REFLECTIONS IN MY MAGICAL MIRROR

Figueroa-Otero presents a summary of key lessons of personal reinvention from his previous self-help books.

The author, a retired pediatric surgeon trained in Chinese medicine and acupuncture, selects 52 quotes from the previous three volumes in his Spirituality book series in order to reflect on those sentiments more deeply and use them as a jumping-on point for readers who may be unfamiliar with his previous writings. At the heart of his work is his conception of a “Primordial Mind,” which underlies his notion of people existing as sons of God, also known as Warriors of Light, or sons of man, aka Warriors of Shadows: “We must understand that humans were created with a dual nature, first as sons of God and then as God’s vehicle to experience its creation, the son of man.” Figueroa-Otero also stresses the importance of love in realizing one’s personal worth; he strongly associates the concept of love with God, which he regularly describes as a kind of nondenominational universal spirit—a watered-down Christian concept of the type often seen in books on spiritualism. Still, the prose throughout this work is vigorous and direct, and the author successfully manages the tricky feat of discussing thoughts in earlier works without making new readers feel left out or uninformed. Even so, Figueroa-Otero’s conceptual categories sometimes remain frustratingly vague despite the extensive summarizing: “the unloved are the blind in spirit who will never find love,” he writes at one point, “because they live disconnected from the pure love that originates in their spirit.” Nonetheless, those who are familiar with the author’s three previous works may find his additional reflections on them to be useful, and, for the most part, this book makes for a fine introduction for new readers.

An energetic distillation of a spirituality series.