INNER COMPASS: Use yours....

DECEMBER 2018 - DECEMBER 2019

Book Circle for Soul Searchers
with Diane Sears

Is the stack of books in your study or on your bedside table calling to you? And a list of other books too, for when you finish that stack? The wisdom within those books is waiting for you, ready to enlighten you about such soul-searching questions as: Why am I here? How can I attract all that I desire? Who was I before I was born? How can I be more creative? Where do we go when we die? What is a purposeful life?

If you love books and are searching for answers to these types of questions, you've found your perfect circle! We'll read one book each month, then gather to discuss our insights and share our experiences related to the exercises or challenges put forth in the books.

In fact, here is a sampling of other books we may discuss in future circles. And we welcome suggestions by circle participants of other titles to include along the way.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig
Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore
E Squared, Pam Grout
Many Lives, Many Masters, Brian Weiss
Mind Over Medicine, Lissa Rankin
One Zentangle a Day, Beckah Krahula
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach
A Book that Takes Its Time, Irene Smit

Answer your soul’s calling to receive the inspiration and wisdom within these books, and enjoy insightful and lively discussions with soulful community.

Request to join this group and receive reminder notices about the Book Circle for Soul Searchers and other Inner Compass events.

DATE & TIME: Second Tuesday of each month in 2019, 7 - 9 pm.

LOCATION: Inner Compass Academy, 10901 Reed Hartman Hwy Ste 101, Cincinnati OH 45242.
GUEST FACILITATOR: Diane Sears.
PRICE: $10 per circle, pay-as-you-go.

REGISTRATION: Open to everyone but pre-registration is required; request in advance to join this group, or contact Joanne (513-587-9855) for late registrations.

DIANE SEARS

Diane Sears, certified medium through Inner Compass Academy and Light Journey Enterprises, enjoyed a fulfilling career in merchandising and sales until in 2015 when it was not fulfilling anymore compared to nurturing grandchildren. Now Diane nannies Carolina and Penelope as well as operates two creative enterprises. Divinely Connected facilitates development circles and intuition workshops, and gives personal readings, sometimes using her specialty of psychometry with fabric swatches. DiVinyl sells and repurposes favorite vinyl LPs and album covers from the 70s and 80s into bowls and gift boxes as well as other music related merchandise and skirts craftily sewn from collected tee shirts. Diane also enjoys facilitating two spiritual book circles, sewing, crafting, playing the piano, and Sudoku. dianejsears@yahoo.com.

DECEMBER 2018
The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol Rescued his Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits by Les Standiford

As uplifting as the tale of Scrooge itself, this is the story of how one writer and one book revived the signal holiday of the Western world. Just before Christmas in 1843, a debt-ridden and dispirited Charles Dickens wrote a small book he hoped would keep his creditors at bay. His publisher turned it down, so Dickens used what little money he had to put out A Christmas Carol himself. He worried it might be the end of his career as a novelist. The book immediately caused a sensation. And it breathed new life into a holiday that had fallen into disfavor, undermined by lingering Puritanism and the cold modernity of the Industrial Revolution. It was a harsh and dreary age, in desperate need of spiritual renewal, ready to embrace a book that ended with blessings for one and all. With warmth, wit, and an infusion of Christmas cheer, Les Standiford whisks us back to Victorian England, its most beloved storyteller, and the birth of the Christmas we know best. The Man Who Invented Christmas is a rich and satisfying read for Scrooges and sentimentalists alike.

DATE & TIME: Tuesday, December 11, 2018, 7-9 pm.
GUEST FACILITATOR: Diane Sears

JANUARY 2019
Small Move, Big Change: Using Microresolutions to Transform Your Life Permanently, Caroline L. Arnold

Learn how small behavioral changes can lead to major personal and professional self-improvement. Whether trying to lose weight, save money, get organized, or advance on the job, we’re always setting goals and making resolutions, but rarely following through on them. According to longtime Wall Street technology strategist Caroline Arnold, the “big push” strategy of the New Year’s resolution is designed to fail, because it broadly pits our limited willpower stores against an autopilot of entrenched behaviors and attitudes that is far more powerful. To change ourselves permanently, we need to focus our self-control on precise behavioral targets and overwhelm them. Small Move, Big Change is Arnold’s guide to turning broad personal goals into meaningful and discrete behavioral changes that lead to permanent improvement. Providing scores of engaging real-world examples and new scientific findings, she shows us that while the traditional resolution promises rewards on a distant “someday,” microresolutions work because they reward us today by instantly altering our routines and, ultimately, ourselves.

DATE & TIME: Tuesday, January 8, 2019, 7-9 pm.
GUEST FACILITATOR: Diane Sears.

