A vivid but meandering guide that tackles several serious subjects.
In this debut self-help book, a writer offers personal anecdotes about self-discovery.
“Some refer to me as a teacher, others call me a shaman, Reiki Master, psychic, seer, empath, energy worker, or healer,” writes McVeigh. But she sees herself as “just Katy,” a woman who has overcome horrendous adversity by changing the way she looks at life. When she was 11 years old, she was raped. But by forgiving her rapist (without excusing his horrendous deed), she managed to free herself from years of mental torture. In this short, easy-to-read guide, the author cobbles together several anecdotes from her life that taught her lessons—for example, after uncovering a suppressed memory, she realized why her mother was emotionally distant. Skimming several weighty topics—such as dream analysis, death, reincarnation, hypnosis, astral projection, and past life regression—the manual cites few sources. McVeigh’s proof relies mostly on her own opinions and life experiences, giving the book a journallike tone. For example, her beginning chapter on dream analysis is inspired by a class she took in college. During hypnosis, she discovered she had committed suicide in a previous life, and this revelation helped her in her present existence. Some of her anecdotes feel like scenes from The X-Files. McVeigh claims to have had an out-of-body experience in which she reached inside her sister’s back and pulled out handfuls of disease or “thick black-tarry-guck.” That’s not the only time the author relates extraordinary events. During a seminar, a beautiful woman wiped “Indian tears” from the author’s face. McVeigh found out that she was a young Native American seer in a past life. Readers who are into subjects like psychic healing or cosmic consciousness will discover a kindred spirit here, especially if they enjoy fanciful life stories. But nonbelievers won’t find the work convincing.
A vivid but meandering guide that tackles several serious subjects.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982236-32-8
Page Count: 108
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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