Recently a MacBlog reader asked what I’m reading for help in my personal grief-work. Since I know from letters to the editor at Great Scots Magazine that there is a legion of us out there who struggle to cope with death and dying the question about resources to help cope with grief-work is relevant to more than just me. Here, for example, is a letter published in 
the new Sep/Oct issue of GSM:
Dear Editor ~
I have been wanting to write you for some time and today it is very hot and humid in CT as I sit and wait for my husband to go to the Rainbow Bridge. He has lung cancer. In the room with the air conditioner on is his faithful girl, “Adie-McAdie,” our Scottie. She has been with him for 10 1/2 years in his retirement. I think they are joined at the hip. She loves me and I feed her, but am working so soon she will be alone for 8 hours a day. She’s never known that before. Both our lives are turned upside down. I didn’t think I’d be walking in your shoes last January, but here I am, heart in hand after 49 years. I, too, don’t know how I am going to fill the void. I thought that maybe you could do an artical about how our dogs can fill the void left when a spouse or loved-one dies leaving the person they love behind. I am very much afraid I will lose Adie-McAdie. This is placing more stress on an already stressfull time. Just a thought for a topic in your GSM. Keep up the good work. It provides a little stability in a very unsure world that we live in. Best of luck in your journey and grieving, and know there are many who have been in yours and my shoes, and many more behind us.
R C, Lebanon, CT
My GSM reader’s “very unsure world that we live in” is real for each of us. So let me share some books containing wisdom for the walking wounded–books I’ve read over the past month and highly recommend.
All my resource books have one thing in common: they each advocate empowerment of the individual through purposefully changing mental constructs and habits. The cumulative message in my resources meshes with the old King James translation of Proverbs 23:7, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Or, translated into technospeak: clean up the inputs; clean up the outputs … no garbage in, no garbage out! The idea is simple. Breaking cognitive habits of garbage thinking and replacing with wholesome mental habits is a life-work in progress.
First are three books by Deepak Chopra. You’ve likely seen him on TV or perhaps heard him speak as lecturer on Public Broadcasting Stations, so Chopra isn’t a new name to many of you. His book, Creating Affluence, is anything BUT a guide to materialism. His little book, however, is a more credible approach to the popular ‘The Secret’ doctrine of “the law of attraction” for creating wealth in the deepest and richest sense, starting with inner peace and freedom. This book resonated deeply for me because my Charlotte’s unnamed ‘mantra’ was “Call good things,” 
and that is essentially the theme of Creating Affluence. It’s an easy read, but don’t be fooled by this book’s aphoristic format. There is heavy-duty thinking and practice behind his alphabet-bite principles. If you want to grow rich from the inside out, spend some time assimilating Chopra’s ‘rules’ of affluence.
Chopra’s Why Is God Laughing? is not so much a book about god’s sense of humor as about human mind-sets that destroy happiness. Told initially in the book as a fictional story about a professional comedian’s struggle to find true happiness, the book is not preachy because the story-line draws the reader into Chopra’s philosophy of the good life unawares. The last section pulls out Chopra’s principles explicitly for learning and re-reading. Along the way, through the story of the comedian and the didactic principles, the question is answered, Why Is God Laughing? If you’re looking for a map to personal happiness that is fresh and not what you’ve been traditionally taught, check out Why Is God Laughing?
Chopra’s Path To Love is far more detailed than his ‘Laughing’ book. The focus is relational love, but the application and intention is to cultivate what the Dalai Lama calls “compassion” for all things. True love is not the ego-driven, self-absorbed thinking we’ve grown up with in our hearts and relationships. So, when you change the thinking, you change the behavior and the feelings and those changes change the outcomes. It’s decisional. It’s within our control. It’s a powerful mental shift that moves you to peace and inner happiness instead of the noisy heart so much a symbol of modern living.
I’ve also read recently three books by the Buddhist monk, Pema Chodron. Only one mentioned here, viz., Start Where You Are. Chodron is a very readable teacher, a no-nonsense, authentic seeker whose down-to-earth message is tough but honest and real. I saw her interviewed a couple of years ago by Bill Moyers and I was captivated by her humility, non-pretentiousness and quiet sincerity. Her books come across the same way. As I said, she’s tough in ripping off our masks and exposing the places we escape to in order to hide from our pain; tough in demanding that the only way to grow is to NOT 
avoid pain, but embrace it and learn from it and be softened by it. She’s a worthy guide because she embodies her message. Check her out.
Don Miguel Ruiz’s book, The Four Agreements, is a sleeper you want to get and read and practice. He’s a Toltec Indian medicine man who hands down Toltec wisdom in his pages. The four agreements are covenants you make with yourself to change your life: (1) to be impeccable with your word, (2) not to take anything personally, (3) not to make assumptions, (4) to always do your best. No rocket science here … but character science in abundance! Simple ideas, maybe, but life-changing and happiness-bringing when lived in daily life.
Tibet’s Dalai Lama’s book, The Art of Happiness, has been around for over a decade. 
The book is co-authored by Howard Cutler and consists of extended interviews Cutler did with the Dalai Lama on the topic of happiness. It’s all about cultivating compassion, empathy, and the practice of sincerely caring about others, not just yourself. Again, nothing new here, but old truth and a kick in our pants to quit complaining and to practice it.
The book that most directly focuses on happiness through changing our mind, is Sakyong Mipham’s Turning The Mind Into An Ally. This is a gem. Mipham shows the reader how to do elementary meditation and then walks you through the mine field of familiar mental ‘garbage’ that keeps us ego-driven, slavishly attached, fearful, and sad. As a bumper sticker I saw recently said: “Only YOU can prevent narcicism,” so also the message of Mipham and the others is YOU are the maker of your thoughts that color your perceptions and shape your emotional states, therefore YOU and I have power to ‘change our minds’ and by so 
doing change our happiness quotient and our lives.
Simple ideas that turn out to be not so simple to implement. But why should they be simple and painless? We’ve spent all our lives perfecting and clinging to bad mental habits that lead us to fear and worry and depression. It takes will power and effort to change, to discard our familiar garbage in, and replace it with what is mentally and emotionally good and wholesome.
The process is helping me. It will help you, too. Take your Scottie along on your journey … they’re ready for whatever path you take.
Joseph Harvill, publisher Great Scots Magazine
