Visionary mystic | Aesthetically sensitive | Born & bred New Yorker | Animal lover |
Patricia Albere
Like most of us, my ten favorite books change as both I and the world evolve. Lately, to be honest, my mystical nature has captured my attention quite completely. In Evelyn Underhill’s classic book, Mysticism: The Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness, she describes the attitude of the mystic:
“Where a philosopher guesses and argues, the mystic lives and looks, and speaks the disconcerting language of first hand-experience.”
I have the privilege in my work of working with hundreds of committed, dedicated human beings who are living within a shared unitive mystical dimension exploring new realities together. We are not learning about but living from what evolutionary forces are generously bestowing to those paying attention in the right way. Religion, science and most current spiritual knowledge is no longer sufficient to bring humanity forward. New potentials are being revealed for a future that is not only hopeful, but appears to be a final fulfillment of our deepest longing.
PATRICIA ALBERE is an internationally known contemporary spiritual teacher and bestselling author who has helped more than 200,000 people transform their lives and their consciousness over the last 40 years.
In the world of spiritual enlightenment, people who have experienced awakenings almost always experience them individually – eyes shut, in quiet solitude. In fact, the spiritual paradigm of the last three thousand years has been singularly devoted to our individual salvation or solo enlightenment.
Patricia Albere uniquely experienced a sustained awakening that resulted in a different kind of realization, a dual realization that happened with another. That shared awakening points to a new dimension of consciousness and an extraordinary possibility for humanity’s future. She is the founder of The Evolutionary Collective and author of the book, Evolutionary Relationships – Unleashing the Power of Mutual Awakening. Her work creates a powerful and palpable field of shared consciousness and love that reveals previously unimagined human potentials that can move humanity far beyond the limits of personal growth or self-development and into mutual awakening. | https://evolutionarycollective.com/
My 10 Best
The Nine Waves of Creation: Quantum Physics, Holographic Evolution, and the Destiny of Humanity by Carl Johan Calleman, Ph.D.
Dr. Carl Calleman reached out to me many years ago, after following my work prior to 2012. When we connected I had been sensing things directly that he speaks brilliantly about in this book about evolution and the waves of creation. I am working directly with the 9th wave of creation and the mutual awakening practice seems to be the perfect entry point to bring people into alignment with it. If you want to know why democracy seems to be crumbling or why the financial inequity in our world is growing and understand the forces creating the chaos in whivch we find ourselves, read this book. You may also find yourself feeling a sigh of relief, knowing that the deeper longing for a sacred world is arising mutually—between you and the awesome forces of existence.
Transcending the Levels of Consciousness: The Stairway to Enlightenment
by David Hawkins M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Hawkins uses muscle testing to illuminate the different levels of consciousness and density that human beings exist within. The levels are explained with richness and have been extremely useful in working with people in groups. It validated my instinct that it was crucial to bring people together to work from higher states of consciousness, beginning with courage and willingness. If you are dealing with people in trauma, anger, pride, you cannot begin to move together into unitive realities. It’s an important book for anyone who is dedicated to understanding how to grow and stabilize in lighter and more powerful states of existence.
Seductress: Women Who Ravished the World and Their Lost Art of Love by Betsy Piroleau
This may seem a strange choice, but I found these stories of historically influential women who were too old, too loud, too unattractive and just too much undermined societal norms and changed the world inspiring. As women, we need to challenge almost everything we are told about who we need to be to be loved or effective. I wish I had read the book when I was fifteen. As a woman now committed to bringing forth the radical potentials I see being offered by evolutionary forces, it really helps. It’s hard enough for women to be given recognition, even when they are relying on being backed by patriarchal institutions like religion, science, psychology, politics, etc. But to speak from the future as a sourced original voice, that takes an entirely new level of liberation.
The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography
by Frank Capra
As a child and teenager my favorite movies were created and directed by Frank Capra; Meet John Doe, You Can’t Take it With You, It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Lost Horizon, Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, It Happened One Night, A Pocketful of Miracles, and on and on. His autobiography illustrated that his life was indeed a Frank Capra movie—absolutely inspiring. I wrote to him when I was teaching for est in the 1970’s and he wrote me back supporting the work of transformation. It’s probably out of print, but worth finding and reading.
Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth and Everyday Magic by Martha Beck
In 2011 I found this book by a new author at the time, Martha Beck. It’s one of those brilliantly written stories that is not only a pleasure to read, but also conveys the reality of what it means to keep a pregnancy of a Down’s Syndrome child. The way she captures her journey inspires and indirectly teaches those who read it. By the time of this story, Martha had two degrees from Harvard. She writes that she “had to unlearn virtually everything Harvard taught [her] about what is precious and what is garbage.” It’s one of the very few books I’ve read more than once.
