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Book: Chop Wood, Carry Water: A Guide to Finding Spiritual Fulfillment in Everyday Life
Author: Rick Fields with Peggy Taylor, Rex Weyler, Rick Ingrasci
Year: 1984

Review

The title of the book comes from an old Zen proverb:
  Before enlightenment chop wood and carry water.
  After enlightenment chop wood and carry water.

This is a book about life goals and meditation. It does not come up with a new theory or a new philosophy but the authors take quotes from Buddha, Jesus Chrsit, Lao Tse, Confucius, Chinese Zen Masters, etc. and put them into a modern context, and into the context of our daily lives. The book touches many topics such as relationships, sex, family, money, work, and healing.

The book is an inspirational guide for everyday living. Above all it gives us impulses, ideas and thoughts of how we can integrate spirituality into our everyday lives where we have to deal with demanding kids, grocery shopping, doing the laundry, or a yelling boss.

Spiritual Message

I used the book to derive personal "thoughts" or "visualizations" for my meditation. For myself I turned the book into this short list of very basic meditation messages:

• Love yourself
• Love your body [good food, exercise, health, ...]
• Love others [friends, not-so-friends, enemies, anyone]
• Be open
  [listen, be open minded, be aware of synchronicities (see "The Celestine Prophecy")]
• Surrender
  [give up control, the Universe will take care of you, surrender to your partner (e.g. during sex), don't control your partner, loosen up, ...]
• We are all one
  [We are all connected, we are connected to our partner, what we do for/to them we do to ourselves, through people we are connected to their circle of friends, eventually we are connected to everyone.]
• I am healthy
  [Our physical state affects our spiritual state and vice versa; if my spirit knows that I am healthy my body will follow.]
• Be more passionate [This makes life more enjoyable.]

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