While I was leafing through this book, looking for evidence of another heresy attributable to a fault of the translation, I realized that my behaviour was the absolute opposite of the monk. I was not directing my mental faculties to understand God, and instead, I was completely and overwhelmingly preoccupied with what Man had done with him.

That was when I saw my way out of this tangled maze — I had to look for God elsewhere because I had learned too much here. The very depth of my knowledge had blinded me to the divine light of understanding.

If God is an eternal, unchanging entity, this is impossible — but as any student of stories can tell, God does change as he progresses through this story. Throughout my life, I’ve read the Bible cover-to-cover three times, with plenty of additional readings of my favourite books. I knew this character, and I knew he changed, and here was an author devoting an entire book to exploring why.

Jack Miles was the first author who gave a thorough investigation into the consequences of those changes, and provides a book-by-book examination of the evolutions of his character.

When Albert Einstein was asked by a rabbi if he believed in God, he replied, “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”

This was the God I had been searching for, the power and consciousness behind all things. When I became rationally convinced of its existence, I was free to discover the most direct path into its divine embrace.

This beautiful complication of ideas was perfect for occupying all the branches of my mortal conscious mind, keeping me mentally engaged to my maximum capacity, and freeing my spirit to engage with these mystical ideas and sense for itself what felt like home.

Studying the Qabalah has been endlessly rewarding. Out of all the books that I am sharing with you, this one is by far my favourite.

My younger mind was full of anger and conflict, and it was soothed by her gentle, motherly voice reciting powerful and uplifting thoughts in the first person. Listening to this recording allowed me to think these powerful thoughts, as often as I pressed play.

By thinking these thoughts, and feeling these feelings, I was able to turn away from the angry dominant mindset I possessed when I was younger, and replace it with a default mindset of calmness and love.

This book gave me a plethora of exercises and practices to keep my mindset sharp, my body toned, and my work productive. If there was one book I had to give to a young boy to guide his growth into manhood, it would be this book.

I opened The Greatest Salesman In The World, a parable about a salesman in ancient times who was gifted with ten scrolls of wisdom, and was told to read one scroll aloud, three times a day, for thirty days before moving on to the next scroll:

1. I will Form Good Habits and Become their Slave
2. Greet Each Day With Love In Your Heart
3. I Will Persist Until I Succeed
4. I am Nature’s Greatest Miracle
5. Live Each Day as if it Were Your Last
6. Master Your Emotions
7. The Power of Laughter
8. Multiply Your Value Every Day
9. All is Worthless Without Action
10. Pray to God for Guidance

This was what made the book so practical to read and study throughout my day — I didn’t need to trudge through lengthy blocks of text from end to end, I could open randomly and read a story and a cartoon, ponder his big bold quotes, and apply the lesson to something that had *just* happened in my sales career.

Being able to apply my charisma to my income generation was something I had been searching for during the first few years of my career, and reading this book gave me a practical method to make that happen.

Each chapter opened with a story hook, drawing me in deeply, and engaging me as I used the story the author just told to understand the philosophical principles underlying a stoic lesson. By using this formula, he was able to describe very abstract principles by pointing to the particulars of his opening anecdote.

After I read this book, I finally understood the power of story hooks, and it dramatically improved my craft as a writer.