5 Essential Spiritual Books to Explore in 2025

Are you curious about spirituality but don't know where to start? In this episode, I share five book recommendations for those wanting to dip their toes into spiritual concepts in a very accessible way. These books offer wisdom whether you're new to spirituality or returning to deepen your understanding.

Books Recommended:

1. The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield
   • A fictional story exploring the interconnectedness of beings
   • Introduces concepts of meaningful coincidences, energy fields, and subtle communication
   • Perfect starting point for those new to spiritual concepts
2. Many Lives, Many Masters by Dr. Brian Weiss
   • Chronicles a psychiatrist's unexpected journey into past life regression therapy
   • Shows how past life experiences may influence current challenges
   • Bridges traditional psychology with spiritual exploration
3. Journey of Souls by Dr. Michael Newton
   • Explores the spiritual realm between physical lives
   • Documents patterns from thousands of regression therapy sessions
   • Offers perspective on how we may choose our life challenges for spiritual growth
4. The Awakened Brain by Dr. Lisa Miller
   • Combines personal experience with neuroscience research
   • Demonstrates how spirituality strengthens brain health
   • Shows how spiritual practice protects against depression, addiction, and loneliness
5. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
   • Written by a psychiatrist who survived concentration camps
   • Explores how finding meaning transforms our experience of suffering
   • Emphasizes our power to choose our response to any circumstance

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Transcript

Tatiana: 0:00

Before we dive into today's episode, I wanted to share something special with you. If you've been listening to our conversations about integrating spirituality into therapy, you might be wondering where to start with your own clients. To help you with that, I've created a free guide called 20 Client Conversation Starters, exploring Spirituality. Ethically, Now these aren't just any random questions. They're carefully crafted prompts designed to open up meaningful dialogue while respecting ethical boundaries and diverse beliefs. With each question, you will be given a context for when and how to raise it with a client to provide you with that extra guidance. You can download this guide right now by heading to the link in the show notes and let me know how you go with using this conversation. Starters, I'd love to hear from you. Now it's today's episode. Welcome to the Integrated Wisdom Podcast. I'm your host, Tatiana DaSilva. Join me as we discuss what it means to live an integrated life and explore ways for you to create a life filled with greater meaning, peace and connection by integrating the wisdom of spirituality, psychology. Neuroscience, epigenetics and energy psychology. I hope to empower you to create deeper and more loving connections with yourself and others, whilst also paving the way for humanity at large to be reimagined and inspired to become the very best version of. Hello and welcome to the integrated wisdom podcast. What I wanted to do is start today's episode with just some recommendations for those few that are curious, who. Oh, I want to do a deeper dive into some spiritual concepts. Wants to start understanding a little bit about what spirituality has to offer. On, uh, I guess a tangible on a practical level. And. But also want to just start opening themselves up to exploring these concepts. Uh, you know, with doesn't feel too cold fronting and too out there. So I'm waiting to be talking through five book recommendations. Two. I invite you to start exploring these topics a little bit more fully. Some of them you may have already encountered. If you're here, obviously you're really somewhat curious about spirituality. So you may have encountered some of these books. But if not, you know, they definitely would be amazing books to start with. But I think they're also the types of books that don't hurt to go back to again and again. Because you start to uncover other pearls of wisdom and things that we would benefit from. With. You know, going away and coming back with a fresh perspective, with a little bit more lived experience, it adds assertion nuance to that, to the book that we may not have received that first time. That we were dead. So let's get going. The very first book that I'm going to suggest. Is. Probably. One of the very, very first books that I read. That started me thinking about more of the energetics of being a spiritual being on us. And it's the Celestine Prophecy it was. Probably a much more popular book when I first read it, which was in the nineties. Give me my age away. But I was blown away. I think it was in the nineties now. I'm pretty sure it was in the nineties. But it was blowing away by the concept It is written as a fictional story. But the underlying premise. Is, it talks about the interconnectedness of all beings and it speaks to. How coincidences aren't always coincidences the concept of signs. The concept of fate. Uh, and the fact that we are spiritual beings here, having a human experience. I remember it being a really