A fluid, insightful read on the topics of self-improvement, spirituality, and fulfillment.
In this debut collection of essays and meditations, the author presents ideas for holistic living and a possible path to growth and awareness.
Unlike many other self-improvement books, this one incorporates ideas from a multitude of disciplines, including science, positive psychology, and Buddhist spirituality. In it, the author posits that “energy” and “vibrations” rule the mind, and that the mind, in turn, creates the reality of one’s world. Richard, a former entertainment lawyer who abandoned his 20-year practice to engage in a life of Buddhist study, combines Eastern teachings with a practical knowledge of Western, commerce-driven life to produce an insightful book about waking oneself up to new ideas. He begins with a metaphor of water, explaining scientifically how the fluid can contain vibrations of negative or positive energy. He then moves into a study of the human mind and how perspective and perception drive human experience. Perhaps the book’s most valuable offerings are its initial 25 meditations on happiness and its 25 meditations on wisdom near the end. They include cogent mantras to which readers will likely often return for inspiration and support. In one key meditation, for example, the author writes, “Space is limitless. / There are no boundaries to time and space. / Together they make the playground for the mind. / The mind gives rise to all phenomena. / With our thoughts we make our world.” These short lines read like aphorisms and crystalize important messages regarding love, happiness, and faith. On the subject of happiness, for instance, the author draws from a contemporary body of positive psychology, pointing to intelligent studies about joy as a journey rather than an end. The book also unpacks the mystifying allure and complex subversion of happiness in a society that promotes consumption instead of spiritual and intellectual growth. Readers of self-improvement works will be pleased to find the well-stated ideas about mindfulness, awareness, and perspective in this short work.
A fluid, insightful read on the topics of self-improvement, spirituality, and fulfillment.Pub Date: July 20, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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