I have enjoyed writing all of my books. And each was very different. Laughing with God was easy, fun and funny, like the book itself. It took only five days to write. Five action packed days. I would write a chapter and run to the house with it, read it to Jacki, laugh a lot and go write another chapter. There wasn't much editing necessary on Laughing with God, LWG, because it flowed so naturally and easily.
How to Win by Quitting wasn't nearly so easy. I had to keep quitting, forgetting the book, then starting all over. I had to model out the dance of quitting while writing the book. I reigned myself in a bit writing Quitting until I got to the Cakes, a particularly wild foreshadowing of writing that was to come in the next couple of books.
Thinking Clearly was my first book. My good friend Bill Fox, who is a spiritual book collector, called it a Beethoven Symphony. This book, I think, was written a bit more like other people write. It was chiseled from a much larger piece, or perhaps boiled down into a sweet useful form a bit like maple syrup. It doesn't mention NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming, but provides a grounding in NLP. It really isn't the first book I wrote, it is the second. The firt one found its way, unceremoneously, to the garbage. It just wouldn't come together, and, I suspect, had to test me a little as an author. Had to test whether I had what it took to throw out super hard work without the possibility of ever succeeding at writing a book. Out of the literal ashes of the first book, we had a fireplace in the cabin, rose Thinking Clearly. The book has half chapters, just for the fun of it, and is perhaps my most understandable book. It is also very practical with exercises and suggestions of specific things to practice at the end of each chapter.
I can't really remember writing Enlightenment is Losing Your Mind, ELM. It was my first venture into the wild world of downloading without editing. My friend Kazree says, "I keep it under my pillow and anytime I can't sleep, or just want a little fun, I pull it out and read a chapter." The book is a wild, playful and artful exploration of what moves us, who we are, how we got here and how in the world we will get to where else we are going. ELM is my first strictly vertical book. It dives directly toward who we really are, without stopping go or collecting two hundred dollars or dallying even a bit.
There are No Accidents is the easy reading, novel, twin of ELM. Read it for the fun and adventure of it all. Much of it is true, some of it is fiction, and all of it, hopefully, inspires you to write your own story as you want it or wish it to be.
Spiritual Seduction is a different sort of book. I recall years ago on a group call one guy I didn't even know said, "I have degrees in literature and study it as my passion. This book is my own personal War and Peace." Though I might not descirbe it that way I will tell you a little about its creation and I will probably continue to stay away from the book. In any spiritual pursuit there will be a time, or times, of descending. Spiritual Seduction was written in the six months of intense, frothy assention as I, unknowingly prepared to plummet into the Valley of Darkness. It was written because I had to write it, I had so much to say, so much to express before it disappeared. I stayed up late into the night writing, woke up early writing. I ate little and wrote a lot. Often in the middle of the night I would eat raw condensed milk just to keep me going as I was typing wildly.
Spiritual Seduction has foot notes within foot notes. It breaks many conventions and runs from stream of consciousness to waterfall to just plain confusing. This book, more than any other to date is one revelation after anoter revelation standing naked in the open unasamed. Richard Thompson, later to become a friend, wrote a cover quote for Spiritual Seduction.
"Jerry Stocking playfully dismantles our ideas about ourselvels, and shows us the possibilites of our lives. His new work is teasing and challenging, as it generously tweaks at our self-imposed limitations and offers us something closer to that which our hearts, minds and souls seem to be designed for. His philosophy is especially accessible to the Western reader, who cannot scan through a page without being confronted, in the nicest way, with himself."
Shortly after completing this book I went down, and down, and down some more. I entered a many layered retreat from spiritual heights and seeming immortality back to Earth, losing sight of my wings in the process. I did not have the money to publish Spritual Seduction and raised it by inviting people in an Illusion Conclusion Course to donate money toward the publishing costs. In return I would read the book to them. They donated about twelve thousand dollars and on the integration days of the Course I sat and read. I was already well down and reading the book was looking back at wild glory days from the pits of existence. You don't have to read Spiritual Seduction, you can listen to it complete with profuse comments that I made while reading.
Spiritual Seduction is a good book to read if you are too grounded, too literal and need a dose of wild creativity. Laughing with God is a good book to read if you want to be lighter, freer and have a good laugh. The best kind of laugh is to laugh at ourselves in the proccess of getting to know ourselves. Thinking Clearly will help you do just that: think clearly. It is a great basic NLP book with a lot more thrown in. Enlightenment is Losing Your Mind provides a guide book between the known and unknown. There are No Accidents is a love story along the lines of Way of the Peaceful Warrior. Coincidentally, Dan Millman, author of Way of the Peaceful Warrior, upon reading the initial manuscript suggested I make it into a novel to make it more accessible. |
