A List Of Who and What I Consider Comprise My “Provenance:”
by Kenneth Hawley Hamilton MD
(N.B the books I include are the ones I have read.)
Wayne Dyer (1940-2015)
Tells a Great story about finding his father’s gravestone in his 2015 Memoir: I Can See Clearly Now, Ch 27. “The essential lesson I’ve learned in life is to just be yourself. Treasure the magnificent being that you are and recognize first and foremost you’re not here as a human being only. You’re a spiritual being having a human experience.”
https://www.drwaynedyer.com/
Book: Your Erroneous Zones (1976)
Book: The Shift (2009)
Denis Waitley (1933)
“God’s Law of Cause and Effect: Your rewards in life will always be equal to the amount and quality of service rendered, in the long run.”
http://www.waitley.com/
Book: Psychology of Success (1994)
Earl Nightingale (1921-1989)
Arguably, the world’s greatest student of success: “The progressive realization of a worthy ideal”… the one with which each and every one of brings into their life at birth. My practice manager gave me an INSIGHT tape of his to help me through a deep struggle with familial anger. In it Nightingale laid out what he called “The Law of Correspondence.” He said that what you see in the world around you is a reflection of how you see (and treat) yourself. It worked immediately for me, releasing a lifetime legacy of anger! I subscribed to his monthly INSIGHT tapes, each one comprising four 15-minute presentations, the first three of which were by fine humans he had come to know over the years, and the last was by Earl, himself, sharing his rich, lifelong experience with what comprised his belief about success. My monthly subscription lasted 22 years. Today, they still have a prominent place in my library, along with their complementary transcribed booklet. (I enjoy rereading them – picked at random, of course!)
http://earlnightingale.com/
Book: The Essence of Success (2007)
Book: The Strangest Secret (2007)
Margot Fanger (1929-2001)
LCSW, Master Neurolinguistic Programmer. She shared her skills and experience with me, maturing my skills. She came down with stage 3 ovarian cancer shortly before we met. She fired her oncologist who kept on insisting she would need him when her cancer came back! She then got on with her life and lived with the cancer for 11 more years!
Book: Expanding Therapeutic Possibilities: Getting Results in Brief Psychotherapy (1991, co-author, Steven Friedman, Ph. D.)
Bernie Siegel (1932)
M.D. pediatric surgeon, student/devotee of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. He created ECaP (Exceptional Cancer Patients) Groups working on attitudes. (He wanted to call them H.O.P.E. groups, but couldn’t figure out the acronym). We met in 1986. We are good friends to this day.
http://berniesiegelmd.com/
Book: Love, Medicine and Miracles (1986)
Gerry Jampolsky (1925)
M.D. child psychiatrist, student of A Course in Miracles (ACIM). He transformed from what a counselor-friend said was “the meanest s.o.b. in the SF Bay area” into a vibrant, loving, kind human while he was reading ACIM at the request of a friend who wanted his professional opinion of the text. We are good friends.
Book: Love Is Letting Go of Fear (1979)
Founder, Attitudinal Healing International, of which H.O.P.E. is a member https://www.ahinternational.org.
John O’Donohue (1956-2008)
Precious Celtic priest-prophet poet. (See attached blessing, For the Interim Time)
Died age 52. I picked up his sense that he would not live a long life. He did what he came here to do.
Book: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom (1998)
Book: Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (2005)
Sounds True CD trilogy “Wisdom from the Celtic World” (includes The Divine Imagination)
Nanci L. Danison (1951)
A Midwest lawyer who had a beyond death experience of dying (from an abnormal response to a pre-op medication); going through a beautiful darkness to incredible colors; becoming a “Light Being” with ever increasing spiritual vibration that takes her into the Presence where she knew that the Presence was everything. In her book mentioned below she tells of extending the thought that she has to go back and tell others what she has experienced. Presence tells her to go, and she finds herself back in her body. She, a health lawyer by profession, feels compelled to research this remarkable experience, and over the next ten years finds 600 published accounts of similar experiences!
Book: Backwards: Returning to the Source for Answers (2007) http://backwardsbooks.com/.
Pema Chödrön (1936)
American Tibetan Buddhist nun. I learned Tonglen from an audiotape of hers 20 years ago, and have taught what was on that tape to many H.O.P.E.’rs since… always with good results.
https://pemachodronfoundation.org/
Book: When Things Fall Apart
Audio CD’s: (all from Sounds True) The Noble Heart (2015), Walking the Walk (2014), When Pain is the Doorway (2013).
Peter Kingsley (1953)
Another prophetic mind pointing out how we in the “West” corrupted the meaning of the mystery of being (Pythagoras, Empedocles) into a logical (Plato, Aristotle) structure. After 40+ years of devotion and study, in Reality he ably presents evidence for: “we are immortal”.
https://peterkingsley.org/
Book: In the Dark Places of Wisdom(1999)
Book: Reality (2003)
Book: A Story Waiting to Pierce You (2011)
Michael Toms (1941-2013) and Justine Willis Toms (1942)
Co-founders of New Dimensions Radio that I first met through Maine public radio in the mid 1980’s when my world was undergoing a psychospiritual metamorphosis. Both of these lovely humans demonstrated rich interviewing skills, enabling me to create an inventory of 56 of their interviews that I found appealing. These encounters with other fine humans contribute both background and foundation for my experience as deserving of mention as any of the guides I’ve listed above.
Krista Tippett (1960)
She started the public radio program, “Speaking of Faith” in 2003, which was a weekly “conversation” about religion, ethics, and meaning. I encountered her shortly after she began her program. It has now evolved into “On Being” and I still follow her, meeting ever so many more fine humans and their experiences in examining what it means to be alive.
On Being
Book: Speaking of Faith: Why Religion Matters–and How to Talk about it (2007)
5,000+ H.O.P.E. Group meetings.
It is, indeed, an honor to be able to share all of this with you, the reader. Take what you need to develop your own provenance, and I encourage you to share it with others. For me, Life asks us to share our experiences with It. Its incredible Creation needs our experience of It for Its own evolution.
Peaceful and loving blessing thoughts abide.
Ken
