Tag: spirituality

REVIEW: CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD #3

Conversations with God: An Uncommon DialogueConversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue by Neale Donald Walsch
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What would a holy book—a supposed hotline with God—read like if it was written today? Would it be enough to jump-start new religions the way the Bible or the Quran did in their time?

What would God have to say about marriage? Child rearing? Aliens? The nature of the individual soul and how each one is an instance of God, of creativity, of consciousness discovering itself and who it wants to be? How about sacrilege? Sin? Free Will? Life after death? Can God be insulted? What is the divine dichotomy (I love this concept)?

Instead of the typical, monotheistic concept God we’re used to who is worshiped as if He/She/It was a vengeful, entitled asshole, God here appears as the real deal, the creator full of compassion and love the Big Guy from the Bible is supposed to be, and it’s incredibly refreshing. Next to this Creator, I can’t believe what all kinds of mass religion crap is passed off as ultimate truth. There’s just no comparison. It’s staring at the sun on the one hand—impossible without looking away lest you go blind—and having one of the warm light LED lamps on the other.

In fact, I can easily see pieces of Conversations with God be used 200 years from now in the same way the Bible is quoted today, with the difference that the former draws from profound sources and delivers meaning and advice that can be useful to people living in the 21st century instead of the trite, hollow, more traditionalist than insightful Old Testament passages that so often make their appearances in American media and try to pass themselves off as spiritual—and which frankly annoy me to no end.

To drive the point home, even though I did thoroughly enjoy CwG#3 in audiobook format unlike the first two which I read on my Kindle, I must say I would recommend reading the books instead of listening to them. If audiobooks are your thing then the audio is also great, especially the fact that God was voiced by a woman as well as a man taking turns in the conversations. Τhe actors were excellent to boot—I imagined the male God as a cross between Morgan Freeman (damn movies!), Dumbledore and an aged Eddard Stark (what a sense of imagination! /s) and the female one as President Roslin from Battlestar Galactica. However, not being able to highlight incredible insights that appeared every other “page”, it seemed, was a problem, and that alone would count as reason enough for me to actually get all three books in paperback—just to underline the hell out of them! Literally? Heheh.

Deciding whether to give this four stars, as I did for #2, or five, as I did for #1, took me all of about 80 seconds. “Feck it”, I decided. I’ve recommended this book already to pretty much everyone I’ve talked to about books with whom I share even a remote interest in spirituality or anything transcendental. At this point, that it’s just more of the same, which was my main issue with #2, isn’t a problem. While there’s little really new “content” here, only reiterations of the same basic teachings, don’t they say that repetition is the mother of knowledge?

In case this review didn’t manage to convey my enthusiasm and my belief that this book can only enrich your life in some way and that anyway you should definitely read Conversations with God, here are my respective ones for #1 and #2.

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REVIEW: SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES: AND OTHER LESSONS FROM THE CREMATORY

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the CrematorySmoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I believe I first heard of this book on Mysterious Universe, if I’m not mistaken, and read it in audiobook format narrated by the author herself, which by the way is a medium of delivery which I believe is in fundamental and intuitive ways superior to the printed word. Having the author narrate her stories, thoughts and observations directly to you can create a powerful emotional connection, the non-verbal qualities of which should not be underestimated. The effect this one had on me was that of a profound book, which it is, but with the attributes of a captivating, paradigm-shifting motivational speech, TED talk or the like. I’ve had this experience before with The Power of Now and others that don’t readily spring to mind but are likely sitting somewhere on my audiobook shelf.

What makes this book special? Well, all I can say is that listening to what Ms. Doughty had to say about death and “our” relationship with it really made me think. We don’t cremate people in Greece, nor do we embalm them, but the fear of death is still something that governs most people and our lives to a degree we’re too scared to even consider. The way we treat our elderly and rob them from the right to a “good death” is definitely something we have in common in many globalised cultures. At some point, she said something close to “in 19th century Britain, nudity or sex was taboo; today, in what we consider our free-minded and progressive society, it is death is the greatest taboo of all.”

I’m writing this review from an internet cafe in Ioannina and I’m running out of time, so keep this: if you want to have your attitude towards death in general questioned and think deeply about the ailments of our necrophobic society, don’t miss Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. The writing was captivating, too; it took me just 4 days to finish.

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LINK: THE PSYCHONAUT FIELD MANUAL

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AKA an introduction to chaos magick. This illustrated digital booklet holds some great guidelines and info and it is exquisitely presented. It’s s easily one of the best things I’ve ever laid eyes on, especially since we don’t get to read about esoteric stuff like that in such a form very often. That said, I can’t say anything about whether it works or not or how—that might have to wait a while still! Check it out here or download a .pdf of the latest version here.