like, Gauging read a lot, reading that book. And, you know, talked about the aura that people have and the aura of objects, which is really just the energy, you know? Field that we, we have as an extension of our. So entity. And how we communicate about certain things in a, an unspoken way, or we can pick up information from our environments in subtle ways. So that was the very first book that I encountered that started exploring these topics or opening that concept up for me. So many years, not fast forward, two years down the track. Thinking back to, I don't know, 2018 thinkers. When I first encountered this person's work. But there is a. A biologist. From the UK. Called Rupert Sheldrake and his whole field of study. Is around what he termed morphogenetic fields. Right. Morphogenetic fields of these. Subtle energy field or electric magnetic fields that hold energy that allow different beings and species to communicate with each other telepathically. Or, you know, in subtle ways. And so science has been starting to demonstrate. In practical, tangible ways. Some of those concepts that I encountered way back, you know, 20 years earlier. Which is really exciting. And I think we're seeing more and more of that. At the moment with a lot of scientific studies. Focusing on demonstrating more subtle. Somewhat spiritual elements to life. Though they may not be calling it that. And so the Celestine Prophecy is a book I would really recommend to just, if you're really like really new. You don't really have much of a spiritual. Leaning. At all or any understanding or exposure to energy? I would really highly recommend starting with that book. It was a great read. And it just sucks to open up. Your mind a little bit to the possibilities. So it's the Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield. I will put a link in the show notes for you. Well, those of you who are interested in having a look at it. Then the second book that I would recommend, which again is one of those earlier books that I encountered that really blew my mind. And for me particularly, it was a very impacting book. Well, it was a very impactful book because it was the first inkling that I received. That as a psychologist. I could allow myself to venture into the spiritual. Discussions and talk about these things without. Compromising my own without potentially compromising my professional integrity. And that's many lives, many masters by Dr. Brian Weiss. So for those of you who are not familiar with Dr. Weiss, he is a psychiatrist. He was quite a super now and respectable psychiatrist and atheist. And he's worked a lot with the use of hypnotic regression in his therapeutic work. And many lives, many masters is the first of many books that he has published. In his work chronicling. He transitioned from a more traditional form of regression therapy to starting to become almost like one of the leading experts in past life regression therapy. A chronic follows his work with a particular client of his way back in the eighties. I think it was. Who had, uh, an intractable phobia. That no matter what he tried or the normal, you know, the usual tools of the trade weren't working. And until he one day during a hypnosis. Nordic regression. He instructed this client to go back to the source origin of her phobia and she spontaneously went back to a past life. So this many lives, many masters Chronicles, that experience, and some of the insights that he was then able to obtain. Through that work. That then became his life work. It's what he does to this day. Oh, he doesn't do client work anymore, but he's become a renown and author in this area, he's run a lot of workshops. Guiding people on how to do past life regressions or guiding them through their own experiences. Uh, which is remarkable. I had the opportunity to. To see him life was when he came here to Australia. A few years ago. And it was remarkable experience. So I highly recommend that book because it starts to, again, explain a little bit about this concept of. There's more to, to. Our life and what w why we're here. And maybe even some of the struggles that we have. That. May not just be tied to what we are experiencing in this life that they're there. Echoes of experiences that we have had in the past. And of course, you know, when you allow yourself to think about that more deeply. You can see that there are lots of implications for. The challenges that we encounter in life, whether it be. Relational challenges with people that we have in our lives, whether it be. Some mental health challenges, some physical health challenges, even. You know, there's a lot of implications for how we perceive. The struggles. When you start factoring in the possibility of. I guess an overlay or an echo. Of a previous experience that we've had in a previous life. That might be. Poking through. The life that we're living currently. So it's a book I highly recommend again. I will put it in the show notes for you. All his books are great. But I think in order for you to get the most of the other books, it really helps to read. His origin story. If you like in Many Lives, Many Masters, to really understand how he came to do this work and. Why he became. His life's focus. The third book. That I would highly