A comforting retreat and respite from the daily grind.
Oppenheimer offers a course of meditative practices aimed at reconnecting readers to their essential natures.
Despite the plethora of spiritual guides meant to help readers escape the hamster wheel of modern life, it often remains difficult for many to achieve even a modicum of peace, let alone anything approaching an enlightened state of being. As the author observes, “Gaian principles reigned for millennia, but in humanity’s recent past they have been abandoned for free-market principles that go against life’s fundamental structure. This endangers all living systems and beings.” In this case, “Gaian” refers to a “unified conscious” or “intelligent Being.” If that sounds just a little too woo-woo, don’t worry—the author gets it. “Having been raised within the predominant western paradigm, it was only in my teens that I discovered this understanding of personhood bequeathed to all life,” she writes. Further references to “a holon within the holarchy of the cosmos” may initially leave many readers scratching their heads, but those digging deeper into this lush and lyrical text will discover a strong foundational basis for Oppenheimer’s brand of spiritualism. Some of the author’s more grounded observations—including a 2021 UN report finding that we have something like 60 harvests left before Earth’s soil is completely depleted, or that 40,000 metric tons of stardust fall on earth each year—are thoroughly intriguing. Each of the book’s five chapters concludes with a section on “Deepening Practices” meant to help readers apply the ancient wisdom they will acquire here in more direct ways. Much of the practices revolve around simple breathing exercises and varying forms of meditation. “How do we learn to let go?” Oppenheimer asks early on. “Slow down. Breathe. With each exhalation feel your heart soften. Melt and allow dissolution to become more permeable with each breath. Feel the breath swinging through your heart.” If the esoteric knowledge doesn’t get you there, the soft, melodious prose just might do it.
A comforting retreat and respite from the daily grind.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781966293033
Page Count: 122
Publisher: Red Elixir
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
