Prose-Alchemy & SNN Books

03/07/2025

The Dreaming Gods, explores the exhilarating mysteries of human experience and how they reflect the wider reality of which we’re all a part. There’s also a bit of romance, as Colin Stanley points out in his review: “Skillfully interweaving metaphysical interludes, intellectual debate and a love story, The Dreaming Gods provides a thought-provoking, entertaining and convincing argument for, among other things, the merits of retaining an open mind.” Frank DeMarco (co-founder and former Editor-in-Chief of Hampton Roads Publishing Company) wrote of the book, “A damned fine novel of ideas.” You can find out more about it and buy it here:

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30/06/2025

The Dreaming Gods, explores the exhilarating mysteries of human experience and how they reflect the wider reality of which we’re all a part. There’s also a bit of romance, as Colin Stanley points out in his review: “Skillfully interweaving metaphysical interludes, intellectual debate and a love story, The Dreaming Gods provides a thought-provoking, entertaining and convincing argument for, among other things, the merits of retaining an open mind.” Frank DeMarco (co-founder and former Editor-in-Chief of Hampton Roads Publishing Company) wrote of the book, “A damned fine novel of ideas.” You can find out more about it and buy it here:

30/06/2025

04/06/2025

Frank DeMarco is the author of non-fiction books and novels exploring various aspects of communication with the non-physical world. Below is a link to a selection of interviews with him.

[My continued gratitude to my good friend Rich Spees for making this page — and the entire blog — possible . He and I have been friends ever since meeting at a program at The Monroe Institute in 1995. Scroll down for various interviews. They proceed from most recent back.] Not an interview, but ...

19/01/2025

An excerpt from The Sphere and the Hologram, by Frank DeMarco on how "The Guys Upstairs" access knowledge:

Rita: Okay, well, one question that arises for me is, how does all this information become available to you?

TGU: [pause] To us the process is more or less what it is to you when you’re thinking about something without needing external resources like books or conversation. It’s as though we’re ruminating, only we’re kind of gravitating toward the information.

http://ofmyownknowledge.com/2025/01/19/how-tgu-access-knowledge/
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“The mystical life is the center of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.”
-W.B. Yeats

20/12/2024

Exercises for Spiritual Advancement

Rita Warren: Well, here’s an easy one. A question from the same person.

F: We’d like to know what an easy question is. It’ll be interesting to see this.

R: [chuckles] What would you recommend as the five best exercises for spiritual advancement?

F: [pause] Not an easy one, but it’s an awfully good one.

Practice love every day. Find some object to love, whether it’s a pet or a flower or an abstraction or a car – it would be better if it were a person. As you practice this day by day, make the exercise a little more – Raise the bar. So that practice loving something that’s successively less lovable. Anyone can love a dog, because the dog thinks you’re wonderful. It takes a little more to love a cat, because the cat thinks it’s wonderful. It takes more to love a woodchuck, because a woodchuck doesn’t care one way or the other. It takes more to love a rattlesnake, because you’re afraid of it. So you could easily raise the bar a little bit every day. The practice of love is the practice of overcoming the illusion of distance.

That’s really one through five, but another exercise? [pause] Well, this won’t seem to have anything to do with the subject. Practice changing points of view. When you are in a dispute – or even if you are in a pleasant exchange with someone – try, every so often, changing into their point of view. Try to really see it as they see it, as opposed to the way you see it. All right? Swap back and forth. Now, that seems to have nothing to do with spiritual self-development, but you’ll be astonished. If you’re able to do it. Difficult exercise. [pause]

[chuckles] Do we have to come up with five? Those are two very good exercises!

From Frank DeMarco, author of The Sphere and the Hologram

Exercises for Spiritual Advancement Posted on September 27, 2007 by Frank DeMarco More than one person has pointed out that the TGU material can be a bit daunting. From time to time I intend to pull out particularly interesting or important material to let it be more easily found. This is from a ses...

