There are so many incredible books about spirituality and personal development. I never liked reading when I was younger, but since I’ve started my inner journey I love to read a good book. There’s so much knowledge out there and I’ve learned so much from it already.

Here I’ll share some of my favourite books!

1. The Untethered Soul – Michael A. Singer

This book describes how we all have a voice in our head and how crazy it is that we listen to that voice so much. Even though that voice is often like an annoying person who can’t shut up and who constantly needs to comment on literally everything around us. It never stops. The book is also about how we limit ourselves with this voice: our believes, judges, comments, fears. And how we can learn to let go and surrender, and to live with a more open heart instead of a closed heart (because of our fears and limiting believes).
How we can let go of the walls we build to protect ourselves.
How we can enjoy all of life, and not only the good / positive things.

When difficult emotions come up:

“Just open, relax your heart, forgive, laugh or do anything you want. Just don’t push it back down. Of course it hurts when it comes up. It was stored with pain. You have to decide if you want to continue walking around with stored pain blocking your heart and limiting your life…”

Beautiful, super interesting book. Definitely worth reading. Once, or twice (that’s what I did), or even more.

2. The Surrender Experiment – Michael A. Singer

I read this book in Dutch (“Het Overgave Experiment”, but it’s an American writer.

“Stop listening to your inner critic and live your most beautiful life.”
Well I could have written this myself (and I always have to say it to myself), because a big part of my life journey is about learning to live with and calm down my inner critic Harry. So, when I read this in the description of the book, I knew I had to read this!

Such an inspiring story it is!
In this book, Michael A. Singer tells his life story, how he took distance from his constantly chattering voice in his head. The voice we all have in our heads. He decided to not listen to that anymore and he started an experiment to respond on what live brought him, instead of forcing life with his own preferences of the mind. It’s incredible to read what happened to him and how everything fell into place just about right, because he dropped resisting the flow of life.
An extra motivation for me to learn to surrender to life even more.

3. The Four Agreements – Don Miguel Ruiz

My favourite book of 2022!
Two different people suggested this book to me the same month, so I knew: I have to read this. This book is absolutely incredible. Every time I was thinking: yes, yes, yes!
This book is based on the Mexican Toltec wisdom. It’s not a religion, more a spiritual way of life: “A way of life, distinguished by the ready accessibility of happiness and love.”

We live in a world full of rules, laws, believes, judgements, good or bad etcetera. From the moment we’re born we take on all these rules, that already existed, without thinking about it. Lots of what we think and do is unconsciously, imposed by our society, parents, community, school…
The christians say that if we behave badly, we will go to hell.
But Don Miguel Ruiz says: we let ourselves live in a hell on earth. We let ourselves suffer, because we constantly measure ourselves with certain things we should do or things people expect from us and what we expect from ourselves.
If we can’t meet these expectations (because it’s not possible to meet all these expectations perfectly) we start to judge others, but mostly ourselves.
In other words: we’re constantly suffering, and we do it to ourselves.

How can we get “heaven” on earth, is the question?
According to Don Miguel Ruiz, or the Toltec Wisdom, we can take unconscious “agreements” that doesn’t serve us anymore and replace them with four agreements who can help us escape from “hell”:
1. Be impeccable with your word
2. Don’t take anything personal
3. Don’t make any assumptions
4. Always do your best

Super inspiring, definitely worth reading!

4. Grace and Grit – Ken Wilber

“And so began the most extraordinary forty-eight hours of our life together. Treya had decided to die.”

On the last day of my 10-day silent retreat in Mexico, our teacher read a part of the last chapter of this book. Grace and Grit is an autobiographic lovestory between Ken Wilber (an American philosopher and writer) and Treya. Ten days after their marriage, Treya gets the horrible news that she has breast cancer. In this book Ken describes the whole process they go through together, from the moment they get the news until Treya’s death.

The passage I heard during the retreat touched me so, so much. I never heard such a beautiful, bittersweet story in my life. Hard to keep quiet with a snotty nose of getting emotional.  It gave me a different view on death. Ken describes in a beautiful way how he supports Treya in her process towards her death. That’s why I really wanted to read the whole book.

It gave me the realisation: if you spend a big part of your life with someone, and then you can also be a part of the ending of someone’s life… then that’s obviously the hardest, but also the most beautiful thing there is. Treya was keeping a diary during her sickness and Ken uses both her diary and his own vision and spiritual theories to tell the whole story.
It is a lot to read, this book. But it’s more than worth. Very interesting and special!

5. The Secret – Rhonda Byrne

The Secret was the first book I read about the law of attraction and it changed my life.
It was on my list to read for so long (and I hear that from more people).
Until someone mentioned it and told me it changed his life. Then I decided to finally read it.
It’s a beautiful introduction to the law of attraction. It’s called the secret because it says that when you know this, you know the secret of life. How to attract what you want? How to manifest into your life that what you desire? Everything is possible, according to the Secret.

5. Wake up to sleep – Charlie Morley

This book is a very practical book with interesting information about the importance of sleep and breathing correctly.
Full of simple (breathing) excercises and interesting topics like Yoga Nidra and lucid dreaming.
Definitely worth reading if you’re interested in sleep, breathing and . Also connected to trauma healing and how proper sleep and breathing reduces stress and anxiety.

6. Stillness Speaks – Eckhart Tolle

Eckhart Tolle is one of my favourite spiritual teachers.
He wrote incredible books like The Power of Now and A New Earth.
This book is almost like a summary of all his beautiful messages, food for thought / contemplation.
Everything he says is pointing towards your true self, to something beyond your mind / body / emotions / life story.
It touches your soul and if you’re open for it, you’ll sense that presence inside of you, that inner silence that is always there. Your true essence.
Everything he says is full of beautiful reminders.
So, definitely worth reading and opening on a random page every now and then, if you feel like you’re too much tangled in your “life problems” again.