Love Without Limits with Deborah Anapol - Recommended Reading and Music

Deepak Chopra
The Path to Love
New York, Harmony Books, 1997
Deepak does an excellent job of explaining the New Paradigm for Love and the union of Sex and Spirit. A popular and non-threatening approach which is totally aligned with Love Without Limits.

David Deida
Intimate Communion: Awakening Your Sexual Essence
Deerfield Beach, FL, Health Communications, 1995
A unique and interesting approach to making sense of male/female relations. Definitely not for the politically correct crowd, it presents a model for relationship that goes beyond equality.

Riane Eisler
Sacred Pleasure: Sex, Myth, and the Politics of the Body
San Francisco: Harper, 1995
If you read only one of these books, make it this one! Eisler offers a compellingly complete analysis of how our cultural attitudes toward love, sex, and family became so destructive as well as some clear guidelines for finding our way into a truly humane and sustainable future, where pleasure rather than pain is the basis for relationship with each other and with Earth. One key, says Eisler, is the restructuring of the family and intimate relationships between men and women. This volume offers a political and philosophical basis for the polyamory and sacred sexuality movements.

Helen Fisher
Anatomy of Love: The Natural History of Monogamy, Adultery, & Divorce
New York: Norton, 1992
Fisher's basic premise is that life long sexual exclusivity is unnatural for humans as well as virtually all other animals. She speaks authoritatively, frequently citing animal behavior studies and statistics for support, but many of her conclusions are in fact highly speculative. While Fisher has done an excellent job of unmasking the typical behavior hiding beneath our cultural norms, her apparent disregard for evidence of bonding beyond the dyad is a serious flaw. Fisher's perspective on the evolution of the family provides another interesting twist. She attributes modern family values to the agricultural tradition and views the current instability as a "return to our nomadic roots." Divorce, secret affairs, single parents, and blended families are nothing new, she asserts, and have always been common. The only new development, she insists, is single people living alone who choose a network of friends they consider family.

Dalma Heyn
The Erotic Silence of the American Wife
New York: Signet, 1992
Brilliant, highly readable stories illustrating why women stray from monogamy expose conventional marriage as a patriarchal, misogynist institution. The message is that women's pleasure and eroticism is valid and important. Heyn urges women not to sell their sexuality out in order to fit the socially prescribed criteria for "good girls" and "perfect wives."

Carter Heyward
Touching Our Strength: The Erotic as Power and the Love of God
San Francisco, Harper, 1989
This inspiring book on sexual justice by a lesbian Episcopal priest and professor of theology is a rich source for a sexual ethic that truly honors diversity. Heyward's touchstone is the concept of mutual empowerment.

Spenser Klaw
Without Sin: The Life and Death of the Oneida Community
New York, Viking, 1993
Most recent of many books on the famous Oneida community which practiced both sacred sexuality and polyamory. Includes an account of founder John Humphrey Noyes system of complex marriage.

Dolores LaChapelle
Sacred Land, Sacred Sex: Rapture of the Deep
Durango, CO: Kivaki Press, 1992
Sacred Land, Sacred Sex combines impeccable scholarship with a personal, readable style to create a straightforward analysis of what's wrong with our culture, how it got that way, and what to do about it. LaChapelle traces the beginnings of the split between the human and the natural world to the widespread influence of the abstract Greek language which has no intrinsic meaning. (Just as mystic G.I. Gurdjieff does, though he does not explain as clearly why this is so.) Her understanding is based on over forty years of sifting through information derived from every conceivable academic discipline as well as direct observation of herself, her skiing buddies, and of the nature itself. Then, by sharing knowledge and stories collected from indigineous cultures around the world, she gives us a picture of another way to live along with specific suggestions for reviving the old ways. The road home can be summed up in one word, ritual. "Sacred ritual concerns putting all parts of the human together deep inside the individual, for putting humans together in society and for facilitating human interactions with nature. Such sacred rituals not only keep alive the old ways but also facilitate rapid change, effortlessly, in a society."

LaChapelle's courage and creative genius really shines through though in her ability to trace the links between caring for the earth, a sense of place, natural birth (population) control, spirituality, and human sexuality. Unlike single issue ecologists, she recognizes that the right use of our sexual energy is an important key to restoring balance to the earth, and she is not afraid to take on monogamy and the nuclear family as major contributors to the current crisis. "We're all bleeding at the roots because we're all suffering from treating sex as a substance. In fact, the biggest substance abuse of all is monogamy ... No energy is fed back into the whole of either the culture or the place. Of course, that's one of the reasons for the monogamous ideal, it keeps the economy of the Industrial Growth Society going very well."

Sacred Land, Sacred Sex is good medicine! "I do not presume to tell you how to do it, I merely explain how to set up structures so that nature herself, in your own place, can once again begin to teach you. In this kind of learning, there is no knowledge, in the usual sense, to process and convey; there is instead a deepening of attention to the pattern of all life around you so that you begin to live your life according to that pattern.

Richard Moss
The I That Is We:
Awakening to Higher Energies Through Unconditional Love
Berkeley: Celestial Arts, 1985
A personal account of the transformation process by a medical doctor who saw the light. Includes his experience in healing life threatening disease in himself and others through "energy work." Also has helpful sections on working with groups.

Bertrand Russell
Marriage and Morals
New York: Bantam, 1959
First published in 1929; a genuine classic by the Nobel Laureate. An entertaining and exquisitely clear critique of monogamy.

June Singer
Energies of Love:
Sexuality Revisioned
Garden City: Doubleday, 1983
Marvelous, beautifully written theoretical work, placing inclusive relationships in a psychological and spiritual context.

Celeste West
Lesbian Polyfidelity
San Francisco: Booklegger Publishing, 1996
Celeste West has written a wise, witty, and charming manual for all polyamorous people. Based on a survey of 500 lesbians, the ring of authenticity comes through in the nitty gritty details of the personal stories related here.

Neale Donald Walsch
Conversations with God Book 1, Book 2, Book 3
Charlottesville, VA, Hampton Roads, 1997
These popular works have really struck a chord with the American public. Incredible as it may seem, God comes out in favor of polyamory and sacred sexuality. Invaluable if you're looking for support for questioning monogamy.

Marianne Williamson
A Woman's Worth
New York, Ballantine Books, 1993
Another book with a scope beyond sex and relationship, included here because of the incredible validation it offers for alternatives to monogamy from a best selling, popular author.