Customer Reviews

The Future of Love

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is such a very eclectic mix of philosophies and ideas that I had a very hard time reviewing it. Few authors have the courage to write about love relationships in such a magical and inspirational fashion. Kingma suggests that every moment of our love relationships serves a higher purpose - a purpose of the soul. She then supports this well thought-out point with several examples from both common relationships and some very uncommon, perhaps even "taboo" relationships.

The general theme that I left this book with was that love is an infinitely powerful force, and as being such, love takes on an infinite array of scenarios. Some of the scenarios can be gay, lesbian, straight, friendship, emotional, long-distance,strictly sexual, non-sexual, and even communal. Basically, the point is that love can take a variety of forms and this is the ultimate desire of the human soul.

While I personally didn't find anything in this book to be offensive, I can understand that many people may find this book controversial or even offensive. This book suggests that divorce, extramarital affairs, polyamorism, gay marriage, and even casual sex can serve a spiritual purpose for the soul. Even if you are skeptical of this point, I suggest you read the book anyway.

I find it also important to note that this book is on Neale Donald Walsch's "Ten Books that Can Change the World" list. This book is an excellent expansion of some of the relationship suggestions featured in his "Conversations with God" series. At times I found myself wondering if this book was actually written by Walsch.

Reading this book helped release me at last from the burden of shame i carried from my divorce 7 years ago. i now see that experience as one of spiritual transformation instead of a societal 'failure', and more importantly as a part of expressing society's spiritual evolution. i came home at last to a sense of greater meaning in what was a devastating personal experience. I also found the chapters on the qualities of soulful relationships totally inspiring and reorientating. My understanding of love has just taken a quantum leap thanks to ms kingma's lucid, poetic and profound writing. I recommend this book to everyone i think could benefit. You won't be sorry you bought this book!

Reading this book kinda scared me. Kingma's ideas can be controversial.

This book gives permission to us not to conform to the social norms, convinces us that it's OK to have "failed" relationships, and tells us that there are more to love than what we are used to know. SOUL LOVE is the ultimate love, according to Kingma. Search within yourself, acknowledge what you really need, believe in the agenda of the soul, and you'll see the way.

This is a good book to help us console ourselves.

On the other hand, this book also challenges what most people believe in - social norms and expectations that seem to put things in order. It belittles the importance of marriage institute and underestimates the virtue of shouldering responsibilities. The way I see it, if the soul is too busy trying to grow it may neglect the needs of the family. I am a bit skeptical with her confidence with her "love prophecies".

The book is well written, with sufficient examples to illustrate the ideas. Some sentences are too similar to those found in Conversation With God, though.

All in all, there are some good points well elaborated in this book. Take them. At the same time, be cautious to some of the dangerous, crazy ideas. Oh! I might be traditional! ;-)

Perhaps one of the most insightful, profound writers on relationships I've ever read. Particularly poignant were the 7 stages that every relationship experiences, be it 3 days or 30 years. I recommend it as a gift for young people as they enter into the realm of relationships as well as for those of us who have walked in that realm, that double edged sword of immense pain and immense love. Still I think her book is not quite complete and Lew Epstein's Trusting You are Loved is a perfect adjunct to Kingma's book. Again, they should be required reading for anyone in relationship.

A wonderful book that I wish everyone could read. Instead of seeing divorces as failures, they are steps on the road to realizing -- no, to EXPANDING ourselves into pure, unconditional love. Kingma explains why marriages/relationships really fail and how, as spiritually strong and independent beings, we can experience a more encompassing type of love. Relationships are "a journey of self-creation" where "our wholeness is emerging". "The future of love is true love, a great, sweet love that isn't pain but joy, not small but vast, not personal but spiritual". In the past, "our marriages become watered-down versions of the values of society, instead of vibrant emotional unions that nourish the people within them."

Daphne Rose Kingma's "The Future of Love" is-- at least in some ways-- among the five best books I have read this past decade, but at the same time I am now also finding it to be among the hardest books on which to write a worthy review.

First, I must warn potential readers that this is NOT a self-help book "about love." In the broadest of terms, Kingma turns our perception of how we view love on its head, and invites us to consider love in the context of the soul, rather than as an extension of wants, desires, needs, personality, insecurities, and so forth. At the heart of this lies the non-dualistic premise that love isn't something we "want," or "have," or can "get," but simply something we ARE, with love as an "expression of the soul," rather than a "want" or "need."

