Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: Spiritual Growth

THIS TOO SHALL PASS by David Yuen – Poetry, Inspirational, Spirituality

Poet and philosopher David Yuen shares observations on the human experience, showing how the gifts of life outweigh its pains, though not without a thought-invoking skirmish between the two.

Covid-19 provoked Yuen to compose some poems fixed on the unique moments of the pandemic. One fascinating segment centers on a trip the author undertook to Ireland. It was a typical sort of tour, including a visit to the Blarney Castle, with the opportunity, which Yeun declined, to kiss the renowned Blarney Stone. Yet, he joined in the placing of stones, assisting a couple with one of the many stones they set around the world in memory of their departed son. Sharing in that small ritual was a high point of the journey, contrasting a low point as he scored positive on a Covid test and had to remain in Ireland for many days.

Though at the time it seemed tedious, Yuen reminded himself of how often he wished for simple solitude in his busy life, and how fortunate he was to isolate in such desirable surroundings.

Similar thoughts, rooted in a Christian perspective, occur to Yuen as he reads about the Russian attack on Ukraine, and the many implications of that war.

In all situations, ranging from such issues as Roe vs. Wade, personal stresses like a horrific accident narrowly averted while driving to work, or a rather amusing argument with his morning coffee, Yuen maintains a positive stance. He believes that God wants humans to face tragedies, wars, and personal vulnerabilities with resolve, as Jesus invited us to count our blessings and feel secure that we are, in fact, “lavishly loved.”

Yuen, a second-generation Chinese American, has developed the enviable ability to explore thorny issues and painful subject matter while maintaining an upbeat, spiritual viewpoint.

His descriptions of his inner thought processes – energetic, entertaining, and credible – will remind readers of their own sometimes-conflicted ways of chewing on problems. Despite the inner turmoil, Yuen keeps a positive light at the end of even the darkest tunnels. His well-considered outlook, encapsulated in the title This Too Shall Pass, should be welcomed by anyone trying to approach time-worn trials or embrace the challenge of new ones.

June 26, 2023
ENLIGHTEN UP! Finding Clarity Contentment and Resilience in a Complicated World by Beth Gibbs – Personal Transformation, Meditation, Spiritual Growth

Beth Gibb’s Enlighten Up! Finding Clarity Contentment and Resilience in A Complicated World is not a simple how-to book, but rather an invitation to begin a journey of self-discovery.

This journey follows the “five-layer method,” based on the Upanishads, a 3,000-year-old East-Indian wisdom tradition. After a quick history lesson on the pursuit of self-awareness, Gibbs walks readers through the five layers of achieving it, for a happy and fulfilling life. Throughout the book, Gibbs includes breaks for mindfulness and grounding exercises to get the most out of each section.

Gibbs writes about the assumption that the goal of enlightenment is to, “suppress or eliminate their emotions, live everlasting bliss, and face every situation with equanimity,” and how that assumption is unrealistic.

She sees a better understanding of self as a way to improve many aspects of one’s life. Following her advice won’t create a drastic overnight transformation, but it involves a lot of reflection and hard work to make these changes last. It’s clear that the benefits of developing better self-awareness are more than worth the effort as they can lead to better lifestyle choices, reduced stress, and strengthened relationships, all of which contribute to personal happiness. At the end of the day, many people wish most of all for happiness for themselves and those they love.

Beth Gibbs does a wonderful job blending her explanations of Eastern wisdom traditions with Western beliefs and scientific thought.

Before Enlighten Up! Readers may not have heard of the Upanishads, but Gibbs’s down-to-earth writing style makes it easy to understand and think about the culture and purpose of enlightenment and meditation. For instance, she refutes the idea that practicing enlightenment is to suppress or eliminate emotions and live in everlasting bliss. Gibbs dives deeply into these ideas, such as exploring the distinction between our emotions and our feelings.

Within each section, Gibbs writes about her own journey of enlightening up and how it is about, “feeling, being, and acting authentically.” From Enlighten Up! readers will learn how to feel 100% authentic and comfortable in their skin by working through the layers of awareness, aided by the offer of breathing and calming exercises.

Enlighten Up! Finding Clarity Contentment and Resilience in a Complicated World is a must-read for those wanting more peace of mind in their loud and busy lives.

Enlighten Up! by Beth Gibbs won Grand Prize in the 2021 CIBA Mind & Spirit Awards for Spirituality and Enlightenment Non-Fiction.

June 7, 2023
EVEN the MONSTERS. Living with Grief, Loss, and Depression: A Journey through the Book of Job (2nd Edition) by Daryl Potter – Personal Transformation, Coping with Grief, Christian Studies

Meticulously researched and written, Even the Monsters. Living with Grief, Loss, and Depression: A Journey through the Book of Job (2nd Ed.), by Daryl Potter, goes well beyond a self-help book, a religious treatise, or an evangelical statement of faith.

