A valuable guide to spiritual principles and practices that aptly covers the basics plus a few twists.
A shaman shares her wisdom in Marks and Spector’sself-help book.
As a child, Marks had visions, interacted with a silver-skinned spirit guide and, by power of thought, occasionally moved a ball suspended from the ceiling of her room, freaking out her friends. Luckily, Marks grew up in a home where psychic ability was the norm. In the workforce, she encountered trouble due to her heightened senses, particularly in a mental hospital, where the staff didn’t appreciate her empathic perceptions. A self-described “Jewbu”—a Jew embracing Buddhism—she would later develop into a “medical intuitive”capable of assessing an individual’s health by reading energy, sometimescatching what medical professionals missed. The book is divided into four parts: spirituality, practices, balance and the human condition, includingcautions against trying to be psychic without first laying the foundation through consistent practice of things such as meditation, which, the authors say, aids in releasing negative and positive emotions for an observer to achieve a neutral state—“the empty, silent space to just be.” A notable chapter deals with the significance of life force, noting that long-lived humans tend to be “completely self-involved.” Another addresses miracles, spotlighting a man who went into spontaneous remission from cancer after a potent lucid dream. The well-conceived book has a straightforward presentation void of ego. Although not as groundbreaking, some passages recall the teachings ofEsther and Jerry Hicks (i.e., embracing joy rather than focusing on past travails) and Eckhart Tolle (being present now). The author suggests “de-cording” from others—severing unhealthy energy ties at the chakras—which she compares to removing cookies from a computer’s operating system. Graciously, Marks puts herself on the line, telling of a male teacher who, feeling her acute anger, moved out of her line of fire: “[H]e kept telling me that I was sending ‘arrows’ at him….One day, he stood up and moved across the room, saying he wasn’t sitting in my line of sight.” Shortly thereafter, a window broke, presumably due to her energy, though neither of them had physically touched it. Marks says it illustrates a lesson: If one can heal, one can harm. For beginning and intermediate students on a lifelong spiritual journey, the reiteration of maxims such as thisshould prove beneficial.
A valuable guide to spiritual principles and practices that aptly covers the basics plus a few twists.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1493546916
Page Count: -
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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