WHOLE-ING

A comprehensive spiritual guidebook that offers a vision of tranquility and fulfillment.

The title of Cross’ new book will give readers the sense that he has some ambitious goals. There are no half-measures in this capacious volume, which aims to synthesize insights from psychology, medicine, cartography, religion, philosophy, and science. It’s a lot to unpack, but the throughline is freedom, which Cross, the author of The Architecture of Freedom (2014) and The Path to Personal Freedom (2016), describes as “letting go of those things in our lives that block us from experiencing our birthright, which is living fully within the flow of this infinite multiverse—a flow that is shaped and interconnected with a deeper type of Love.” Of course, ideas like these aren’t new; they have roots in time-tested Eastern religious practices that advocate detachment from the things of this world and a search for enlightenment and serenity. The strength of Cross’ book, however, is his attempt to put ancient ideas into a contemporary idiom. He’s able to do so because he’s trained in a very different field—architecture—and the fact that he’s a nonspecialist is not a weakness but a great strength. Like a traveler from another land who’s able to see things that longtime residents miss, Cross brings an outsider’s perspective to spiritual concerns and produces genuinely unique new insights. Among these is his central, titular concept, whole-ing, which is both a process and destination for the author; he defines the term as “the conscious illumination, acceptance, and integration of all that we are; all that we judge to be ‘good’ along with all of the ‘bad,’ so that we may become more of a ‘whole’ and complete being.” This fuller and more profound experience of life has many aspects, and Cross imagines whole-ing as having spiritual, physical, and psychological benefits. That he’s able to make these benefits seem so achievable is a testament to his powers as a writer and as a thinker.

An architect’s convincing blueprint for inner peace.