I love books about mindfulness partly because they act as guides for leading a better life. That is why I bring you books like A Monk’s Guide to Happiness. The Book of Soul: 52 Paths to Living What Matters spoke to me when I first saw it on NetGalley because it is about leading an authentic life. I don’t believe I can ever learn enough about that so I was curious to find the 52 ideas that this book had to offer. It turned out to be an amazingly insightful journey. Check out the synopsis first.
In The Book of Soul, Mark Nepo, the bestselling author of The Book of Awakening, offers a powerful guide to inhabiting an authentic and wholehearted life. After we are physically born, we must be spiritually born a second time, a process that takes place through the labor of a lifetime as we develop into more fully realized beings. The Book of Soul delves into the spiritual alchemy of that transformation in all its mystery, difficulty, and inevitability.
The book is divided into four sections that mark the passages we all face: enduring our Walk in the World, until we discover Our True Inheritance, which allows us to live in the open by Widening Our Circle, as we Help Each Other Stay Awake. The Book of Soul is a piercing guide, replete with beautiful truths and startling insight, that leads us deeply into the process of transformation.
Themes for Thought
The Book of Soul is a journalistic style of book with each short chapter followed by 2-3 questions, some to discuss with a friend and others to self-reflect in your journal. These prompts were quite challenging at times, diving deep into my prejudices, beliefs, perceptions and world view. I often talked to my friend Lauren and she helped me broaden the meaning of what I was reading. This is a great book to read with a friend and you could do it over the course of a year, one chapter a week.
Here are three ideas that Lauren and I chatted about, with the promise that when she finally reads this book, there will be more to reflect upon.
Possibility and Disappointment
How are possibility and disappointment related? How do they exist in our daily lives? The first journal prompt was along those lines. I often use my blog to help me reflect on topics and I thought about it here too – Every blog post is ripe with opportunity for someone to find useful at some point. It is an opportunity for me to practice writing. On the other hand, there is also the chance for disappointment that the post will not resonate with my readers and in the case I am collaborating with people on my posts, they won’t necessarily do much to promote it, me being a means to an end.
Talking to Lauren, we realized that possibility and disappointment are sides of the same coin. While disappointment leads to awareness and awakening, possibility points to future ideas and continuing our passion, learning from the disappointment.
It doesn’t completely line up with how I interpreted the prompt in the first place but disappointment leading to feedback makes perfect sense.
It is these kind of insightful conversations that you will have by reading this book.
On The Student and The Teacher Parts of Us
The Book of Soul explains that there are two souls within us – the teacher-soul and the student-soul. I have been a student my whole live and a teacher during my professional training and this analogy is a great way to understand the internal dialogue that goes on in our minds sometimes.
While the student-soul wants all the answers to how to do things right (think about what do I have to do to get a passing grade?), the teacher-soul isn’t about giving the answers, it is about showing the student the path they must take. The student-soul gets fixated on problems while the teacher-soul looks at the bigger picture.
The student-soul obviously stresses a lot about things. I stress about reading and reviewing and my blog often. The teacher-soul helps manage that stress and asks the student why does this really matter? In answering questions like why do I read, who do I write for, etc., I can ease my fears of not having enough time or not meeting some ridiculous standard I have set for myself. The teacher-soul is about finding the right path by asking questions, but not by giving the answers.
Lauren reminded me that teachers don’t always have the answers either and that is another reason why the teacher-soul guides. There were times when I was teaching when my students would ask me a question I could not figure out the answer to in that moment. Sometimes, they came up with different ways of solving the problem that I was not aware of. The teacher-soul lets the student find their right answer, rather than suggesting what the world says.
Next time you are stuck on a problem or ruminating abut a situation, listen to your teacher-soul.
On The Fires
What do you think of when you think ‘fire’? Flames that are hot and burning, consuming things? The Book of Soul told me about two fires – the fire of life and the fire of the world. The fire of life is what is within us and keeps us going – it is the truths and passions that are ours that no one can take away from us. The fire of the world, on the other hand, is an external entity that can harm us. We can get so consumed by the world and its perception of us, that we will (and often do) get burnt.
This is another fantastic way of understanding why we do what we do and whether it is the fire of the world that is driving us, or the fire of life that wants us to lead our authentic life.
Aren’t these some super-insightful ideas to think about? Whether it is in the context of your life as a whole or a passion that you love to pursue, this books will appeal to your teacher-soul and help understand your student-soul better. I highly recommend it and I look forward to reading it again, slower next time, one chapter a week.
** The Book of Soul: 52 Paths to Living What Matters is out on May 5th (tomorrow!) and you can preorder now if you like. **
Amazon Print
Amazon Kindle
Many thanks to the publisher for providing me a review copy via NetGalley for an honest review.
Cover Photo: Photo by Dmytro Tolokonov on Unsplash
Image of fire from Unsplash.
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