Linguists, historians, philosophers, geographers, sociologists—the list goes on—will find Even the Monsters… fascinating. In addition to appealing to a plethora of interests, the book also serves as a memoir of sorts. The author has interwoven biographical information regarding seemingly overwhelming, ongoing challenges to which the wisdom he found in Job was applicable, enabling his family to survive intact.

Almost immediately, when beginning Even the Monsters. Living with Grief, Loss, and Depression…, the reader is captured by the voice. Potter’s attention to the details of Job’s life, considered in light of the customs and values of the society in which he lived, establishes a setting and mood to which the reader can relate. Each of the 1,070 verses in the book of Job are presented, parsed, and discussed in light of Job, the man.

The author’s stated rationale for this approach makes perfect sense:

“… when it comes to books about the Bible and personal spiritual growth, the scholarly and the practical are separated by an unacceptable divide. The depth in the academic literature is obtuse and inaccessible to the nonacademic [sic]. Accessibility in the more personal accounts often sacrifices accuracy [sic], richness, and lasting meaning by mainly focusing on emotional and subjective material. The scholarly cannot be easily digested, and the popular supplies inadequate nutrition.”

The reader comes to know this man personally. Potter takes the time to explore Job’s life as if in real time. How must he have felt when each tragedy befell him and his family? How might he have reacted? What did those in his social circle think of his misfortunes? Potter asks the kinds of questions people today ask themselves when struck by unexpected or unwarranted adversity and extrapolates from the “what happened next.”

In this process, along with revealing Job, the man, the author also reveals and reaffirms those qualities, often unrecognized or untapped, which are uniquely human. Having faith, exercising bravery in the face of adversity, and having the determination to prevail are among these gifts, which often lie dormant and unused by virtue of the individual’s ignorance of their existence.

With this revelation, while the reader will not find pat answers or solutions to her personal dilemmas within this narrative, she may discover her unused and perhaps unrecognized inner resources that can help.

Even the Monsters. Living with Grief, Loss, and Depression: A Journey through the Book of Job (2nd Ed.), is not a difficult read in terms of language and writing style, but it’s not a book one can hurry through. It is long, by nature of the care with which it was written, and rich with food for thought. Not just a book for Christians, it’s a book for humankind—well worth the time and consideration it demands, one we can highly recommend.

January 26, 2022
SACRED LIFE: Healing from the Virus in Consciousness by Bedri Cag Cetin, Ph.D. – Spiritual Self-Help, Personal Transformation, Spiritual Growth

In his biographical work, Sacred Life: Healing from the Virus in Consciousness, Bedri Cag Cetin, Ph.D. explains his version of “The Golden Key,” a phrase he uses to formulate an “Inner Guide” which seeks above all else “…peace, happiness and harmony for all involved.”

Cetin uses his advanced education, world travels, failed and then healed personal relationships, business dealings, and training under spiritual leaders to formulate his thoughts. According to Cetin, decisions based on or that cause fear, chaos, or blame reflect Ego-driven actions in one’s journey toward inner peace; whereas using one’s Inner Guide to make decisions will result in peace and harmony.

Each chapter in the book reflects a chapter in his own journey. Cetin illustrates the times in his life when he either caused chaos from Ego based actions or eventually found peace due to trusting and surrendering to his “Inner Guide.” At the end of each chapter, the author offers insights and comments that further explain his ideas. The organization of each chapter, premise, personal example, realization, acceptance of the Inner Guide, ultimately make Sacred Life easily understandable and therefore valuable.

Sacred Life falls into a loose category of “spiritual self-help” books.

Throughout the book, the author’s casual voice makes it very easy for the reader to grasp these universal and sometimes ethereal truths. Similar in tone to Tosha Silver’s Outrageous Openness, Sacred Life offers neither pretentious nor overly complicated phrasing. Rather, the path created in the book may deliver a great journey for those seeking to learn the first steps toward a more enlightened life. At the end of the book, Cetin encourages his readers to ask their Inner Guide, “What is it that I really want?”

Reminding his audience that Healing, a return to Wholeness, requires a total surrender of the illusions and barriers that obstruct the way. The Ego’s chronic addiction to “feel good” behaves much like a drug addict’s dependence on drugs. The resulting action unravels into spiritual numbness.

Cetin refers to this “numbness” as the “dark night of the soul,” but he encourages readers not to despair. Through work and attention to the Inner Guide, one can be unburdened from carrying years of accumulated baggage and find true freedom and happiness.

Universal truth points to peace and harmony.

Sacred Life: Healing from the Virus in Consciousness reflects and explains a universal truth: That peace comes from awareness, and conflict arises from dependency on the Ego. Training one’s thoughts and desires to be satisfied with peace, happiness, and harmony could ultimately end all discord and create a balanced, peaceful life.

