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John-Roger's latest contender for the 'Best-Seller List', 'Spiritual Warrior', seems at first to be the kind of book I prefer: short. Yet as I read, his words became meditations taking me on timeless inner journeys. As I 'finished' my first reading I realised that it was just the beginning. Beware of this book. You could be entering a maze that will amaze you and from which you may never want to escape! Although not 'positioned' as a 'management book', per se, 'Spiritual Warrior' is very much a 'tool kit' for discovering our true spiritual selves while staying protected from the adversity that goes with the territory. It is ideal therefore for those of us who want to bring Spirit more into our work as developers. Explicitly or implicitly. In an age where it's fashionable to decry humans as the pillagers of the planet, John-Roger reminds us that "Only human beings are capable of observing the presence of God in all things, including themselves. Human beings are sacred for that very reason. If you could understand that simple fact, you would never need to read another self-help book." Quite a claim. Yet quite a book. I was struck by the almost 'matter-of-fact' way he talks about spiritual matters. He discusses the (unusual) concepts of 'manifesting your spirit', 'moving from the unknown to the unknowable' and 'bridging the left and right sides of consciousness' with the savoir faire of someone for whom discerning the worlds of spirit is as natural as making a cake. Yet he does this without trace of ego or superiority. In the course of my own personal growth, I've read a lot of so-called self-help books. Yet this is the first one that actually seemed to read me! Cliché Spiritual ideas that have become just so much vocabulary seemed to penetrate the fog of my mind and make more sense. I've always cringed at 'organised religions'. Now I know why. In his chapter 'MOVING FROM THE UNKNOWN TO THE UNKNOWABLE' he says, "God is unknowable…Some people take what they know about God and start preaching it so they can get more people going in one direction. This gives the illusion that God is a known quality. As a result, people cease to seek inwardly, having the idea that because many people are following a particular way, it must be right. But that is a fallacy. Nothing in the world can relieve us of our personal responsibility for seeking the truth. How can something as noble as religion get us into so much trouble? Because we constantly confuse what we know or think we know with what is truth. The Spiritual Warrior has to be able to discern the difference." The notion of 'Observation' as the key to letting go', I am familiar with. Now it's becoming more of an experience. I felt things stirring in me. A new sense of freedom showed up. The excitement of realising that even I could open the inner doors to a profound spiritual awareness. It's as if the material was simply a vehicle for keeping my mind occupied while my soul danced and played with some invisible energy somehow impressed onto the paper. A mature grasp of the nature of 'abundance' was something always out of my reach. I could never detach myself from its association with 'money and things'. Now in my consciousness and in my life I'm beginning (a touch smugly) to experience what it means. John-Roger makes no pretence that the path of the Spiritual Warrior is easy. Au contraire. He encourages us to take on greater challenges in order to promote our spiritual growth. What he does do is de-mystify the mystical and place it within reach of all of us who are ready. As I read on I felt like I was being guided through different levels of experience. By the time I'd reached the end of chapter 10 I felt ready to, as he's says, maintain my 'spiritual convergence'. My what? You may well ask. Well, I think I'm beginning to grasp it: it's when "Inside us, who we are as an eternal being meets the person who is here temporarily. Here the Spirit, the emanation from God, meets us, the selves we know. This is our point of convergence. A point of concentration or attention." It would be easy to ignore 'Spiritual Warrior' for its apparent 'jargon' and casual Americanism. But we'd miss the fact that he's introducing some very profound ideas in a very different way. The difference being that these tools really do work as we work them.Paul Hunting paul@horsejoy.com
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