A wandering but serviceable guide to bettering our lives.
White examines the path to enlightenment.
After spending years as a self-proclaimed “spiritual seeker,” the author realized that while different religious and spiritual traditions offer various methods to reconnect with the One Spirit, the most effective path is to look within oneself. She writes that our existence is simply the Spirit experiencing itself through each living being’s unique combination of body, heart, mind and spirit. We perceive ourselves as separate from the Spirit when emotional judgments tied to past experiences hold us back. The author urges readers to tap into and examine emotions to unravel their judgments and fears–getting past emotional interference brings us back to the One and into a more compassionate perspective in relation to other people. We must clear any emotional clutter not only to live freer and more enlightened lives, but also so that we don’t contribute negative energy to the world–the author points to terrorism as an example of how our present-day collective turmoil has manifested itself. To eradicate such evil, we must confront our darkest fears, hatred and prejudices to eliminate their power and understand even the most horrific actions of others. Trying to separate ourselves from those who commit such crimes only perpetuates the alienation that fuels them. While many readers may not follow White’s arguments, her premise offers a solid path, echoed by many spiritual teachers, toward a more fulfilling life. However, the book is often repetitive, and White’s distinctions among feeling, emotion, intuition and other abstract concepts can be difficult to grasp.
A wandering but serviceable guide to bettering our lives.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-9792797-0-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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