This book wasn’t easy.  But, wow.  I think it could be life changing.  I read it months ago but it’s taken a very long time to feel I can write about it.  And I honestly I don’t think I can give it the justice it deserves with a review.  Out of respect to the author I am giving you lots of quotes so that I don’t butcher his messages.  But out of respect to you and me I will attempt to give you my lessons.

The main concepts I believe are about letting go and pushing our boundaries.  Letting go of the little things that don’t matter, realising our thoughts are our choice, and not letting our thoughts stop us for doing things.  But this seems so simplified.

Being open to growth

“If you truly want to grow spiritually, you’ll realise that keeping your stuff is keeping you trapped.  Eventually you’ll want out, at any cost.  You will then realise that life is actually trying to help you.  Life is surrounding you with people and situations that stimulate growth.  You don’t have to decide who’s right or wrong.  You don’t have to worry about other people’s issues.  You only have to be willing to open your heart in the face of anything and everything, and permit the purification process to take place.  When you do this, the first you’ll see is that situations will unfold that hit your stuff.  But, in truth, that’s exactly what has been happening your entire life.  The only difference is that now you see it is a good thing because it’s an opportunity to let go.”

Self kindness

“If you mistreat an animal, it becomes afraid.  This is what has happened to your psyche.  You have mistreated it by giving it a responsibility that is incomprehensible.  Just stop for a moment and see what you have given your mind to do.  You said to your mind, “I want everyone to like me.  I don’t want anyone to speak badly of me.  I want everything I say and do to be acceptable and pleasing to everyone.  I don’t want anyone to hurt me.  I don’t want anything to happen that I don’t like.  And I want everything to happen that I do like.”  Then you said, “Now, mind, figure out how to make every one of these things a reality, even if you have to think about it day and night.”  And of course your mind said, “I’m on the job.  I will work on it constantly.”  ..  That is why the mind is so active; you gave it an impossible task to do.  Your body would get sick if you kept trying to make it do things it was incapable of doing.  This is what has broken the psyche.  The signs of the body breaking are pain and weakness.  The signs of the psyche breaking are underlying fear and incessant neurotic thought.”

Our comfort zone

The book talks about how our thoughts/beliefs actually imprison us.  We are so terrified about getting out of our comfort zone that we live in a cage.  We think we are protecting ourselves but we are actually stopping ourselves from enjoying what might be on the other side of our cage.  It’s quite surprising to me to see it in a way that means instead of keeping ourselves safe where we are, we’re actually totally locked up with no freedom.  But if we can slightly push the bars of our cage out a little, slowly, little by little, make our space bigger and bigger our worlds will become bigger and more full of what we want to be surrounded with. Yes we need to deal with the fear that comes from what is outside our current cage.  But we can.  We can choose to go out there.  We can choose to find more joy, happiness, love, success – everything we could possibly want in life.  We don’t have to take over the entire world at once.  We just take a very small step, and then keep taking tiny baby steps until they feel normal.  Then we can take bigger steps.

“If you examine this, you will see that you’re willing to stay in this cage because you’re afraid.  Your comfort zone is familiar to you; beyond it is the unknown.”

“If something is not comfortable, they do whatever they must to protect themselves and get back to a feeling of safety.”

So interesting writing this.  It nearly makes me feel sick.  It’s so frightening to me getting out of my comfort zone.  I was totally brought up to be all about safety and security first.  Even if that meant bland.  In fact bland was good, it was safe.  Average was a good thing.  Greatness was asking for too much.

“When you truly awake spiritually, you realise you are caged.  You wake up and realise that you can hardly move in there.  You’re constantly hitting the limits of your comfort zone. You see that you’re afraid to tell people what you really think.  You see that you’re too self conscious to freely express yourself.  You see that you have to stay on top of everything in order to be okay.

Your cage is just like this.  When you approach the edges you feel insecurity, jealousy, fear or self-consciousness.  You pull back, and if you are like most people, you stop trying.  Spirituality begins when you decide that you’ll never stop trying.  Spirituality is the commitment to go beyond, no matter what it takes.  It’s an infinite journey based upon going beyond yourself every minute of every day for the rest of your lif.….  Eventually you will realise that it cannot actually hurt you to go beyond your psychological limits.  If you are willing to just stand at the edge and keep walking, you will go beyond.  You used to pull back when it got uncomfortable.  Now you relax and go past that point.  That is all it takes to go beyond.  Go beyond where you were a minute ago by handling what’s happening now.

Would you like to go beyond?  Would you like to feel no edges?  Imagine a comfort zone that is so expanded that it can easily fit the entire day, no matter what happens.  The day unfolds and the mind doesn’t say anything.  You simply interact with the day with a peaceful, fully inspired heart.  If your edges happen to get hit, the mind doesn’t complain.  It all just passes through.  This is how great beings live.  When you are trained, like a great athlete, to immediately relax through your edges when they get hit, then it’s all over.  You realise that you will always be fine.”

On death

“Life is not something to waste.  It’s truly precious.  That’s why death is such a great teacher.  It is death that makes life precious.  Look how precious life becomes when you imagine you only have a week left to live.  How precious would life be if there was no such thing as death?  You’d waste every second of it because you’d figure you’d always have it.  It is scarcity that makes things precious.  It is scarcity that makes a simple rock become a rare gem.  So death actually gives meaning to life.  Death is your friend.  Death is your liberator.  For god’s sake, do not be afraid of death.  Try to learn what it’s saying to you.  The highest way to learn is to take each moment of your life and realise that what matters is to live it fully.  If you live each moment completely, you will have a fuller life and you will not have to fear death.  You fear death because you crave life.  You fear death because you think there’s something to get that you haven’t experienced yet.  Death is giving meaning to your life.… it is you who throws your life away, not death.  Death actually helps you get your life back by making you pay attention to the moment.”

LET GO!

The book is also about letting go of judgement of ourselves and others.

“When you walk through a beautiful botanic garden you feel open and light.  You feel love.  You see beauty. You don’t judge the shape and placement of every leaf.  The leaves are of all sizes and shapes and they face every-which-way.  That’s what makes them beautiful.  What if you felt that way about people?  What if they all didn’t have to dress the same, believe the same, or behave the same? What if they were like the flowers, and however they happened to be seemed beautiful to you?”

The present moment

The book finishes with the idea that what has happened up until now doesn’t matter.  It’s not too late.

“You can turn your eyes from the sun’s light and live in darkness for a hundred years.  If you then turn them toward the light, the light is still there.”

The key lessons 

• Choose love
• Expand your heart
• Let go of any thoughts that don’t expand your heart or feel good

My goodness, they sound simple when you put them like that.  And I guess maybe they can be.  But the practice is the hard part.  The constant vigilance and awareness to watch your thoughts and be prepared to change so you act in a different way.

What do you get out of this?  What if you could choose love, expand your heart and change your thoughts to only have ones that feel good?  What would that be like?  Is it possible?  Would you read this book????

Be kind to yourself.

Wax