Book 1 for my #50BooksIn2016 challenge. Find out more about the challenge here.
I picked this book up randomly at a Barnes & Noble a while back. (Yes, they still exist and I still go to them.) I’ve been struggling with my own feelings of religion and spirituality, and without getting too far into the weeds on that – another time and place, perhaps, the back cover of the book seemed as though it could shed some interesting light on my internal debate.
In the end, it did, although it took a long and winding road to get there.
Overall, I liked the concept of the book and what it had to say about God in our lives in modern society. In a very small nutshell, the premise of the book is that God (and religion) has fallen out of favor in modern society for numerous reasons, but there is a way to bring him back into our lives. In fact, we must bring him back if we are to not fall into utter chaos and despair as a society.
The long and winding road to get to the way we can begin to experience God again has a lot to do with a rebuttal to staunch atheism as espoused by Richard Dawkins and a few others. I think this rebuttal was the main premise of Chopra writing the book, and while that discussion was interesting on some level, it wasn’t what I was looking for. I could have selected a few chapters and gotten what I was searching for much quicker. Although saying that somehow feels like it goes against some of the main principles Chopra discusses such as “letting go” and “releasing expectations”. I just finished it, I need some time to practice.
Chopra’s main premise is that God is consciousness and existence and Being, and that alignment with this brings ultimate self-awareness or oneness or “enlightenment” as it is more commonly know. He provides daily practices, such as the mentioned “letting go” and “releasing expectations” and describes why they are important. He discusses evil in the world and how to comprehend it in terms of this God that is consciousness. While I’m not sure I bought into or understood it all, I like the direction he goes.
In general, I would recommend the book if you are on a spiritual journey that isn’t tied to a specific religion, although it could still be helpful if you are more a believer in the principles of a religion than the hard and fast rules of a religion. He does speak out about that type of religious belief. I found the last third or so of the book on Knowledge of God to be informative and certainly a basis to begin seeking God, although not the final word.
But a true spiritual journey shouldn’t have a final word, should it?