06/12/2024

“The word 'noticing' is simple but profound, as is this book. The author takes you on a classic hero's journey you'll never forget. We not only vicariously experience his transformation but are inspired by the possibility that our own lives might be able to change in the same way.” ~ Steve Chandler, the Godfather of Coaching and author of Time Warrior, The Prosperous Coach, The Power of Systems, Fearless: Creating the Courage to Change the Things You Can, and over 35 other books

Every moment of life exists in its unique perfection.

Yet most of us experience the opposite: lives that feel fractured and overwhelming, overrun with negative thoughts and feelings that hijack and consume the present moment.

The Power of Noticing shows the way out. It points us to our gift of awareness, something always present, just forgotten in the tumult of life. To illustrate the power of noticing in action, author Will Keiper shares moments in his own life where simply noticing opened doors to new spaces of inner peace and understanding—and recalls times when it could have if he’d only gotten out of his own way. He offers insights into the science of how and why we notice, and step-by-step approaches to help you cultivate your own innate gift.

In a world filled with distractions, The Power of Noticing offers a “how-to” for experiencing living more fully moment-by-moment than you ever thought possible.

https://www.amzn.com/B0DMSSRRX3/

04/12/2024

Hard to put a reasonable price-tag on this invaluable book, written by Colin Stanley and published by Paupers' Press. If you’re familiar with Colin Wilson and have read more of his books than you’d care to admit (like, ahem, me), this is nonetheless an exquisite companion volume. Stanley is perceptive, thoughtful, insightful and comprehensive, offering overviews of the books in question (twenty-eight titles in all), as well as some background on how they were received by readers and reviewers. And if you’re relatively new to Wilson, Writing to Some Purpose offers an incredible window into his work. There are copious samples of his writing, providing one sense of why he is such a highly readable thinker, synthesizer and visionary. For me, Wilson’s work—in addition to being impactful in its own right—provided a launch pad for the exploration of human nature and the wider universe through a multiplicity of fields: psychology, philosophy, crime, the occult, music, art, s*x, literature and more. Stanley’s book serves as the same kind of launch pad into the world of Colin Wilson. Writing to Some Purpose is thus a particularly useful guide not only to Colin Wilson’s work but, by extension, an invitation to explore the farther reaches of ourselves.

22/07/2024

From Frank DeMarco:

Some counterfactual speculations from my novel Papa’s Trial: Hemingway in the Afterlife.

http://ofmyownknowledge.com/2024/07/22/hemingway-at-125-what-if/

Papa's Trial: Hemingway in the Afterlife

15/03/2024

Excerpts from The Sphere and the Hologram:

Frank DeMarco: This book originated as transcripts of a series of sessions Rita Warren and I conducted with “the guys upstairs,” (TGU) unnamed non-physical entities who were willing to address our curiosity as to the nature of the unseen world.

Co-author Rita Q. Warren on the impact of the TGU material:
What has changed for Frank and for me as a result of these experiences? . . . I have made some mental, emotional, and psychological changes during our adventures. There have been a number of ways in which the statements of The Guys Upstairs have been particularly powerful for me.

1. Choosing. Our assignment in this life is to choose and choose and choose again. Being exposed to all of the contacts with TGU led to greater awareness that we are continually choosing minute by minute in our lives. After all, if that is our main purpose in life, it is much better to bring it totally into consciousness. It is our way of continually creating ourselves . . .

2. Stretching our consciousness. Our current step developmentally is to bring all parts of ourselves to awareness. “Filling our crystal with awareness” is the way TGU phrase it. Looking at everything from an Upstairs (Oneness) and a Downstairs (individual) perspective is TGU’s recommendation; I am trying to do that as a way of redefining myself, remembering that the greater part of myself remains in the nonphysical.

3. Losing the dualities of here and there, now and then, us and them. In the timeless and spaceless world of TGU, we are in no way separate from them, and only here and now exist. We can bring our conscious focus on to the here and now, as is often recommended, and it is a useful thing to do since this is really what we have to work with. And knowing that we are One with our guidance is reassuring indeed.
. . to be continued . . .