Book reviews and a video to aid your search for meaning…

How does a person cope when they find themselves living in oppressive, desperate times? How can you live to your fullest and experience the rich potential that exists as part of living on earth, when dark forces seem to be facilitating your demise? These questions express the existential dilemma that keeps popping up when I try to write about writing, storytelling, hiking, fitness, and the better aspects of life I find inspiring. I feel that when I’m writing about something positive, like a hike in a national forest, I’m being delusional or ignoring the hard reality such an event (like the hike) takes place within. It’s like exerting myself on a 5 mile trek down a forest trail while the sky is being overlaid with a chem-trail haze. How do I reconcile the two?

The best commentary I’ve found for dealing with this dilemma is Viktor Frankl’s classic book, Man’s Search for Meaning . Dr. Frankl dealt with these very existential questions while living under the most extreme of conditions: the Nazi concentration camps. There, life for him was reduced to its most elemental level. All meaning, choice, and love were taken from him. Yet in his misery, his clinical mind observed what was happening to him and remained determined to learn its lessons. Those lessons congealed only years after his liberation and they are what I keep returning to.

In a nutshell, Dr. Frankl found that hope and meaning in a person’s life is best found by following three strategies:

(1) by creating a work or doing a deed; 
(2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and 
(3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.

That work or deed might be the engaging in activism to oppose evil. Experiences and encounters  might be deliberate (like hiking the Appalachian Trail) or being open to inspirations offered by “chance” encounters. And when oppression reaches its most extreme, the only choice that can’t be taken from us is how we respond to it (i.e., “suffering well”).

BTW: this is not “spoiling” Dr. Frankl’s book. His anecdotes and commentary expand on these strategies with much enlightenment to anyone open to it. I highly recommend his book (see the links at the end of this post).

So, bearing Dr. Frankl’s advice in mind, let me push ahead with my own work—which I mean to be a helpful sharing with others.

I’ve posted a couple of book reviews that reflect this idea of seeking inspiration and information in the face of harsh reality. The first is a review of a science fiction book, Fata Morgana by Steven R. Boyett and Ken Mitchroney. While I didn’t rate the book highly, I did much enjoy its depiction of the operation of a B-17 Flying Fortress. The authors’ inspired research in this area shows, and that they meshed it with a SF time travel format grabbed my attention. While the story wasn’t handled as well as it could have been, there’s still much entertainment value in it.

The other book review is Nostradamus: Premonitions of 9/11 by John Hogue. This book’s subject is precisely what its title implies: a consideration of the predictions that Nostradamus actually wrote concerning the 9/11 event, and premonitions that surfaced in the years prior to that great watershed tragedy. Because Mr. Hogue concentrates on his own premonitions, the book is more autobiographical than his other works. It also contains his political commentary (since he is a “political prophet”) that I recommend for those trying to “get a clue,” though in this case, I don’t agree with all of his interpretations.

So I’ve offered in this post, considerations of written works of philosophical inspiration, entertainment inspiration, and paranormal-political commentary. Let me also offer one of stark reality. This is a video made by Geoengineeringwatch.org. It relates the horrendous wildfires constantly raging in the western US (especially California) to the geoengineering program (the source of chem-trails) going on over our heads. I offer this to you as another clue. It is one you can follow into a pitch dark hole, but it’s reality, and you need a store of spiritual sustenance to keep your optimism and your inspiration. See Dr. Frankl’s book.

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Links:

Ray-view of Fata Morgana .

Ray-view of Nostradamus: Premonitions of 9/11 .

Ray-view of Man’s Search for Meaning .

Geoengineering Watch video about wildfires.