recommend. Again, in the realm of. Exploring our. soul essence or the fact that we have previous lives and how we come to shape the lives that we have. And again, another Person who indirectly gave me permission to own my psychologist Identity as well as my spiritual, identity. And that is Journey of Souls by Dr. Michael Newton. So Dr. Michael Newton was a psychologist. He was a clinical psychologist in the us. And he also did a lot of work with regression therapy. And through experimenting with clients and through his work, he discovered that some clients were able to not just recall. Previous lives, but they could actually connect with. The. The state that we would be in, in between lives. So, you know, in a spiritual dimension or realm, And through thousands of client work. He documented. A lot of what the spiritual realm looks like, how it operates. Some of the. I guess. The ways and we tweak come to decide. The life that we are going to people in inter some of the lessons that we choose to experience while we're here. You know, it's a very impactful book. Because it starts to demonstrate or open up. The conversation for this idea that. We're not. Helpless victims of circumstance that life yes, can be very challenging. But we're not just having things happen to us. That in many cases. There. Experiences that we've signed on for or challenges that we've signed on for always engineered for. In order for our own or not facilitate on growth. And learning as spiritual beings. Sorry, his book is he's very methodically documented a lot of details from that in-between lives state. Which is, you know, fascinating. So I would highly recommend that you have a read through. Through that book. And again, we're putting, I'll put the link in the show notes. But, you know, just curiously. There are some researchers at the university of Virginia that have spoken about. They've been chronicling. Instances or cases of children who spontaneously remember past lives. For many decades, you know, Parroting all the way back to late forties, fifties. I think it is. And in a large proportion of those cases, even though they couldn't include that data. In their analysis because they couldn't cooperate it. But a large proportion of these children would also report. Memories of that in between lives state. Uh, which I think is pretty fascinating, right? Because you have the, you know, you have someone like Dr. Newton. Who is yes. Through hypnosis. Guiding people to access information about those states. And we can definitely have conversations about no. Are they being, uh, how suggestible. Oh, these clients in that stage, you know, how much is. Is the practitioner leading them to have these memories or fantasies. But the fact that independently of that. People like. No Dr. Jim Tucker, for example, have documented and interviewed children who not under hypnosis. But through spontaneous. Memory reporting. Have indicated or provided examples of memories. From this in-between lives state. Sure we can't corroborate it. But if we stay in that state of curiosity, If we put on this hat of. Looking for patterns, right? When independent sources are pointing to similar things at the very least. Right. Especially for those of us who are practitioners listening to this. And hold. Tightly to our scientists, like to in the ideals of science and. You know, learning. At the very least it gives us cause to think. What is this pointing to right. Wanted to dive a little bit deeper. To wonder what if. There might be other logical explanations. For why? These information is coming through. But one of the hypothesis that we would be remissed to leave out is could it be that there's a supporting the idea that there is a spiritual world? That we connect with. When we're no longer in physical form. So it's one of the reasons why I think journey of falls is a great book. To read. He's very methodical in the way that he's collated the information. And really only included. Details that were corroborated by multiple clients. So, you know, when we think about the scientific method, And the fact that things need to be able to be replicated independently. In order for it to be considered. You know, in the realm of scientific proof. With these sorts of concepts, it's much, much harder to create independent experiments that are replicable. But I think we come really close to something like that. When you have individuals. Reporting the same thing on the separate circumstances. Right. So yeah, the very least it gives you some, yeah. Some things to consider and think about. So highly recommend journey, your souls. The fourth book. That I would suggest that I think is fantastic. And it really now starts bridging the gap between science and spirituality. Is written by Dr. Lisa Miller. Her I feel is. Producing such important work. In PA, like in really championing for the integration of spirituality. Into our understanding of what it means to be a human being. And how to navigate some of the challenges that we have as human beings. And in her book, The Awakened Brain it is a beautiful combination of her own. Personal experiences with spirituality and in her journey and some of her own. Personal challenges, but also the research that she's been very actively involved in producing