Customer Reviews

Awakening Love: The Universal Mission: Spiritual Healing in Psychology and Medicine

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Awakening Love is an exceptional book which integrates the areas of psychology, medicine and spirituality. East and West truly meet in this book.

Awakening Love introduces Love as the power and the personality as the mechanism for transformation to reach one's soul expression. The personality is described through weaving information on the chakras, patterns of psychological wounding and directions for spiritual unfoldment. To illustrate the material, the personality and its patterns are described using the nine personality types of the enneagram. The nine personality types are clarified and deepened through the interpretation of Jesus' Teachings. Personality pitfalls and patterns of self-undoing are clearly explained as well as clear methods for personality integration and growth.

Meditation instruction is given for each of the nine personality types. Each meditation provides healing, personality integration and an infusion of soul awakening.

Awakening Love is a must read!

There is much valuable information here, packed in a small format. In the last few years, we have seen many books about psychotherapy and spirituality from a Buddhist perspective, such as Mark Epstein's "Thoughts without a thinker" and others. This book is about psychotherapy and spirituality from a Christian mystical perspective and should be of interest to many (including non-Christians, in the same way one does not have to be a Buddhist to be interested in Epstein's books). The authors present the Christ Self as a metaphor for the realized Self. My reading of the book has been slow at times, because there is much information and wonderful insights to absorb. I particularly enjoyed the ten meditations in Chapter 8--who does not want to "transform vices into virtues" for one's particular personality type?

I am excited to find a book so exceptionally well-written, so complete, so rich in concepts and information. It is likely the best psychology book I have ever read.

Awakening Love makes Enneagram personality study vibrant and clear. We learn "the astonishing power of our thoughts"-how each personality type creates thought forms which either enslave the mind or transform the soul. To take this learning even further, Jesus' teachings are woven in for instruction in the self-realization of the nine personality types. Discussion of world religions is fascinating and supports the understanding of underlying spiritual principles. Supplemental materials include insightful exercises within the text and sacred meditations among the appendicies.

This book is well worth the purchase simply to consider the perspective of any one of these aspects of study. Yet it's the weaving of them that makes this book a gem-a rich tapestry of personality theory and spiritual transformation tools that will inspire profound growth and awakening to your truest Self.

I am excited to find a book so exceptionally well-written, so complete, so rich in concepts and information. It is likely the best psychology book I have ever read.

Awakening Love makes Enneagram personality study vibrant and clear. We learn "the astonishing power of our thoughts"-how each personality type creates thought forms which either enslave the mind or transform the soul. To take this learning even further, Jesus' teachings are woven in for instruction in the self-realization of the nine personality types. Discussion of world religions is fascinating and supports the understanding of underlying spiritual principles. Supplemental materials include insightful exercises within the text and sacred meditations among the appendicies. This book is well worth the purchase simply to consider the perspective of any one of these aspects of study. Yet it's the weaving of them that makes this book a gem-a rich tapestry of personality theory and spiritual transformation tools that will inspire profound growth and awakening to your truest Self.

Demetry and Clonts were inspired by the late Stylianos Atteshlis (Dakalos), and they wrote a wonderful book on spiritual healing from a Christian perspective yet there is overlap with other spiritual traditions, including Isalm, Taoism and Buddhism to name a few.

Demetry and Clonts' "Awakening Love" is marvelous, and what better words can be added in a book review? The challenge I face is serious. One does not need to go far to find the Triad, or the Christ-self noted as Power, Love and Wisdom (see page 15-20). Among the nine enneagram personality types these three vertices (once perfected) are represented by the minister of purpose, the spiritual warrior, and the defender of truth (see chapter VII). Demetry and Clonts tell us that the Triad as the law of three is the most fundamental experience, and it evolves through each of the remaining seven personality types in the enneagram, leading to perfection of the self. Demetry and Clonts write in great detail, while providing practical meditations in chapter VIII.

Purification comes with awareness of the Christ-self within. For example, greed is betrayed by our provisional nature; greed and other vices are examples of "negative elementals" (expression coined by Demetry and Clonts) that are all too easy to observe and feel as reported by detached spectators that judge action. The negative elementals generate an irritation, and when we put our hand on the hot stove we remove it. Likewise, only the blind overextend their inventions in a quest to take more and more, eventually doing much injury to themselves and others.

This is why the only real guru points to his own provisionality. It does not end there, however. One finds the Christ-self from within, but this self is not me standing on top of a soap box demanding that others must surrender their autonomy. Nor is this discovery the emergence of additional layers of religiosity. My only point is that the Christ-self feels, and this feeling is not greedy computer output; feeling is as the hand on the hot stove.

As an example, Demetry and Clonts say as much, and to read this book with a critical eye is to discover provisionalities that cry out for better words, at least in theory. And when better words come what is intended becomes closer to a work of art. It seems that the tension we feel can be translated into better words, preserving what is there in the name of a greater artist. We write better words because we can feel and discover a more significant resonance.

But my challenge for better words is daunting. In chapter VI, Demetry and Clonts present a master work that reconnects the Parable of the Prodigal Son to the Seven Chakras and the negative elementals of the subconscious. Their effort is pure genius, noting that the separation from the Christ Self is followed by a return to source and the advent of healing. And we see again how spiritual healing reconnects with complementary medicine so far neglected by Western medicine. What really strikes me is the universality that is felt (resonance) by Demetry and Clonts' treatment. It does reconnect with mere words and their felt tension. It provides a framework for a universal grammar that supports our understanding of spiritual healing.

On page 88, Demetry and Clonts present a wonderful poem by Donna Overall, "Understanding Zorba", and it provides a good summary of their chapter VI with the negative elementals felt with the Seven Chakras:

I dance the pain until it stands
in acrid drops like olive brine
upon my face

I dance the crystalline tears
that long ago turned
my shoulders into stone

I dance the sorrow
of love turned to hatred
and hatred to indifference

I dance the fear of
loneliness and the anguish
of abandonment

I dance the anger
until it rages free
and runs down my arms
like rivers

I dance the disappointment
of expectations unfulfilled
and dreams too long
deferred

I dance all my demons
into dust beneath my feet
sweeping them away
in spiraling centrifuge

Only then can I dance
that which sings
the heart and blood

In the space
between the spaces
that lie between the words

Where words have no meaning
I dance and joy IS ...

Disclosure: My agenda is declared in my profile.