Kingma spends a fair amount of time examining the way we tend to push away love, through our efforts to force it into a particular "shape." To some, it may sound like she invests a lot of effort in taking to task the traditional concepts of "heterosexual marriage" and "till death do us part," but I believe those examples are merely used to illustrate our personalities' tendency to make love EXclusive, rather than INclusive. As she points out, we are "in relationship" with almost every person who comes through our lives, yet we tend to "limit" loving behavior to just a very few people. For many, she will cover some "uncomfortable ground," by making us look at the insecure ways in which we often tend to approach love, even while considering our motivations "noble" and "true."

The first half of the book doesn't actually cover a lot of "new territory," exploring love and the structure of relationships in ways that have previously been covered by other writers. In all truth, I was a bit disappointed in the book until I started Chapter 5, entitled "The Journey to the Future." And it is really the second half of the book that offers the most insightful content. Here Kingma gets down to the essence of love as something that exists at the "soul level," rather than just as an "expression of personality." In a sense, she gets as close to truly explaining the nature of "unconditional" love as any writer I have come across. This is the love that doesn't care whether two people are together or have broken up... the love transcends the "structure" of their relationship.

The latter chapters of the book explore the many "containers" soul-level love can live in. This section goes far beyond mere marriage, or "living together," and covers platonic love, group love, intentional communities, cross-generational love and much more. Kingma is not afraid to explore topics "conventional society" often frowns on, but does so in a way that suggests that the "frowning" is really more the result of ignorance than intolerance. Ultimately, she extends us an invitation to consider love in a much broader context than we normally do. This section even includes thoughts on ending relationships in a loving way, offering a distinct (and very gentle) departure from the often hateful ways that mark endings. The book concludes with explanations of "illumined" or soul-level relationships.

Final thoughts: Highly recommended (9.5 out of 10 possible bookmarks), but it requires the reader to keep an open mind, especially when reading the latter part of the book. The half mark off that keeps this from "excellence" is for the repetition of some already common-knowledge material in the earlier parts of the book.

Thanks for reading!
--Peter

Kingma's book is a breath of fresh air in that she asserts that traditional monogamous marriage isn't the ultimate form of intimate relationship; that it isn't a "one size fits all" relationship that everyone must aspire to. She outlines several different nontraditional forms that intimate relationships may take, each equally valid and suitable depending upon each person's individual needs and desires.

I would have given the book five stars, but I had to wade through quite a bit of superfluous psychobabble in order to get to the core message of this book.

Daphne Rose Kingma's book, THE FUTURE OF LOVE is a literary masterpiece. It shines like a star in the night, guiding us to a new and much improved view of ourselves and our relationship histories. With compassionate words and crystal-clear logic, Kingma explains why failure in love is actually impossible -- because love is who you are. Every relationship you have ever had has been part of your life for a very good reason, and when you step back and examine your life with compassionate eyes, you can see (perhaps for the first time) how perfectly orchestrated everything has actually been.

As Kingma writes, "We stretch, and to our amazement we don't break. Instead, we grow. Suddenly, everything becomes easier, and our hearts, which once we believed could love only one person, or were battered so badly we thought they could never love again, expand so fully that the whole world is welcome."

This spiritual book can provide amazing insights for you, regardless which of the seven stages of love you may currently find yourself in (Romance, Commitment, Crisis, Ordeal, Chaos, Surrender, Transformation). One thing is certain after you've read this book -- your view of the meaning of love will be permanently transformed.

Just came to my attention last week by a dear friend and advisor. She thought I was already living this life, and I am! This work is so very validating and filled with what we are all about, the only thing, LOVE and TRANSFORMATION.

Daphne Rose Kingma, thank you!!! This book truly reflects what so many of us are feeling yet either have not had the courage nor the poetic ability to say - our relationships no longer fit into the definitions made by societies long ago, and it's okay! Our souls are on paths of enlightenment and to truly reach our destiny, we must acknowledge what we are seeking and create our relationships based in reality. I will recommend this book to everyone I know. The message in this book has a profound message for anyone in a new relationship, an old relationship, or someone who desires not to have a relationship. This book will help you examine your views on the relationships in your life and how they affect your life's journey. I've underlined, starred and dog-earred my copy, you will too.