Bluefluke’s Tumblr.

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REVIEW: MUCHAS VIDAS, MUCHOS MAESTROS

Muchas Vidas, Muchos MaestrosMuchas Vidas, Muchos Maestros by Brian L. Weiss
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Este libro se me sugirió de Fede, un uruguayo que conocí por suerte en el candombe de un domingo como todos los otros. Dijo que cambió su vida y le hizo pensar en su “misión de vida”, que para él era algo como ofrecer el amor a los otros en cualquier oportunidad. Sólo unos días después, lo ví en la librería Moebius al lado de la Posada al Sur donde viví cuando estaba en Montevideo, y era casi la mitad del precio de todos los otros libros. No podía no comprarlo.

Bueno, claro que me interesaba el tema, y aunque no podía entender todo, como sigo aprendiendo el idioma español, creo que era un libro bién escrito. Quiero decir que la manera de escribir de señor Weiss era simple pero comunicaba mucho.

Estoy en una fase cuando estoy leyendo muchos libros y material sobre la reencarnación, y algunas veces lo que se encuentra en un libro se contradice por lo que hay en otros. Diferentemente dicho, lo más que investigas, lo más dificil es encontrar fuentes válidas que tienen algo que ver entre ellos en los detalles. Creo en la reencarnación, pero no creo que Muchas Vidas sea el mejor libro para presentar el tema y su profundidad verdadera a alguna persona que ya no está convencida y que mira a la cuestión con un mente crítico, tan por su falta de algún tipo de prueba (quién es Catherine?) como por la impresión que intenta de darnos, que es un libro escrito por un psiquiatra, es una impresión que sin embargo no puede sostener. Este estilo me hizo preguntarme si todo esto realmente sucedió. Parece un mito, una historia basada en hechos reales y como todas las historias similares, es dificíl separar en ella lo verdadero de lo falso. Por eso no valen como pruebas sino como inspiraciones, y esto es sin duda algo muy personal y no cuantificable.

En todo caso, todavía era una lectura interesante con puntos espirituales válidos y con valor para ver la vida por otros ojos, como si el hecho de la inmortalidad del espíritu fuera un hecho indudable, y todo esto la verdá me está poniendo a pensar cada vez más.

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REVIEW: THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN

The Five People You Meet in HeavenThe Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Maria, my former Danish flatmate and co-volunteer at Sofia City Library, recommended this book to me. She was disappointed that a lot of people on Goodreads were knocking it as too melodramatic or for “forty-year-old housewives” (or something like that) but she thought I might enjoy it.

I never knew I was an unemployed forty years old, let alone a woman. Wait; I am unemployed…

It was short, well-written–especially the parts describing Eddie’s early years at the amusement park, or his time at the war–and made me feel as if I was right there as part of the action. I have a soft spot for books that manage to get this right: not having too many details when describing a scene or situation, instead carefully disclosing the right ones that will most effortlessly evoke your imagination. Scents, colours, bodily sensations, random observations or the protagonist’s train of thought (that one doesn’t even have to be relevant to the plot) and metaphors work particularly well.

I didn’t take away from it any kind of profound message. It doesn’t seem to have changed my life in any significant way as it seems to have done for some people who include this title in their relevant lists of life-changing books. Nevertheless, it did make me go through the obligatory and entirely foreseeable process of pondering who my five people I’d meet in heaven would be and conversely who it would be that I would hang around for a while waiting to meet. The idea that I might not have met some of them yet, or even never will, seems comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time. I wonder: is it necessary for us to die in order to have a good hard look at our time on the physical plane and what it taught us?

I’ll stop here. This is going too deep too fast and I’m not prepared to responsibly go on–supposedly–unknowable philosophical musings.

On a final note, reading this made me feel very calm. Maybe it’s because I went through it almost exclusively while travelling on trains.

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Review: Awareness

AwarenessAwareness by Anthony de Mello

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Thinking you can change yourself by changing your situation or your surroundings is like thinking you can change your handwriting by using a different pen.” (paraphrased)

I want to be more aware in my life. That’s why I had been looking for books on the matter a few months ago when I found this one. I ordered it from World of Books and for the first time they disappointed me: the book never arrived at my doorstep. Thirsty for thought-provoking material and wisdom shared aplenty, I looked for the book online and lo and behold, there it was in audiobook form.

