My Book Reviews

In this post I wish to review a book I bought on the 22/2/1997 and have dipped into numerous times over the years.  The name of the book is simply Handbook for the Soul: A Collection of Wisdom from over 30 Celebrated Spiritual Writers. The editors of this compact and inspiring book that runs to roughly 200 pages are Drs Richard Carlson and Benjamin Shiel. The publisher is Piatkus, London, 1995. In the afterword, the editors inform us, should we be in doubt of the fact, that this is a compendium meant to be used and re-used.  Indeed, for me, this book is one I have dipped into many times over the last 20 or so years and I have brought it with me as a vade mecum  several times. They tell us that they hope even that the thoughts within may be debated with passion as well as pondered and reflected upon.  They continue: "It is our wish that some of the thoughts, voices and wisdom in these pages may remain with you.  Let these thoughts resonate in your mind ...

Spirituality My copy of this book Spirituality is one of those words that tends to be chameleon in nature, that is, it takes different camouflage to blend into whatever surroundings it occupies.  The prevailing context literally conditions its presentation of itself to the world.  Likewise, over the history of civilization it has taken different shapes as it was expressed from century to century in various cultures. If readers are of a more traditional religious bent of mind, or attend religious services of whatever denomination then they will understand spirituality as the journey within that certain community or church structure towards a spiritual centre of their lives which they will usually call God, a transcendent source or ground of Being. However, others may understand the spiritual reality as being of a more psychological nature; still others as being a sociological or psycho-sociological phenomenon and others still will view it as a merely artistic or cultu...

When the East Meets the West: Introduction That there is a distinct difference between an Eastern and a Western approach to reality is without question.  Below, I try to summarize what I believe to be the main differences between the two approaches to philosophy.  Some terms I have used may overlap with others. Also, in a certain and significant sense my contrasting of the two approaches sets them up as very much polar opposites which, of course, they are not.  In fact, there is a certain amount of overlap, a certain middle ground and certain nuances of thinking in either approach that allow for some element of the other to enter its domain.  Therefore, what's below is to be taken as somewhat pointed and even simplistic, though instructive to give a beginner a taste for the main distinctions.  Later study of both can allow for the similarities and more learned and subtle nuances.                    ...

My copy of this book Some weeks ago I reviewed a memoir in these pages, viz.,  Staring at Lakes.  Here, I wish to review another memoir, this time one by Paul Auster called Winter Journal  (Faber & Faber, 2012).  It differs greatly from that of Michael Harding.  Harding's work is one which is centered on the Self as an ontological reality as encountered in meditation, in deep philosophical thinking and in that exacting way, I know only too well, of the person who suffers from clinical depression.  Auster's work is not as intense at all as its guiding force is that of a phenomenological exploration of what it means to be a human being in today's modern world.  I was intrigued by Auster's approach which I deem one of remarkably sharp observation. Like every other human being, mortality rears its ugly head for this author in this wonderfully honest book.  We meet him in its pages as an embodied self, whereas in Harding's work we meet th...

I have already reviewed a book by Robert A. Johnson, viz., Owning Your Own Shadow  in this blog before  here . This time I wish to review another one from Dr. Johnson's pen, namely Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth , HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins, 1989. My copy of this little classic Robert A. Johnson is an internationally recognized Jungian analyst, lecturer and author who is now in his early nineties.  Dr. Johnson is to be praised for popularizing the work of Professor Carl Gustav Jung in the United States of America especially, but also much more widely around the world.  He is universally lauded for the accessibility of his texts and lectures to the man and woman in the street.  He studied at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich where Jung's wife Emma was his main analyst.  He also steeped himself in both Eastern and Western mysticism, the former by dialogue with  Jiddu Krishnamurti  (1895...

When I'm feeling somewhat low, or perhaps empty or lacking in inspiration even, it is then that I instinctively look to poetry for something uplifting, fulfilling or inspiring - even healing, if possible.  As I write these notes here, a friend of mine is preparing a collection of my poems in the Irish language for publication.  It took me best part of a week to sift through a couple of hundred poems I had written in Gaeilge to pick out around fifty for a collection to send on to him. Doing that was literally a labour of love and a great sustenance for my soul.  Not that I'm being egotistical here as real poetry, or more correctly the making of poems, has more to do with soul than with ego.  However, as I had to read them thoroughly to pick some out, the reader will forgive me some little self-obsession, at least momentarily.  Further, I was overcome with both emotion and inspiration looking back at my spiritual path over the past twenty years as revealed in th...

Staring at Lakes: A memoir of Love, Melancholy and Magical Thinking (Hachette Books, Ireland, 2013) by Michael Harding. My copy of Harding's book Harding is an outstanding Irish author, playwright, novelist and actor who writes a column in The Irish Times .  It is not surprising at all that this memoir won the non-fiction book of the year at the Irish Book Awards, 2013. If I were asked for a comparable book in the memoir line here in Ireland, I should have to point to Nuala O'Faolain's equally moving   Are You Somebody? : The accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1996). Both books are written with such a white-hot honesty that the searing truth burns into the page and keeps the reader gripped in such an intensity that one simply does not want to put the book down until one is finished.  I read Harding's book in one sitting, just like I did O'Faolain's book.  In existential terms, one is caught by the sheer authe...