Jean Houston, being an avid representative of human rights, offers us a transformation guide to live with passion towards things in our daily lives. With this passion being the priceless ingredient to receive and accept the grandiose opportunities life has to offer. An extraordinary book of self-realization.
Jean Houston, PhD, is a renowned teacher, philosopher, and scholar and was one of the creators of the human potential movement. With a remarkable list of colleagues and mentors that includes Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, Helen Keller, and Buckmister Fuller, Houston shares her profound wisdom through engaging, firsthand accounts. With PhDs in both psychology and spirituality, Houston has worked in the field of social artistry and in over 100 countries and 40 cultures. As a consultant to the United Nations and other international agencies, she has created many programs offering training and solutions to cultural and social problems. She has written several dozen books, won numerous awards, and has been a professor at universities in the United States.
Jean Houston is a great writer and a creative thinker--a kind of genius I think. This might be a book to own; it's so full of good ideas and exercises that one can come back to.
I took from this book a fresh outlook on living life, an outlook that sees the infinite possiblities contained in the Me-Self, capital M capital S. Each of us holds vast and endless resources inside us--an unending multitude of sense impressions, personalities, memories, stories, symbols, and divine revelations. One reads this book and realizes the utter impossibility of boredom. If you can never get really and truly bored, what is there to fear? All experiences feed the process of life. Each experience opens us up to an amazing network of possibilities, in which to partake or not. Life is a never-ending, intricate network of events and options.
By opening up to the inner world we make space for these possibilities to manifest. They manifest inwardly and outwardly. We can bring any experience from outside to inside, or inside to outside. There really is only the frailest border between the two worlds, if there is any at all.
At first I wasn’t sure whether I liked Houston’s approach. This was my only my second exposure to her work after listening to a free seminar a couple of months ago. But, by the end, I got it. It is similar to information I have read in other books but presented in a way that reaches you more deeply. I learned a lot from reading her words and will definitely look into her work further.
This little book has some wonderful imagery - up the mountain, then down inside the spiral core of the mountain to find facets of oneself. I particularly liked this quote I found in the last pages - "The home you have longed for has always been within you." She later adds, "Now it's your choice..think back over your travels - the inner landscapes you have explored, the special people you have met...the Creator you discovered yourself to be. The great Kingdom within is your birthright, your splendid inheritance".
I absolutely LOVED this book and will read it over and over again I am sure. It has inspired so many concepts within my own writing, translating ideas into children's books, but has also given me numerous 'penny-drop' moments as well!
The author's personal story with Hillary Clinton is more interesting than this book. This one is an interesting attempt to package visualization for a reading audience.
How to be one with the soul and live a full life that is true to your passion and potential? If you like the soul searching way to reach there, this is for you.