To be exact, I didn’t find it exactly in audiobook form. In fact, the recordings I found were from some seminar in which Anthony de Mello presumably delivered the contents of this book to a crowd of wisdom-thirsty individuals such as myself over a period of a few days. I don’t know whether or not me listening to the recording of that seminar could count as actually reading the book, but for now it’ll have to do. See? I’m cheating and probably no-one will read this far to actually notice!

All that cleared up and taken out of the way, I most certainly did enjoy listening to Anthony de Mello’s lectures and his style. Of course, most of his teachings about the uselessness of language, the subjectivity of reality, the difference between the “I” and the “me”, the inherent selfishness of what we commonly refer to as love or falling in love etc. wasn’t anything new to me. In fact a lot of what I heard are deeply held beliefs of mine. But a lot of other things he mentioned are matters I will want to revisit, for I think they are as timely and deep as ever and a single listen cannot possibly contain their gravity, moreso because, as with all the great teachers, De Mello’s teachings and the new mentality he proposes are intoxicating in their truthfullness, but alas, one cannot handle and take in this much truth all at once. At any rate I believe he was right in warning the listener about the dangers of substituting one brainwash for another: the point is to always be aware and to forget about existing concepts. What would the difference between “enlightenment” and dogma be otherwise?

I can easily see myself revisiting this countless of times at random intervals in my life. It does feel like a flow of precious advice and living the way De Mello suggests feels deep within me like a precious ideal one would do well to strive for – or not strive for, since there should be no effort involved! I’m giving it 4 stars instead of 5 because it wasn’t anything groundbreaking for me – “just” a collection of profound, valuable insight.

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Review: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I… um… “enjoyed” The Power of Now in audiobook form — difficult choice of words here because “read” would be a lie and “listened to” would make it Power of Now sound like a song. I guess audiobooks need their own transitive verb now. Anyway.

Audiobooks have their strengths and weaknesses, obviously. I had the pleasure to enjoy the Power of Now as I was exploring a part of my city that had long been invitingly mysterious and still. The setting reinforced the listening and vice versa. The experience would have certainly been very different had I visually read the book in that jungle of reed. Those hours of exploration are now inseperably interwoven with the listening in my mind. I touched the Power of Now as described in the book while I was there; my attention was not in the past, nor in the future, it was squarely focused on my ears and eyes. I didn’t finish it during that exploration, however, and most of my subsequent listenings were rife with inattention. I thus have problems now remembering which parts I do not have any recollection of; I have no page to turn to. When you’re visually reading a book, the lack of memory is connected with an image related to the book — perhaps a page number or even the visual arrangement of the page, the shape of all the letters in tandem jumping out to create a subconscious bookmark. When aurally reading a book, this image is connected with the surroundings, especially if one listens to the book when using mass transit and all kinds of faces and other people are there to capture the attention and fantasy in ways reeds cannot.

Enough with describing the medium. The book in itself is very good. I did not find Tolle awfully didactic and the Q&As through which he chose to convey his teachings were satisfactory catalysts for bringing out what he wanted to say. Neither was I annoyed with his “recycling” of old teachings; essentially, that’s what religions have been doing anyway, repackaging old wisdom in different flavours. His message is more important and relevant now than it ever was, what with our lifestyle crisis and general existential confusion: 1) There is no past or future, only present. Giving in to dominance of the mind filters out true consciousness and presence (as in being in the moment wherever and whenever one is, not in the past and future) 2) People’s minds are imposters pretending to be their true selves and worrying about all sorts of things when there is no real reason for it.

What I found slighlty annoying was his insistence on quoting Jesus. Then again, my being annoyed with Jesus is only part of being disgusted by the church and naturally connecting hiw with it. That is however, as I understand it, a logical fallacy (I would like to mention at this point that discrediting the book because Oprah popularised it is comitting the very same fallacy). To do Tolle justice he does say that he’s not in that way supporting Christianity over other religions (he often quotes Buddha as well as other enlightened figures of the past), he’s merely putting Jesus’ words ouf ot the context of that religion and into the context of the shared meaning behind all religions, of course with added stress to Eastern philosophies which emphasise more strongly on those aspects than the –generally moralistic– monotheistic ones.

Now that I’m trying to sum up the actual contents of this book I’m finding it hard to describe, even though I think I did get the gist of it. If I knew how to accurately and meaningfully reproduce it I wouldn’t have felt the need to read it. I guess “true wisdom cannot be shared through words; it lies within and waits for the right wake up call”. Yep, it’s one of those…

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