer and flow better than the ones above, but there's still the feel of reading notes and the sense that the paragraphs are modular and can be moved around.

Some readers might like to know they're reading notes, as they might feel they're getting at the essence of Iyer's teaching. To me, the teachings appear solid as rocks and therefore a good introduction to Advaita or a supplement to a formal course of study.

Here are examples from each chapter:

Philosophy: The Inquiry into Truth:

"What is wanted in Advaita is thinking it out for yourself all the 24 hours and not merely reading books or hearing words."

Means and Methods of Inquiry:

"Advaita does not prove that there is One: It proves that there is no second thing!"

The Need of Semantics:

"First find out the meaning of words. You will find that they are simply mental images. These again are just your constructions and concoctions."

Perception and Idealism:

"What we start with we call `outside object' and what we finish with we call `percept'. Our illusion lies in thinking the two are different. They are not, but one and the same."

Change and Illusion:

"The individual is a bundle of memories, desires, etc. What are memories and desires? Something imagined. Therefore the individual self is entirely an imagination."

Mind, the Ideation of Consciousness:

"If you can cast away the ego-consciousness, the individual mind is the same as the universal mind.

"All objects and creatures are mind alone. In advanced Vedanta you convert this statement into, `are Atman alone'.

"All these [scriptural] quotations prove that Advaita teaches that mind is none other than what India calls Self, Atman, Universe and Brahman."

The Self, the Seer of the Seen:

"Once you understand the ego, you will have understood 90% of Vedanta. You must learn that the ego is different from consciousness."

Avasthatraya: Coordinating the Three States of Consciousness:

"It will be a great error to write that the world is a dream: It is not. The correct statement is: The world is like a dream. This is because both dream and waking worlds are mental constructs."

Realisation of Truth is the Removing of Ignorance:

"Non-duality does not mean the non-existence of a second thing, but its non-existence as other than yourself. The mind must know it is of the same substance as the objects."

The Doctrine of Non-Causality:

"We do not deny that a succession of ideas, [that] objects appear before us. What we deny is that there is a causal relation between them."

Advaita in Practice:

"What is the fundamental reason why we should control the senses? Because their characteristic is to make you think erroneously that the second thing is real, that the objects are real."

The Jnani, the Knower of Truth:

"The jnani makes no voluntary effort, but does what has to be done. Therefore he will practice both activity and abstention at different times."

Where it is difficult to find in-person teachers of Advaita, and where Advaita demands a lifelong relationship with a teacher, what does a person do? If you're hungry enough, you'll move to where a teacher is available.

If you're hungry for what the study of Advaita can deliver, but won't move to where the teacher is, or can't afford to bring a teacher to you, then you have to read, study, communicate with people online, meet teachers in person occasionally. This would be a very good book as part of your lifelong learning of Advaita, or the truth of who you are.

Advaita is the traditional and stepwise teaching of nonduality. If you're looking for a brief book about Advaita that you can fall in love with, get Dissolved.

Dissolved is a delightful-to-hold-in-your-hands, attractively designed 90 page book. It is a dialogue between a seeker and a sage.

Dissolved is a gently told Advaita: a study of mind; a question of illusion; an enquiry, "Who am I?"; a surrender to the Guru, to the Self; a dialogue on spontaneous action, pre-determination, fearlessness.

This is an easily received Advaita, too: a questioning of the world of duality and reactivity; a confession of living in the world when established in the Self; an addressing of pain and sorrow.

Dissolved is a practical Advaita: impermanence; the nature of happiness; renunciation, diet, helping out the world, alcohol and drugs; all these topics enter the dialogue and are crisply addressed

Dissolved is a full Advaita: in the end there is the dissolution into Self through surrender to the Guru and via self-enquiry.

Dissolved is filled with stories and metaphors, some of which you may have heard and all of which are heard freshly once again.

In the following fragment, the Guru plays the role of seeker and the seeker Vivek plays the role of Guru; this is done to test Vivek's knowledge, or perhaps the reader's knowledge, or perhaps it is a pure demonstration of the play of Self:

Guru Ji: But still how can [the Self-realized being] meet people, who give him hatred and abuses, with love?

Vivek: What happens when one throws a stone in the ocean?

Guru Ji: Water gets splashed.

Vivek: Does the ocean splash back stones in return? No. The ocean only has water to give. No matter what you throw it, it will only throw water back. Similarly, a Self-realized being is an ocean of love. He has only love to share. No matter what you throw in, you will only get love. There is nothing else in there.

Guru Ji: Still ... How is this possible? I know, you will say they don't see anything separate from them, they see only the Self, etc., etc.

As the dynamic between Vivek and Guru Ji plays out, the reader eventually joins to make a trinity. Sometimes the reader takes the attitude of seeker, sometimes the sage. In this way, the reader eventually becomes another character, merging with, dissolving into Guru Ji and Vivek, so that all three characters become one. In such a manner, a level of dissolution is experienced.

In the beginning, the seeker Vivek asks his Guru for help in understanding who he is. In the end, there is dissolution into the Self, into consciousness. Dissolved, therefore, is a full-cycle, concise version of the teaching of Advaita.

Whether the reader dissolves into Vivek and Guru Ji, or dissolves into Self, or sits back with a cup of tea and dissolves a spoonful of sugar into it, this book serves up many levels of rewards.