I Ching Workbook
by R.L. Wing
From time to time, I throw the coins and am fascinated by the brilliance of insight that arises in this ancient text. When our minds get too familiar and busy with the direction we think we should continue with, I find the wisdom in the I Ching shakes up or validates what I am seeing.
Facets of Unity: the Enneagram of Holy Ideas
by A.H. Almaas
From the 1990’s to 2005 I studied and taught the enneagram and have found the knowledge to be powerful in displaying the vast territory of the individual incarnational journey. You can see the ego development from the pathological to the highest expressions of an awakened soul. This book is dedicated to the holy ideas which are the pure states that are available to us as human beings.
The Mother
by Sri Aurobindo
This very important small book by Sri Aurobindo deals with the actions of the Divine powers in the world, particularly the powers of the Divine Feminine. I hate to use that description because most of what is said about the Divine Feminine doesn’t resonate for me. Here’s an excerpt about one of the powers of the Mother:
This is the power of Mahalakshmi and there is no aspect of the Divine Shakti more attractive to the heart of the embodied beings.
Maheshwari can appear too calm and great and distant for the littleness of earthly nature to approach or contain her, Mahakali too swift and formidable for its weakness to bear; but all turn with joy and longing to Mahalakshmi.
For she throws the spell of the intoxicating sweetness of the Divine: to be close to her is a profound happiness and to feel her within the heart is to make the existence a rapture and a marvel; grace and charm and tenderness flow from her like the light from the sun and wherever she fixes her wonderful gaze or lets fall of the loveliness of her smile, the soul is seized and made captive and plunged into the depths of an unfathomable bliss.
Magnetic is the touch of her hands and their occult and delicate influence refines the mind and life and body and where she presses her feet course miraculous streams of an entrancing Ananda.
And yet it is not easy to meet the demand of this enchanting Power or to keep her presence.
Harmony and beauty of the mind and soul, harmony and beauty of the thoughts and feelings, harmony and beauty in every outward act and movement, harmony and beauty of the life and surroundings, this is the demand of Mahalakshmi. Where there is affinity to the rhythms of the secret world-bliss and response to the call of the All-Beautiful and concord and unity and the glad flow of many lives turned towards the Divine, in that atmosphere she consents to abide.
But all that is ugly and mean and base, all that is poor and sordid and squalid, all that is brutal and coarse repels her advent.
Where love and beauty are not or are reluctant to be born, she does not come; where they are mixed and disfigured with baser things, she turns soon to depart or cares little to pour her riches.
If she finds herself in men’s hearts surrounded with selfishness and hatred and jealousy and malignance and envy and strife, if treachery and greed and ingratitude are mixed in the sacred chalice, if grossness of passion and unrefined desire degrade devotion, in such hearts the gracious and beautiful Goddess will not linger.
A divine disgust seizes upon her and she withdraws, for she is not one who insists or strives; or, veiling her face, she waits for this bitter and poisonous devil’s stuff to be rejected and disappear before she will found anew her happy influence. Ascetic bareness and harshness are nor to her not the suppression of the heart’s deeper emotions and the rigid repression of the soul’s and the life’s parts of beauty.
For it is through love and beauty that she lays on men the yoke of the Divine
The Grand Option: Personal Transformation and a New Creation by Beatrice Bruteau
Beatrice Bruteau is a visionary in her own right, but more importantly, an adept student of Teilhard de Chardin. As I began the work of the evolutionary collective and discovered Teilhard de Chardin, I was overjoyed with the resonance and alignment I felt with his vision of evolution, the noosphere and potentials for humanity inside a communion of consciousness. For me, of all the books I’ve read, including Teilhard’s books, The Grand Option is the most inspiring and informative. Our work has since discovered an evolutionary dimension beyond the noosphere, the spondisphere. More about that later….
Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future
by Tracey Bashkoff
Hilma af Klint painted from the 1890’s until her death in 1944. She was a visionary and her works sourced by the future. In 1906 she began painting abstractly before Kandinsky, Mondrian and others. ‘The Paintings for the Temple’ were works that were envisioned to be housed in a round building, where visitors would progress upward along a spiraling path, on a spiritual journey defined by her paintings. This description of her vision to me, as a New Yorker, is manifest in the Guggenheim. In her will, she determined that her works would not be shared with the world until twenty years later. She inspires me, with the power of her work, her vision and her courage as a woman to bring forth the future.