Learning to love the life force

The Answer is Simple ….. Love Yourself, Live Your Spirit’ by Sonia Choquette (Hay House Inc., 2008)

 Sonia Choquette is a globally celebrated spiritual teacher, intuitive consultant, storyteller and visionary guide. In this admirable and persuasive self-help guide she advises we readers to stop dwelling on past errors and start to “live as Divine Beings.” 

She views problems as opportunities which offer the path to true wisdom and warns against the trickery and self-deception of the ego.  She advocates choosing self-love in order to “embrace the authentic you.” These are laudable aims and there’s plenty of truth in what she says.

Choquette’s daunting CV challenges mere mortals like myself to suggest that anything she writes could possibly be wrong.  However,  I venture to part company with her in the manner in which she merges the concepts of the ‘Divine Spirit’ with that of ‘God the Creator’ as if these concepts were one of the same thing.

She writes confidently that  “Your Spirit after death simply returns to the great Creator, the Holy Mother/Father God, and resumes being the light it is made of.” There is of course no fact-based evidence for such an assertion. As with all religious beliefs, faith and mystery stand in for objective proof.

Choquette goes on to revere the Creator as the source for “the fulfilment of all your needs.”  She argues that since this great Woman/Man looks after all our interests all that remains is to keep the heart open and clear. This is all fine and dandy if you are prepared to take on trust the notion that  “God has a plan and positive things are always in store for you.”

Confusingly, she also maintains that “we, as Spirit, are the creative writers, directors, and actors in every scene.” In saying that we and God have the power to steer our lives towards peace, love and understanding is surely a contradiction in terms. Either we open our hearts up for celestial guidance or we set about doing the guiding ourselves. Who’s in control here?   

As I non-believer, I believe that placing trust in a mystical (and unprovable) creator is to deny the power we have within ourselves. As a result, every time Choquette introduced the word Spirit (always with a capital letter) I mentally substituted the term ‘life force’ (in lower case).  After all, the book title urges us not to love your spirit but to live it. 

In short. I think a better title for this book would have been  ‘Love yourself, Love your life force.’  

What’s God got to do with it?

Purity is the most mysterious of the virtues

Notes on Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Wise Blood’ (with spoilers)

First edition of ‘Wise Blood’ published by Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1952

“All comic novels that are any good must be about life and death” wrote Flannery O’Connor in her note to the second edition of her debut novel ‘Wise Blood’.  

When I first read this book I was attracted to the gothic atmosphere and the ironic , distorted images of humankind. I took it to be a satire on religious extremism, having no idea at the time that the author was a devout Catholic and that for her the slogan  ‘Jesus Saves’ was meant as a statement of fact.

Despite her unwavering belief in grace and salvation, O’Connor knew full well the criticisms against the faithful and the arguments for atheism. Instead of mounting a defence of the Catholic Church, she presents the anti-religious viewpoint through the voice of the absurdist central character Hazel Motes. He is  a deeply troubled 18 year old who returns to a deserted home town of Eastrod after being discharged from the army. All his family are dead. He is alone, rootless and faithless.

Sir Kazuo Ishiguro asks: Are Friends Electric?

KLARA AND THE SUN by Kazuo Ishiguro(US: Alfred A. Knopf; UK:Faber & Faber, 2021)  A spoiler-free review.

One of the characters in Sir Kazuo Ishiguro’s eighth novel says “It’s not faith you need. Only rationality.” Yet, while never undermining the importance of pure science, Ishiguro is primarily concerned with how humanity and machines can co-exist healthily.

Although, ‘Klara and the Sun’ will be classified as a work of Science Fiction, he, like Ian McEwan is not fundamentally aiming to write within this specific genre. McEwan’s flawed ‘Machines Like Me’ failed because he introduced elements of political satire into the story and it was also obvious that he had only a superficial interest in exploring the moral dilemmas surrounding Artificial Intelligence. Ishiguro is more disciplined and doesn’t allow himself to be distracted by wider social issues or to stray too far off topic.

Jordan B. Peterson adminsters a flawed antidote to chaos

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson (Penguin Random House, 2018)

"Chaos is the domain of ignorance itself. It’s unexplored territory" - Jordan B. Peterson.
"Chaos is order yet undeciphered" - José Saramago (The Double)

The book ambitiously seeks to find common ground between a series of dichotomies such as crime vs punishment, Christianity vs Atheism, sacrifice vs impulsiveness, constraint vs liberty, fidelity vs promiscuity and, most important of all, order vs chaos.

It is the work of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, a clinical psychologist  and professor of psychology who has taught at Harvard and Toronto universities.

More by design than accident, Peterson has become a key social media influencer thanks to numerous TV appearances plus a series of university and public lectures posted on You Tube. The book summarizes his core beliefs and advocates rules which he maintains will help us become better citizens with the added advantage of helping to fulfill our ambitions.

He states that “making your life better means adopting a lot of responsibility, and that takes more effort and care than living stupidly in pain and remaining arrogant, deceitful and resentful.” Central to his argument is that the weak are lured by the promise of unfettered freedom which only leads to chaotic, self destructive habits.

Here is the place, now is the time

Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue (Harper-Collins, 1998)

This is a self help book for the soul in which traditional Celtic wisdom from Ireland is couched in universal terms. It is full of  quotable anecdotes about living correctly and completely.

On the downside, affirmative thoughts are frequently undermined by woolly references to ‘spiritual’ values that imply all life’s gifts are God-given. O’Donohue argues that “At every moment and in every situation, God is the intimate, attentive, and encouraging friend”, ignoring the fact that there is not a shred of concrete evidence to support such a statement.

As a life-long Atheist I find the pseudo-religious aspects of the book frustrating primarily because it seems at odds with the admirable Humanist thrust of the key ideas. How can we be truly free as individuals if we are subservient to a divine being?