3 Books That Helped My Spirituality Evolve Beyond Childhood Faith

About a year ago, I spent some time reflecting and created a list of the 24 Wisdom Teachers Who Have Changed My Life. The books listed in this article didn’t just “change” my life – they helped my spirituality to evolve in complexity and commitment to humanity.

If any of them sound compelling or challenging for you, I invite you to grab a copy, either through the links or through your local library!

My recent book Unmasking the Inner Critic: Lessons for Living an Unconstricted Life is on now sale – Click here to grab a copy!

Wild Mercy – Mirabai Starr

This book…this book is amazing. It helped my image of the divine “grow up.” After years of examining and deconstructing my experience of God as a white, male, Zeus-like figure, Mirabai’s words in this book helped me to finally put words to my actual experience of the Divine. She helped me create space for my own story and invited me to engage it. Highly recommend picking up Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics. 

(Fun fact: Amazon happily reminded me that I’ve now purchased this book four times because I keep giving it away – it’s THAT good.)

My Grandmother’s Hands – Resmaa Menakem

While not explicitly spiritual in nature, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies is undoubtedly a spiritual book. If an engaged spirituality is all about developing the capacity to see Reality/What is Real/the Divine more clearly, this book is a wisdom-filled guide in just that.

Resmaa Menakem provides narrative, powerful questions, and body-based practices to help people examine and reveal how white supremacy exists in our bodies; for white Christians in particular, it is a beginning place – a guide to start with –  for how to remove the log of racism and white supremacy from our collective eyes.

Radical Dharma – angel Kyodo williams

In Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation, Rev. angel is joined by Lama Rod Owens and Jasmine Syedullah in a truly powerful conversation about all things spiritual. Coming from a Buddhist lens, they discuss the connection between spirituality and activism, harm caused by spiritual communities, and the importance of these spiritual communities in engaging healing and providing communal space for the collective work of liberation.

This book pushed me – it challenged me to lean into spiritual practice as activist in nature – and I hope it’s equally challenging for you.

Engage in Your Inner Work

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This post contains links to several book recommendations that have made a large impact on me; if you end up buying any of them, I’ll get a small commission from Amazon for sharing them.