Book Review: Natural Born Soulmates

Yes, I'm reviewing another "Law of Attraction" book about finding a soulmate. I'm still recommending The Soulmate Path: Find the Love You Want and Strengthen the Love You Have, but Natural Born Soulmates: Follow Your Inner Wisdom to Lasting Love by Lauren Thibodeau has a slightly different target audience and covers a different set of issues.

The first key concept that sets this book apart is the division of soulmates into three categories: "Karmic Connections" who present you with unfinished business that needs to be cleaned up, "Balance Partners" who offer support and lessons (but not necessarily pleasant lessons), and "Heartmates"who are people to we can build happy, healthy and growing passionate relationships with.

The second key concept is a list of five attitudes that commonly block us from finding Heartmates, and keep us stuck with Karmic Connections or Balance Partners. I'll just list them, as they basically speak for themselves:

1. I'd rather be anything but alone.
2. But I see such potential.
3. It's just that I love you so much.
4. I won't be hurt like that again.
5. All of the good ones are gone.

If at least one of the above five statements sounds familiar, then this book will have something helpful for you. The book does claim to be written for women, but the advice and concepts pretty much apply to everyone. And I promise this will be the last soulmate book I talk about at least for a few months.

Book Review: The Vibrational Universe

I should probably start off with a warning: this review is going to be about yet another "Law of Attraction" book. The Vibrational Universe: Harnessing the Power of Thought to Consciously Create Your Life by Kenneth James Michael MacLean definitely falls into that category. But please bear with me, and don't say "Been there, done that, got the T-shirt" just yet. The book actually raises an important point which, in my opinion, is worth the price of admission. We tend to think of emotion and reason as two separate things. This book says that your ability to reason is affected by your emotional state, and that sufficiently negative emotional states can inhibit the ability to reason entirely. The corollary is that we're better able to deal with problems that come up if we can find something to feel better about first.

To that end, the book includes a scale of emotions, ranging from apathy at the extreme negative end, to serene bliss at the extreme positive end. This is important because changing our emotional state only works well a couple of steps at a time. It's hard to go from apathy to enthusiasm, but taking a couple of steps up through grief and anger works better. This also means that you can't lift someone else's mood if you're too far above them on the scale without approaching them, at least temporarily, from a lower spot.

The rest of the book won't have many surprises for those of you who have been following this blog for any length of time, but the book is a very good introduction to the Law of Attraction and related concepts.

Book Review: The Soulmate Path

I have a theory developed while reading The Soulmate Path: Find the Love you Want and Strengthen the Love You Have by Monte Farber and Amy Zerner. The authors don't explicitly state this theory in their book, but it seems to be implied by what they've written. So here goes: soulmates are not born, they are grown. A soulmate relationship is not necessarily predetermined before birth, but is definitely a result of a process in which two people acquire a deep understanding of each other, and a closeness that results in the two preferring each other's company to anyone else's.

The authors have a method of finding a soulmate that I haven't seen anywhere else:

...if you put your efforts into becoming yourself fully and do your best to realize your potential and find out who you are and what you are capable of, you will become the kind of person your Soulmate will want to meet and stay with.

Well, that sounds like a well-defined, workable plan to me, so I'm trying it. The book also has very helpful advice for how to deal with issues such as children, abuse and commitment, and some delightful stories about how the authors found each other, and a set of affirmations toward the end for those of you who are into that sort of thing. I highly recommend the book for anyone who wants to find a new relationship or improve an existing one.

George Carlin and Christian Athletes

George Carlin used to complain in one of his routines about Christian athletes "who thank Jesus whenever they win, never mention his name when they lose." It's a valid complaint if you're a fundamentalist materialist, but if you know about the Law of Attraction, what these athletes are doing makes perfect sense. Being thankful for good things that happen on the playing field attracts more things to be thankful for. I don't know if these athletes know that, but it works anyway. So, the bottom line is, Jesus may not need our gratitude, but we do.

Book Review: The Magician's Way

This book, like Creative Flowdreaming: Manifesting Your Dreams in the Life You've Already Gotis about creating rewarding experiences for yourself and others. So why review two books on the same subject? Because the approach is different, and one size definitely does not fit all here. The approaches in the two books are both valid, but one or the other may work better for you because it feels more natural.

The approach in The Magician's Way is, as you may expect, analogous to the Magician Tarot card. You focus on what you want, but don't worry about how to get it, and take action to make it happen. Creative Flowdreaming on the other hand, has an approach more like the High Priestess card. Instead of focusing on what you want, you focus instead on how you'll feel when you get it. That way, you leave the possibility open of manifested something that you hadn't thought of that will be even better for you than what you wanted. As you can tell, I prefer the Creative Flowdreaming, but your mileage may vary.

The book brings up a couple of important points. First, our assumptions are often the most important factor preventing us from getting what we want. Even if the assumptions are correct, they can prevent us from looking into alternative methods. Second, we want to hold on to things because we think we need them, when letting them go can sometimes create room for something better.

My recommendation? Read both The Magician's Way and Creative Flowdreaming. Then re-read the book you liked better and make that the basis of your practice. Either way, you have some "What just happened?" moments coming up.

The Secret Isn't

Up until now, I haven't written any negative book reviews. The main reason for this is Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap. The main purpose of this blog is to sort through all the crap so you don't have to. Therefore, if you don't see a book reviewed here, you can assume that either: I haven't read it yet; I don't understand it well enough to write a review yet; or it's crap (there's also the case where I haven't gotten to it yet -- ed.). So this will be a positive review with reservations.

My primary reservation about The Secret is that nothing in the book was a secret. If I'm proven wrong I'll happily delete this post and post a public apology, but there's nothing in this book that couldn't have been found somewhere else in the same shelf at Barnes & Noble or Borders even at the time the book was written.

That said, there is a lot of useful information in the book. The key concept, focus on what you want, is very important for recovering materialists. Not for the reason you may be thinking about, namely, "how can I get ...?", but more importantly, knowing that you can get (fill in the blank), and that it won't just be a matter of colliding Newtonian billiard balls. Practical demonstration is essential to spiritual development. Even if most, if not all, of what's in this book has been said before, if it takes yet another book for some people to get it then it takes another book.

You may have heard complaints that The Secret is superficial and simplistic. That's fine by me. A lesson that most of us learn, sooner or later is: "Be careful what you wish for; you may get it." Those who read this book will undoubtedly learn this lesson the hard way, if they haven't already. Besides, superficial and simplistic is just what is needed for a certain subset of the population. By the way, I do own a copy of the book and video, so just call me superficial and simplistic.

The bottom line? If you're a total newbie and haven't read any other books on the subject, or The Science of Mind or The Master Key System scare you, you may as well start with this book (or the video for the tl;dr crowd). Otherwise, save your time and money for something better. I guess that wasn't very positive after all. Oh, well.