April 24, 2021
The SATISFIED WORKBOOK: A Spiritual Guide to Recovery and Food Freedom by Dr. Rhona Epstein, PsyD, CAC – Food Addiction Recovery, 12 Step Recovery, Weight Management and Weight Loss

Dr. Rhona Epstein, PsyD, CAC is the leading expert on Food Addiction Recovery.

She is a therapist who has recovered from the problems she now focuses on, seeking to help those who suffer from food addiction to recognize their problem and solve it with spiritual guidance.

Epstein has based this manual around the 12 Steps, a program originally geared to alcoholism and based on Christian principles, but gradually secularized to facilitate outreach to a broader group. The 12 Steps take the addict, of whatever sort, through a series of deepening inner questions and resolutions. Initially, the addict must admit he or she has an addiction – in this case, to food and overeating, resulting in bingeing and other disorders such as bulimia. From that point, there will be a diligent search for relief, aided by faith in God’s care, and concluding with the possibility of helping others with the same problems.

Epstein has organized her book extremely carefully, each chapter considering one of the steps.

The chapters contain an initial Overview followed by Real Talk by Dr. Rhona, who speaks with two voices. As a psychologist, she recounts case studies concerning people whose problems illustrate the need for the steps. As a former food addict, she recalls her ways of dealing with, or dodging, the issues. It took her several years to conquer her overeating and related compulsions, and, as she reminds her readers, the need for diligence, or what she calls “daily housekeeping,” is a constant. For each step, she offers Recovery Questions, makes challenges, and sometimes presents multiple pages of Scriptural Meditations since her work and wisdom are heavily steeped in a Christian viewpoint. Throughout the book, she will urge her readers to give their burdens to God while also suggesting some secular solutions such as meditation and music, attendance in group therapy, and individual counseling, both professional and friend-and-family based.

The author, who has a doctorate in clinical psychology and many years of experience counseling in the field of food-related addiction, references food as both a physical poison that can lead to and perpetuate addiction and as a symbolic spiritual satisfaction when it comes, as healing, from the grace of God.

As a recovered addict, Dr. Rhona is frank about the work it may take at times to acknowledge and overcome food obsessions fully. It is precisely this perspective that gives her strategies credibility. Anyone experiencing food or other addiction problem may benefit from reading Epstein’s highly relevant work. The questions and exercises contained within the book would make an excellent tool for therapeutic workshops.

March 25, 2021
The YOU BEYOND YOU The Knowledge of the Willing by Ramzi Najjar – Personal Transformation, Motivational, Spiritual Growth Self-Help

In The YOU beyond you – The knowledge of the willing, Ramzi Najjar addresses his audience with the contemplative calm of a mystic guru and the fervor of an old-time evangelist, in a how-to guide to good health, happiness, and inner peace as a personal philosophic treatise addressing the physical and spiritual quality of life in the 21^st century.

In the Preface, Najjar quickly captures readers’ attention with the question, “In a chaotic world, and a life of prevalent restlessness, how can we make sense of the non-sensical [sic]?”

Who doesn’t relate to that?

In seeking an answer to that question, rather than asking the who, what, when and whys of traditional philosophy, Najjar accepts that negative and “nonsensical” life conditions are a given and asks the question how.

How can one change the negative impacts of these conditions upon one’s own being?

Najjar contends, “… you become what you perceive … and what you permit to enter your body…,” and this is the underlying premise upon which the book is based.

The author developed the rationale for his guide from personal experience, learning, observations, and understandings, along with widely accepted, common-sense information, uncited hypotheses, and research from various disciplines. In addition to ideas borrowed from areas of psychology, metaphysics, and epistemology, the author includes some concepts found in Eastern religions. The author weaves these bits and pieces together to create a new paradigm for 21st-century spiritual enlightenment.

At 137 pages, The YOU beyond you is not a long book or a difficult read.

Ramzi Najjar provides detailed explanations, relevant metaphors, and personal anecdotes to support his conclusions. Along with a preface, lengthy forward, and conclusion, he presents his ideas in six chapters: “Body Pollution; Mind Pollution; Restoring our body and mind; Getting imprinted with the correct memory; The Source and how to access it; and, Letting the right Memory run our life.”

The first three chapters are relatively short and provide a fairly comprehensive review of the benefits of common-sense behaviors and choices, and of proven healthy practices that can pave the way to personal transformation. The latter chapters dip into metaphysics and spiritualism integrated with historical and current scientific thought regarding genetic memory found in contemporary neuroscience, energy medicine, and integrative physiology. If one follows the suggestions in Najjar’s latest guide, there is no doubt the outcome will lead to motivational and spiritual growth.

The YOU beyond you may appeal to a varied audience. While at times verbose and loquacious, the intensity of Najjar’s arguments keeps the reader engaged. Many readers will relate to his friendly sometimes pedagogical, first-person voice and will find the book motivating and inspirational. All in all, The YOU beyond you is an interesting and provocative read.

March 15, 2021