A thought-provoking, practical guide for open-minded readers hoping to overcome life’s challenges.
A New Age antidote for all of the ills plaguing the lives of modern men and women.
Stresses related to our careers, money, health and relationships can oftentimes feel overwhelming and have the potential to grind down even the most resilient among us. But according to Ching, there are solutions to these complex problems if one comprehends that all life on Earth is just part of an elaborate stage play intended to polish and perfect developing souls on their journeys through the higher realms. The pain we experience, the losses we suffer and the sorrows we endure on this three-dimensional plane can often be disheartening and are sometimes debilitating; nevertheless, all of our trials and tribulations, according to the author, can become much more manageable if we only realize that they are all actually part of a “Prelife Plan.” “Apart from balancing our Karma, there may be additional life purposes that we are born to fulfill in a lifetime,” the author writes, and when we stray too far from these purposes, we encounter trouble. However, within the metaphysical paradigm that Ching advances, these unpleasant events are actually “Divine Nudges” meant to set us back on paths conducive to accomplishing our life missions. Sometimes, when we don’t respond to these somewhat gentle nudges, the universe steps in and delivers a real “Wake-Up Call.” These can be quite traumatic, indeed: The author includes some of his own life experiences—dealing with a failed marriage and the death of his beloved mother—to underscore just how upsetting, yet ultimately vital, these cosmic wake-up calls can be. To outline his thesis, Ching’s serviceable prose draws heavily on the works of fellow New Age authors, including Eckhart Tolle and Rhonda Byrne. Varying forms of meditation—related to the body, mindfulness, visualization and the author’s own “holistic meditation approach”—function as the primary remedies for those in crisis. While much of the author’s advice complements established tenets of Western psychoanalytical thought, a belief in reincarnation remains fundamental to the work.
A thought-provoking, practical guide for open-minded readers hoping to overcome life’s challenges.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4910-1089-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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