FEBRUARY 2019
Do Your Om Thing: Bending Yoga Tradition to Fit Your Modern Life, Rebecca Pacheco

Sometimes an hour-long yoga class is the only chance we get to connect meaningfully with our bodies and our minds during an otherwise hectic week. For a brief moment we’re able to let our worries melt away and feel relaxed, centered, and fully ourselves. Have you ever wondered how it would feel to bring that experience out of the yoga studio and into your everyday life? In Do Your Om Thing, master yoga teacher and creator of the popular blog OmGal.com Rebecca Pacheco shows us how to do just that. The true practice of yoga, she says, goes deeper than achieving the perfect headstand - it is about bringing awareness and intention to every part of our lives. In her warm, personal, and often hilarious prose, Rebecca translates yogic philosophy for its twenty-first-century devotees, making ancient principles feel accessible, relatable, and genuinely rooted in the world in which we live today.

DATE & TIME: Tuesday, February 12, 2019, 7-9 pm.
GUEST FACILITATOR: Diane Sears.

MARCH 2019
Carpe Diem: How to Become a Latin Lover, Harry Mount

In this lighthearted guided tour of Latin, journalist and former Latin tutor Harry Mount breathes life back into the greatest language of all, drawing on everything from a Monty Python grammar lesson to Angelina Jolie's tattoos. Filled with fascinating tidbits and humorous asides,Carpe Diem will delight the word lovers who made Eats, Shoots and Leaves such a monster hit. Whether we're aware of it or not, Latin is all around us. Consider the sayings in everyday use: alter ego, ad nauseam, caveat emptor, modus operandi, per se, and, of course, the ever-popular e pluribus unum. Even more abundant are words derived from Latin roots: arena (from harena, meaning "sand"), auditorium ("a place of audience"), stadium (a running track)...and those are just the theatrical ones! It's inescapable. It's also the most daunting of languages, one that is seemingly obscure and filled with arcane rules and often accompanied by unpleasant memories of adolescence. But, as Mount says in Carpe Diem, "Knowing a bit of Latin is an invitation to the biggest room in the building, with a view down the corridor to all the succeeding ages. And you can get your hands on that invitation at any age."

DATE & TIME: Tuesday, March 12, 2019, 7-9 pm.
FACILITATOR: Diane Sears.

APRIL 2019
Country Grit: A Farmoir of Finding Purpose and Love, Scottie Jones

Scottie Jones lived a typical suburban, professional life in Phoenix until her husband, Greg, got into a near-fatal car accident. While recovering, he became convinced that they needed a change and a simpler way of life, one more connected with nature and with each other. So, driven by a desire to cut ties with a material and convenient suburban life that had left them feeling empty, they bought a peaceful-looking farmhouse on sixty acres in Oregon and said good-bye to everything they knew. But though the grass may look greener, the road to pastoral bliss is fraught with financial woes, relentless rural roadblocks, and colossal failures. When the burden becomes almost too much to bear, Scottie hits on the idea of turning a house they initially built for their daughter into a Farm Stay, where people could visit and learn about Leaping Lamb Farm. The Farm Stay becomes the niche that rescues them from foreclosure - having found both a sense of purpose and a sense of place, the couple now finds the means to sustain it. In a world increasingly filled with questions of where our food comes from and dissatisfactions about our modern lives, Country Grit is a story that will resonate with countless people itching to get back to the land. Told with humor and hard-earned wisdom, it is also an account of what small-scale farmers across the country experience everyday and a warning that the farming life is not for everyone.

DATE & TIME: Tuesday, April 9, 2019, 7-9 pm.
GUEST FACILITATOR: Diane Sears

MAY 2019
Spying on Whales: The Past, Present, and Future of Earth's Most Awesome Creatures, Nick Pyenson

Whales are among the largest, most intelligent, deepest diving species to have ever lived on our planet. They evolved from land-roaming, dog-sized creatures into animals that move like fish, breathe like us, can grow to 300,000 pounds, live 200 years and travel entire ocean basins. Whales fill us with terror, awe, and affection - yet there is still so much we don't know about them. Why did it take whales over 50 million years to evolve to such big sizes, and how do they eat enough to stay that big? How did their ancestors return from land to the sea - and what can their lives tell us about evolution as a whole? Importantly, in the sweepstakes of human-driven habitat and climate change, will whales survive? Nick Pyenson's research has given us the answers to some of our biggest questions about whales. He takes us deep inside the Smithsonian's unparalleled fossil collections, to frigid Antarctic waters, and to the arid desert in Chile, where scientists race against time to document the largest fossil whale site ever found. Full of rich storytelling and scientific discovery, Spying on Whales spans the ancient past to an uncertain future - all to better understand the most enigmatic creatures on Earth.

DATE & TIME: Tuesday, May 14, 2019, 7-9 pm.
GUEST FACILITATOR: Diane Sears.

JUNE 2019
To Be Determined