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Symbols & Stillness | Books for Your Inner Practice
25
items A reading companion to Your Daily Ritual and A Quiet Sanctuary: books on tarot, dreams and symbolism, daily rituals and journaling, meditation, silence and deep listening, and contemplative traditions. Explore different approaches to inner practice, ...
Sections
4
Tarot, Dreams & Symbols
Rituals, Journaling & Self-Discovery
Meditation, Sound & Stillness
Contemplative Wisdom & Connection
Tarot, Dreams & Symbols
Rachel Pollack's classic walks through all 78 cards, Major and Minor Arcana, explaining their symbolism and how the images connect into a larger story. It suits slow, card-by-card reflection at the tarot desk. An in-depth reference to return to again...
Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom
Jessa Crispin approaches tarot as a tool for creative thinking, pairing each card with writers, artists and stories from their working lives. It accompanies the creative reflection and journaling side of the tarot corner. A friendly starting point fo...
The Creative Tarot
More than 800 pages of short essays on individual symbols, from animals and plants to the body and the cosmos, each paired with images from art across cultures and eras. A place to look up an image that appears in a card, a dream or a pattern. A comp...
The Book of Symbols. Reflections on Archetypal Images
Benebell Wen's annotated translation of the I Ching, the Chinese Book of Changes, with cultural and historical commentary on each of the 64 hexagrams and their lines. It offers a different symbolic system to explore beside tarot, within its own Chine...
I Ching, the Oracle
Jung and four colleagues explain how dream images, myths and archetypes such as the shadow can be understood, with many illustrations from art and history. It offers a psychological lens on the images that recur in cards and dreams. A good starting p...
Man and His Symbols
Jungian analyst Robert A. Johnson sets out a four-step approach to working with dreams (associations, dynamics, interpretation and ritual) and a method for active imagination. It suits keeping a dream journal or reflecting on symbols after a reading....
Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth
Rituals, Journaling & Self-Discovery
Tristine Rainer describes a range of journaling techniques, from free writing and lists to unsent letters, dialogues and dream records, with ideas for using a diary for self-guidance and creativity. It pairs with the journal on the tarot desk. A prac...
The New Diary: How to Use a Journal for Self-Guidance and Expanded Creativity
A twelve-week program built around Morning Pages, three pages of longhand writing each morning, and a weekly solo Artist Date, with exercises and prompts in every chapter. It goes naturally with the journaling corner of the tarot room. A practical st...
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
Casper ter Kuile looks at how everyday activities such as reading, walking, eating together or a weekly pause can become intentional rituals, drawing on practices like sabbath, pilgrimage and sacred reading. It suits anyone shaping a small daily ritu...
The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities into Soulful Practices
Joe Dispenza presents his approach to changing habitual patterns of thought and feeling, framed through his own reading of neuroscience and physics, and closes with a four-week, step-by-step meditation program. It suits a self-reflection or journalin...
Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One
Meditation, Sound & Stillness
Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh introduces mindfulness through short stories and simple exercises, from following the breath to washing the dishes with full attention. It accompanies sitting practice on the zafu in the meditation room. A gentle starting ...
The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
Meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg introduces metta, the Buddhist practice of lovingkindness, together with compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity, with guided meditations in each chapter. It accompanies sitting practice in the meditation room. A...
Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness
Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge offers 33 short reflections on where silence can be found, in nature, in the city and within ourselves, and why it is worth seeking out. Its brief, quiet chapters suit a moment before or after meditation or a listening...
Silence: In the Age of Noise
Composer Pauline Oliveros sets out her Deep Listening practice, with exercises in breath and body awareness, focused and global attention, sonic meditations and dream journaling. It goes with the sound and mindful-listening side of the meditation roo...
Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice
Drawing on his workshops, Joe Dispenza sets out a series of guided meditations, including work with the body's energy centers, the heart and a walking meditation, alongside reader stories. It can accompany a longer meditation practice for those curio...
Becoming Supernatural: How Common People Are Doing the Uncommon
Eckhart Tolle's spiritual guide to living in the present moment, written largely in a question-and-answer style about the thinking mind, the ego and awareness. It pairs with quiet sitting and moments of stillness in the meditation room. A widely read...
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Informal talks by Shunryu Suzuki, the Soto Zen teacher who founded the San Francisco Zen Center, on zazen posture and breathing, attitude in practice and keeping a fresh, open beginner's mind. It accompanies sitting meditation on the zafu. A classic ...
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki
Contemplative Wisdom & Connection
Kabir Helminski, a teacher in the Mevlevi Sufi tradition, writes about presence, attention and the heart as they are understood in Sufism, with practical reflections for everyday life. It accompanies quiet contemplative reading in the sanctuary. A th...
Living Presence (Revised): The Sufi Path to Mindfulness and the Essential Self
365 short selections of Rumi's poems and teachings, one for each day of the year, translated and arranged by Kabir and Camille Helminski within the Mevlevi Sufi tradition. Suited to a brief daily reading at the start or end of a sit. An easy entry po...
The Rumi Daybook: 365 Poems and Teachings from the Beloved Sufi Master
Attar's 12th-century Persian Sufi poem, in a verse translation by Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis, follows the birds of the world as the hoopoe leads them through seven valleys in search of the Simorgh, with parables along the way. It rewards slow, co...
The Conference of the Birds
Lao Tzu's 81 short chapters of Taoist thought on simplicity, softness and following the way of nature, in Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English's translation, revised with Toinette Lippe and paired with Jane English's photographs. A Taoist classic, distinct f...
Tao Te Ching (Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English translation, with Toinette Lippe)
Botanist and Citizen Potawatomi Nation member Robin Wall Kimmerer weaves Indigenous teachings, plant science and personal essays on reciprocity and gratitude toward the living world. It suits time spent with plants and the seasons, and reflective rea...
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Katherine May's memoir follows a difficult season of her life from September to March, drawing on solstice customs, folklore and the natural world to reflect on rest and retreat. It pairs with marking the seasons and the turning of the year in a quie...
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
Eckhart Tolle extends the ideas of The Power of Now, looking at how identification with the ego shapes everyday thoughts, emotions and relationships, and what he describes as a shift in consciousness. It suits slower, reflective reading after a sit. ...
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Alan Watts traces Zen Buddhism from its roots in Indian Buddhist and Chinese Taoist thought through its principles and practices, written for Western readers. It suits contemplative reading alongside the Tao Te Ching in this section. A thoughtful int...
The Way of Zen