Reddit reviews How Can I Help?: Stories and Reflections on Service

I feel you. Lately it seems if you resolve some negativity, within or without, the cyclical Universe is arranged such that it just dumps another problem in your path. I believe the focus is not to turn away entirely from those situations and people who are generating negativity, but try to be available to help. Yet this is a delicate situation as being present to enliven 'the darkness' means that you are exposed to be taken advantage of, and pulled under by the weight of the world - a process that does not hesitate to convince you that its problems are somehow your problems. In psychotherapy this is known as transference.

Ram Dass has a book that explores some of these issues, titled "How Can I Help?"

Society is in the habit, via propaganda, of rendering the value of the person as an instrument in the betterment of the totality - and thus your soul is sold as a functional mechanism that exists to serve the broken parts of 'The Machine'. It may create a heresy out of any voice or signal that assuages our anxiety-default that something must be wrong. Politics, economics, and much of bureaucracy exists to fix problems, and its success depends on keeping people in a low-grade static of worry about the future. To truly be content in the present may as well render you an alien, as the prototypical zeitgeist is a fight against entropy ("Star Wars").

Spirituality and loving-kindness is focusing, remembering, sharing, and dreaming forward with a celebration of what is not broken, what is not dark and destructive, and what is far removed from the blemishes of time. It can feel that there is not much space for these energies except in ashrams, seminaries, temples, synagogues, or other retreat spaces... still, we can bring our love with us and radiate that kindness everywhere. Perhaps the evolution is appreciating the body as the temple, nature as the sacred, and each other as reflections of the living heart. Then the artificial walls of fear created by misbelief, distrust, and ignorance will dissolve in the presence of those higher frequencies.

Ezra Pound wrote, "THE TEMPLE IS HOLY BECAUSE IT IS NOT FOR SALE."

At this point, selling out is believing the negativity. I don't buy the circus show or parlor tricks of hate, of guilt, of shame, of violence. Instead: I remember love. I remember peace. Om shanti, shanti, shanti

Thoreau: Walden, although non-fiction, may be the closest.

Ram Dass: How Can I Help, also non-fiction, has stories that are perhaps what you are looking for.

Ken Wilber One Taste. Wilber's meditative "journal" for a year. It's one of my 5 top books ever.

Ken Wilber: Grace and Grit. "Here is a deeply moving account of a couple's struggle with cancer and their journey to spiritual healing."

In another area are Carlos Castenedas books, which came out as non-fiction but there have been arguments they are fiction, and I don't know or mind either way. They are based on shamanistic drug use, but I believe it all is possible without drugs.

The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge

I have not read (Lila) Kate Wheeler's works, but I have heard of them. I've not read them mostly because if I can't get them at the library, I am too cheap to buy them.

Not Where I Started From

Nixon Under the Bodhi Tree is a collection of works and the authors there might lead you to more of their works.

I did read Bangkok Tatoo which has some Buddhist meditation themes in it, but it wasn't really to my liking.

The Four Agreements is said to be like Carlos Casteneda's books, but I have not read it.

Bottom line, I've read a lot, and I can't find any matches in my memory for Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. If I think of any I'll add it as an edit.

If you find anything interesting, please pm me, no matter how far in the future it is!

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Edit: as per the reply below, I've added here if anyone has "saved" this post:

I thought of two more, these actually should be higher on my earlier list:

The Life of Milarepa : "The Life of Milarepa is the most beloved story of the Tibetan people amd one of the greatest source books for the contemplative life in all world literature. This biography, a true folk tale from a culture now in crisis, can be read on several levels.... "

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which was the start of all books titled, "Zen and the Art of ____." "One of the most important and influential books written in the past half-century, Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a powerful, moving, and penetrating examination of how we live . . . and a breathtaking meditation on how to live better."

Found it =)