Perhaps you are seeking a beginning education in Advaita, or further practice of self-inquiry, or maybe you only want to enjoy the dialogue, the stories within, the story at large, the teaching, the expression. In only 90 pages of gentle dialogue, poetry, and storytelling, Dissolved offers all this, all you could and could not imagine.

Mike Himelstein is the funniest person I've ever known. His songs make me smile, laugh, remember, forget, and they just make me happy. Get this album!

Strong attributes make this recommended reading. One is the relentless characterization of the Fear-Self with over a thousand uses of the term Fear-Self, an average of four per page:

"A Fear-Self can only deal with another Fear-Self. The importance of this observation cannot be overstated. When we believe another to be her Fear-Self, we cannot see her authentic self. This means that in our world, we are dealing only with the confluence of Fear-Selves. This is why many of us are easily insulted: we take the stress and fear of others, which are always expressions of their Fear-Selves, personally. This is the cause of most interpersonal misunderstandings, disputes, and even wars between nations."

Another strong attribute is reference to African hunter-gatherer societies and Native American practices and sensibilities:

"Hunter-gatherer children were loved and respected just as they were. Modern children must earn the love and respect of their elders, on their elders' terms. This is the origin of the fundamental invalidation that all of us experience... ."

"When it appears you have hit rock bottom, the Peacemaker hands you a sheet of paper with two columns. One column is a list of healing practices that are Native American, such as sweat lodge, singing, dancing, and working with a traditional counselor; the other lists practices that are Western, including job training, substance abuse counseling, therapy, going back to school, etc. The Peacemaker asks you to take the list home, read it carefully and discuss it with no one. He asks you to circle each item that speaks to your heart and not necessarily your head, to return the list to the Peacemaker the next day. He has give you a little nudge that encourages you to become your own healer... .

Also a strong presence is the author's many personal revelations:

"At night, when I get into bed, I feel the pressure to be intimate. This ultimately causes me to flee relationships. I am uncomfortable and feel no sexuality. ... The Fear-Self is entirely self-involved. Everything that happens .... is about me. ... Similar anxieties occur at work. I become inexplicably nervous around the boss. I have persistent fantasies of getting fired, winding up broke and homeless. ... The grandiose Fear-Self is, in fact, nervous and vulnerable."

Another strong attribute is the twenty-one exercises.

The ultimate element is the teaching that can get you to turn from identification with the lie to what you are. That turning is liberation.

"The difference between the liberated you and the imprisoned you is understanding. Through understanding, we stop believing that we are, in essence, our Fear Selves. What was serious becomes playful. What was fearful becomes interesting. Liberation moves us from living an insecure and compulsive life to one that is ultimately a life of play and depth."

This book comments on the impact of living from the Fear-Self upon society and world, and discusses the option of a society and world created out of living from liberation.

Eric Gross shines a thousand headlights on your Fear-Self. Seeing the Fear-Self, and seeing who sees it, you might realize there is another approach to living life.

Jeff Foster is a young and gifted confessor or sharer of what is. Jeff's words are full of space. This book is incredibly effective in getting "you" to see there has never been a "you." There's only this.

I like the writing styles: Question and answer; confessions of what is; some writing structured as poems; and a fourth kind of writing that is set off by its own font, a courier typewriter style font, that gives a sense of "happening now." This fourth kind of writing appears throughout the book under the heading "this"; here's an example:

"Silence. I have no answer for her. This is empty of questions and answers. I am a child, I know nothing about nonduality. All I know is car horns, the whiff of aftershaves, the blowing of noses and aching of feet. This is where I live. Right here, not in some other dimension. The mouth opens to speak, even though I have no idea what to say."

An Extraordinary Absence is a book of beauty but it's not pretty. Jeff talks about pain, including his own extreme physical and emotional pain. He writes about the spectrum of humanity from "A little red-faced toddler in blue dungarees" to a man with terminal cancer:

"He is losing control of his bowels ... I don't tell him there's no suffering, I don't say `I'm enlightened and you're not,' I don't even mention nonduality, [...]

The Foreword by Kriben Pillay and the Introduction by Philip Pegler are themselves worthwhile documents on nonduality. Especially Kriben, a writer, observer, researcher, and publisher of nondualia since the mid-90s, makes strong statements:

"Much of the current nondual scene is ... engaged in layered deceptions..."

It is essential that nonduality constantly check and undo itself. If the worldly construction of nonduality -- as it is known in books, websites, forums, gatherings, conferences, satsangs, all media -- if it can't stand up to its decimation, what good is it?

Something else I like about this book is the quotations. They balance the book.

By around page 90 came the insight that I was reading a classic, even a potential screenplay with Jeff starring and doing the voiceover.

I also like how Jeff brings in Zen, Advaita, and Christianity. The emphasis on Christianity and crucifixion convey that Jeff knows Jesus the man, and resonates with the pain and the utter humanity exposed in this book, and yields this confession:

"Waking up from the dream of separation, there is a death, and that death, as Jesus said, is the only salvation. You have to lose your life to save it. And so when there is no-one, there isn't an empty void, a lonely and joyless black space devoid of all qualities, no, no, no. That void is full, it is bursting with life. ... And in that, all the concepts in the world dissolve."

Read An Extraordinay Absence and watch how you become comfortable with wonder.