or exploring to demonstrate the benefits of having a spirituality, having a spiritual practice to mental and health. Uh, mental and physical health. I think her book is groundbreaking in so many ways, because it is, or. Uh, heavily based on science and neuroscience in particular, it shows how spirituality interacts and strengthens our brain health. It's strengthened. So, mentoring in the marginal health. But also how it protects us from some of the challenges that we have to experience this. That we have to experience in life. You know, it protect us from depression. It protects us from. Addiction feelings of loneliness. and suicidal suicidality, which at the moment it's such a, you know, there's such a rising epidemic of individuals committing suicide. Uh, for all age groups. So. You know, there's such an urgency, I think too. To connect people to their spirituality. And I think. Dr. Lisa Miller in her book. The awakened brain makes a fantastic case for why that is important and why the time before it is now, if not yesterday. To start prioritizing this in our lives. And lastly. A book that isn't overtly spiritual. It is, it's very much a kind of a semi autobiography, but also. Uh, Psychological manual, which you like. But the core message of this book. 100% spiritual. And that is Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. For those of you who haven't read it, I highly recommended. It is an extremely impactful and powerful book. Dr. Frankel, for those of you who are not familiar. Was a psych. Kai interest. I believe. Around. The time of world war two. He and his family were. Taken into concentration camps during world war two. And you lost almost every single family member at the time. In the camps. He was one of the few people that came out alive. From that harrowing experience and in man's search for meaning he Chronicles that, but also speaks to. How. In order for us to navigate. Some of the challenges and downright atrocities that life can throw at us. Our most. Important. Power where our power really lies is in our capacity to apply meaning to what we are experiencing. Like, no matter what I am subjected to, no matter what's stripped away from me. No one can take away from me the choice I make on how I, respond, how I react to what I'm experiencing. That is where our power truly lies. And it's where our control truly lies. Right. So many people will come to therapy. Wanting to learn how to control their emotions and control. Some of the things that they feel uncertain about. Right? A lot of it's that discomfort with sitting with uncertainty. Which can make life really challenging, but it's unavoidable. And. They're looking for external ways to control their lives when really the only thing they can control. It internal, right? It's what they do. And how they respond. And so in man's search for meaning Dr. Frankel makes a beautiful. Case for that. And illustrates really powerfully. How, When we're able to ascribe a meaning. To even. The most painful. Of experiences. We are no longer subjected to suffering. Right. Pain is inevitable. There are always going to be painful experiences that we have to navigate as human beings. But suffering is optional. Because suffering is just pain about having pain. And when we were able to scribe, meaning, find some sort of learning. Or. Purpose. Or wisdom. In the pain. That completely frees us from the suffering. So it's, I think man's search for meaning is mandatory reading for every person on earth. It really does help us find that inner power that we hold. And navigating life. And navigating. You know, pain. So I highly recommend. For those of you that may not have read it. And so just a recap of those top five books that I think if you're keen to read a little bit more about spiritual topics in 2025, if that's the year that you're going to start diving a little bit deeper, these concepts. These are the five books that I would suggest you start with. So number one, the Celestine Prophecy. Number two. Many lives, many masters. Number three Journey of Souls. Number four The Awakened Brain. And number five Man's Search for Meaning. I will put a link to all of these books. In my show notes to make it easier for you to find them. You can probably get them on ebook, or I know that men search for meaning is even available as a free PDF. On online. Sorry. I encourage you to have a look at that. And, but that is all I have for you today. Thank you for joining me. And I will speak to you all soon. Thanks. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Integrated Wisdom. It's my sincere wish that today's episode may have intrigued and inspired you to reclaim your power and step into becoming more fully integrated spiritual beings. New episodes are published every second Wednesday, and I hope you'll continue to join us as we dive deeper into what it means to live an integrated life. So if it feels aligned to you. I invite you to hit subscribe and share it with others who you feel may benefit to. Meals will find me on Instagram at integrated underscore wisdom. Remember, each moment is an opportunity to embrace your divine potential and create a world that is more frequently inspired. So for now, stay connected, stay inspired, and keep shining your light into the world.