Customer Reviews

Living in the Light: A Guide to Personal and Planetary Transformation

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I consider my self a serious student of life, always out of deep curiosity and many times out of a need to survive. I started thirty years ago talking to the best therepists and my wisest friends to find my way to good health and happiness. The process included writing down dreams as well as making time to think and talk about the messages my unconsious was sending me. Getting regular exersize, eating right, and maintaining friendships were the rest of the formula.

Along the way I have read a number of books to guide me. "Living in the light" is, by far, the best book I've found on the subject. It is filled with insight and wisdom and is written in a clear, simple style that makes it easy to read in a couple of evenings. The author's instructions on how to tap your intuitive skills and the energy of the universe are powerful and breathtaking. Short chapters on the male and female aspects in all of us could help save a marriage. A must read for all students of life.

As a classic, this book effectively introduces the beginner to New Age Thought. The mirror principle, issues regarding one's "shadow", cultivating one's inner female/male, and the benefits of trusting your intuition are presented here in clear and readable detail. But I have two real problems with this book.

One: while reading, you sense the book's datedness. While all of Living/Light's ideas were revolutionary in the mid-80s, they were presented as a sentimental mishmash of popular New Age platitudes. To make the presentation worse, with no "human" examples to support these platitudes, Ms. Gawain is reduced to sermonizing them. Since the first edition of Living/Light, some of these concepts have been humanized and vitalized in other more recent New Age texts. (AND AS A SIDENOTE: The mismash problem may also be perceived in most of Carolyn Myss's books, which I find are generally superficial New Age/Christian surveys cobbled together to support a catchy but unproven hypothesis.)

Two: the author only speaks from HER perspective (i.e., white western female in the U.S.), but the universality of this book would force her to generalize for everybody, thereby producing guesswork not truth on how the human psyche works. For example, when she postulates that one's inner male is to surrender to his or her inner female (who's ALWAYS right!) to achieve spiritual wholeness, I get the impression that she's taking the position of a feminist, presenting men in a limiting old-world perspective. Also, when she tries to explain the inner motivations of gay people, and in particular, with male-male relationships, I find myself openly disagreeing with her arguments.

Still, what she offers BASED ON HER EXPERIENCES is valid enough for me to keep this book in my library. I'm glad she wrote the book at a time when New Age books were relegated to the specialty bookstore! I would hope however that in the THIRD edition, she'd hire a male, gay co-author to clean up the murkier portions currently in the second edition. My two cents.

One of the best introductions to Eastern thought, LIVING IN THE LIGHT is well written and easy to understand. Shakti explains our role as channels of energy. This energy is from God, and our job is to allow this energy to flow freely through us into the world for positive change. She demonstrates how problems can result from blocking this flow, and shows how dissolving blockages through meditation and other methods can heal and empower us. The book is divided into background theory and practical application. A good handbook for those starting their deeper spiritual journey.

This is the best book on spiritual / self-help principles I have ever read. Clear and deceptively simple, it can help you change your life for the better in profound and lasting ways.

Yes I envy you if you have neve read this book because you are in for a treat! She teaches you how to recognize what you are feeling at any given time..introduced me to the tyrant and the rebel...two warring factors inside of us that immobile us--right when we actually want to make changes in our lives. I got all of my friends to read this book and it gives us a short cut way to communicate

First, I should preface this review by saying that I believe the edition I read was an earlier one, which may have not been thoroughly updated. That said, what I did read was, well... not too revolutionary. I have read a number of books in this vein and know what entails a good read. For me, that has to be something which really challenges me and not so much gives me answers, but new questions and avenues to explore. This book did not do this for me. Basically, Shakti explains her background. She is very self-congratulatory (I felt) as she explains that she lives her life by intuition, and has done all kinds of things people have felt were crazy, because she listened to her intuition.

I really feel that this book has one core truth to offer, and that is listen to your intuition, your immediate feelings, your first thoughts. Don't analyze. Just be.

But you don't need to read this book in order to get that insight. You just got it from reading my review of the book.

If you are interested in learning about the author herself, this book may be a good read as it explains quite a bit of her background and her spiritual growth. But it's overall a very general book, which offers no real answers other than "follow your intuition." And I feel that a book which purports to discuss "planetary transformation" ought to offer something more than that one insight.

this book is a real treasure if you are looking for answers and changes in your life! It will certainly lead you into the path of transformation and personal growth. I highly recommend this book to every one who is interested in knowing more about the power of the universe. A masterpiece in its simplicity but great power!

I'd give it a five except that it has a bad way of wording things somethimes...but anyway, I've read Creative Visualization, and I didn't think she could top this book...well I stand corrected....if there was only one book in the world that I could buy for every person, this would be it! It deals with surrender to the universe and becoming a channel for it's energy.

I am buying this book for the tenth time because I end up giving it to friends. Never has a book reached so deeply and positively into my life. I highly recommend this book for everyone, but especially if you are at a point in your life where you need guidance.

I find that over the last twenty years or so, I read this book over and over. Mine is literally falling apart. Some reviewers have said that this book is just New Age sentimentality, and I can see why some might say that, but in another way, it's a really tough book. It simply says, unequivocably, that you must be honest: with yourself and others. This is pretty radical really, and very difficult.

Here's another way that this book is the opposite of sentimental: Shakti Gawain does not paper over the fact that being honest with yourself and other people can sometimes appear to backfire, in the short run. She tells the reader straight out that relationships may fall apart as a result, or your life may appear to be falling apart when you put these principles into practice. But in the long run, she says, it's better for everybody.

Like another reviewer, I have trouble with Shakti Gawain's idea that "the world is our mirror." That is the idea that, if something bad happens to me, I must have unconsciously created it. One of her examples is indeed that of a rape victim. Surely the rapist himself bears a great deal of responsibility for such a heinous act. Also, what about children who are abused? Can they in any sense have "created" their own abuse?

Nevertheless, sometimes when I look at other people's lives, it is pretty clear to me the way in which they created their own problems, usually, as Gawain says, by not being honest with themselves or others. So perhaps this is more true of my life too than I realize. It is often difficult to see the ways in which we are messing up our own lives! But this book can help.