Customer Reviews

Prayer and the Five Stages of Healing

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This review is of the 6-cassette audio version published by Hay House

This is a tape of excerpts of a 1-day seminar (apparently) that Ron did on this subject. What Ron does is describe his path through the five stages of spiritual growth (or healing), helping the audience understand how it might apply to hemselves. The 5 stages of healing (spiritual growth, if you will) are:

1. Awakening Here, the seeker becomes aware of God's presence and the need to strive toward that presence.

2. Purification The seeker becomes aware of those practices that act as barriers to spiritual development and casts them off.

3. Illumination The seeker now becomes more aware of God's presence. Sometimes spiritual phenomena, live hunches, intuition, etc. are experienced.

4. The Dark Night Of The Soul The so-called trial, where God completes the purification while the seeker endures the trial. The best description is that it seems to be much like what Jesus went through at the Garden of Gethsemane. I haven't gotten to this stage yet.

5. Mystical Union Conscious living in God's presence.

The way that Ron makes these stages accessible is describing, often with humor, his passages through them, illustrating the stages with anecdotes from his own experience. While he makes these stages accessible to all spiritual traditions, the terminology he uses is Christian and so I found it easy to follow. There is an especially nice sequence where Ron explains the meaning of the Lord's Prayer as it was said in Jesus's language, Aramaic.

Traditional Christians might be slightly put off by the discussions of mysticism, spiritual healing, and Ron's practice of making the message accessible to all traditions. However, there is a strong spiritual message here, that will be meaningful to those who believe in Christ's ideals.

This isn't as much of a how-to set as it is descriptive. The book of the same subject is much more sequenced and does include exercises. I recommend that the book and the audio tapes be used together.

This tape set is wonderful listening during commutes and could be used as part of reflection during the day.

If you are intrigued with Ron's message, I highly recommend this tape set, his other books and tapes and seeing him live, if he visits near you

A road map to union with your higher self from one who is "there". Information given with lots of humor and warmth. A must. Tapes I have listened to several times. I hope there will be more to come.

I like the ideas in this book - the author is a former Catholic priest, and he draws from many religious traditions to make his points. His thoughts are clearly articulated and helpful to the spiritual seeker like myself.

I'm disappointed by the quality of the text, however. I've noticed numerous copyediting errors that could have been easily corrected. Glad I only paid $1.79 for this!

This is an admirable book on a par with the author's previous one, The Healing Path of Prayer.

Though Ron Roth was previously a Catholic priest, the work he now presents us with is in no way narrowly "religious", but is in the forefront of "alternative" spiritual thought.

He examines the five stages of healing - the awakening stage, the purification stage, the illuminative stage, the dark night of the soul and the stage of divine union. It's edifying to find out how far we have progressed on our journey, and how far is left for us to go.

Particularly profitable are the exercises and prayers at the end of each chapter. I especially appreciated the God is-exercise.

In the course of the book Ron Roth draws our attention to, and quotes from, the works of many of the saints and other spiritual writers.

I borrowed the book from the library, and it is absolutely falling apart owing to the numerous readers who have perused it, and especially after I'd finished with it.

I highly recommend this book to all those on the spiritual path.