Rude Awakening
- Back cover:
- For the sincere spiritual seeker there needs to be an awareness of the various ways we can go astray on the path, or fall off the path altogether. The whole idea of spirituality is to be awake, yet it is all too easy to simply end up in yet another dream world, thinking that we have found some higher truth. Rude Awakening: Perils, Pitfalls, and Hard Truths of the Spiritual Path is dedicated to examining, under a sharp light, the many ways our spiritual development goes wrong, or disappears altogether in the sheer crush of books and the routine grind of daily life.
- Author:
- This book is really three short books in one. The first section is polemical, a broad critique of many of the weaker elements of transformational inner work, especially as they have appeared since the '2nd wave new age' of the 1980s (the 'first wave' occurred in the 1920s, a fact many are not aware of), and its tendency to dilute or oversimplify. The second section of the book was originally written as an essay on seven stages of awakening, and was expanded and integrated into this work. The third section is seven capsule biographies of awakened people (Socrates, Jesus, Milarepa, Hakuin, Ramana, Nisargadatta, and Yaeko Iwasaki), including some commentaries on their teachings and realizations. The book ends with a few pithy pointers for the inner journey.
- It is sometimes said that books that point out what is 'wrong' with matters rather than adopting a more constructive and instructional approach are not as popular, and that is understandable and requires little comment. Most of life consists of a series of distractions that we use to avoid looking at our own minds -- at addressing the 'terror of the situation' as Gurdjieff bluntly called it. Few want to be shown the cracks in the ground before the earthquake. But most of the perennial wisdom traditions agree that the matter of awakening, whether approached meditatively, analytically, therapeutically, or from whatever angle floats our boat, centers on the need to recognize what is false and illusory. To deconstruct our cherished illusions can be a painful process, but the sooner we begin, the better. It is a fate no one escapes.
- This has been the most popular of my books among my students and clients over the years.
- author
- P.T. Mistlberger (Sw Prem Teertha)
- language
- English
- notes
editions
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Rude AwakeningPerils, Pitfalls, and Hard Truths of the Spiritual Path
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- see also
- Rude Awakening on the author's website, with TOC and reviews
