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Enlightenment Ain't What It's Cracked Up To Be: A Journey of Discovery, Snow and Jazz in the Soul
Award Winning Finalist USA Best Book: Spirituality, 2011!
What if you spent years of your life seeking spiritual enlightenment, but were looking in the wrong placeover a long time? It’s happening right now to millions of seekers around the world. That’s why Dr. Robert Forman has written his revolutionary book. Told in often poetic prose, it offers new direction for people looking for a sane and healthy spiritual pathway in our increasingly confusing world. Traditional spiritual models are giving seekers a wrong and frustratingimpression about spiritual enlightenment. By exploring his own 39 year experience of spiritual enlightenment, Dr. Forman offers a remedy to folks who are:Convinced they don’t have the right stuff to achieve enlightenment in this lifetime: Disillusioned by spiritual teachers who don’t live up to their lofty self-portraits: Worried that choosing a spiritual life means leaving their everyday life behind: Hungry for a different way to be, but unable to express it. Through metaphor, humor, vulnerability and achingly beautiful prose, Dr. Forman’s book offers newfound hope to spiritual seekers everywhere.
What if you spent years of your life seeking spiritual enlightenment, but were looking in the wrong placeover a long time? It’s happening right now to millions of seekers around the world. That’s why Dr. Robert Forman has written his revolutionary book. Told in often poetic prose, it offers new direction for people looking for a sane and healthy spiritual pathway in our increasingly confusing world. Traditional spiritual models are giving seekers a wrong and frustratingimpression about spiritual enlightenment. By exploring his own 39 year experience of spiritual enlightenment, Dr. Forman offers a remedy to folks who are:Convinced they don’t have the right stuff to achieve enlightenment in this lifetime: Disillusioned by spiritual teachers who don’t live up to their lofty self-portraits: Worried that choosing a spiritual life means leaving their everyday life behind: Hungry for a different way to be, but unable to express it. Through metaphor, humor, vulnerability and achingly beautiful prose, Dr. Forman’s book offers newfound hope to spiritual seekers everywhere.
234 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 16, 2011
10 people are currently reading
365 people want to read
About the author
Robert K.C. Forman
12 books17 followersForty years of daily meditation practice led me to become professor of comparative religions, (CUNY), to found both the Forge Institute & The Journal of Consciousness Studies, and to a rethinking of the spiritual goal in our complex modern lives. That's why I wrote
Enlightenment Ain't What It's Cracked Up to Be: A Journey of Discovery, Snow and Jazz in the Soul
. It answers the question, what if you spent years of your life seeking spiritual enlightenment, but were looking in the wrong place over a long time? It's happening right now to millions of seekers around the world.
Told in often poetic prose, it capitalizes on author's years of scholarly research into and his own 39 year experience of spiritual enlightenment, and uses both as a springboard for exploring new directions for people looking for a sane and healthy spiritual pathway in our increasingly confusing world.
Told in often poetic prose, it capitalizes on author's years of scholarly research into and his own 39 year experience of spiritual enlightenment, and uses both as a springboard for exploring new directions for people looking for a sane and healthy spiritual pathway in our increasingly confusing world.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 23, 2011
I know I'm the author, but this is by far the best book I've ever written. Not that all my academic books give it much competition.
As a scholar of mysticism, I've probably read 2000 books on spirituality. I got frustrated with them all because there is waaaay too much fiction and telling of just so stories in them. So I attempted to tell the real truth here, warts and all: about the path. About what Enlightenment actually feels like and is. About the goal that we're actually after. It is part memoir, part research into what enlightenment actually means, part exploration of the lacunae of the spiritual path, and all an exercise in telling the truth.
And I like to think, and keep hearing, that readers can feel the thud of truth here. Here's one of the reviews from Amazon:
"I have been savoring Dr. Forman's wonderful new book for the past few weeks...reading it slowly in chunks and enjoying every delightful bite like a mouth-watering multi-course meal that you never want to end! Given the subject matter--"spiritual enlightenment"--and Dr. Forman's formidable background as a scholar of mysticism and religion, I had expected more of an erudite and opaque academic tome, like the writing of so many "spiritual teachers" who have been climbing the "stairway to heaven" for centuries! But, alas, to my great surprise -- and delight --instead of weighty "expertise" on a subject that, truth be told, no one fully understands or grasps (not with scientific proof, anyway!)...Dr. Forman has given us a candid --even raw -- expose on his thirty-odd year struggle with, what he calls, "the silence". I found myself, over and over again as I read, moved deeply by his humility and inspired by his courage. Very few of the "spiritual teacher" club will come down from the mountain very often or for very long, and especially not to publicly air out their dirty laundry (let alone even acknowledge they ever soil any)...or to share their challenges with making a living, being a good spouse, hell...just living with integrity in these crazy, noisy, unforgiving, chaotic times we call "modern life".
"As a writer myself, I was inspired by Dr. Forman's beautiful, simple and honest prose, and touched by the sweet sincerity of his vulnerability" Jeffry Hull
As a scholar of mysticism, I've probably read 2000 books on spirituality. I got frustrated with them all because there is waaaay too much fiction and telling of just so stories in them. So I attempted to tell the real truth here, warts and all: about the path. About what Enlightenment actually feels like and is. About the goal that we're actually after. It is part memoir, part research into what enlightenment actually means, part exploration of the lacunae of the spiritual path, and all an exercise in telling the truth.
And I like to think, and keep hearing, that readers can feel the thud of truth here. Here's one of the reviews from Amazon:
"I have been savoring Dr. Forman's wonderful new book for the past few weeks...reading it slowly in chunks and enjoying every delightful bite like a mouth-watering multi-course meal that you never want to end! Given the subject matter--"spiritual enlightenment"--and Dr. Forman's formidable background as a scholar of mysticism and religion, I had expected more of an erudite and opaque academic tome, like the writing of so many "spiritual teachers" who have been climbing the "stairway to heaven" for centuries! But, alas, to my great surprise -- and delight --instead of weighty "expertise" on a subject that, truth be told, no one fully understands or grasps (not with scientific proof, anyway!)...Dr. Forman has given us a candid --even raw -- expose on his thirty-odd year struggle with, what he calls, "the silence". I found myself, over and over again as I read, moved deeply by his humility and inspired by his courage. Very few of the "spiritual teacher" club will come down from the mountain very often or for very long, and especially not to publicly air out their dirty laundry (let alone even acknowledge they ever soil any)...or to share their challenges with making a living, being a good spouse, hell...just living with integrity in these crazy, noisy, unforgiving, chaotic times we call "modern life".
"As a writer myself, I was inspired by Dr. Forman's beautiful, simple and honest prose, and touched by the sweet sincerity of his vulnerability" Jeffry Hull
June 30, 2012
I want to Robert Forman for writing his book. It is one of its kind: so open, paring to the truth in all its nitty-grittiness. But most it spoke to my experience, chapter by chapter – not literally, but in real ways. He describes what so many of us have learned, how all religions in their literal senses are false or incomplete. He avoids easy answers, which I find refreshing. As I read of his experiences of oneness or merging, I was reminded of Schopenhauer’s noumena, which is remarkable. In short, Enlightenment Ain't What It's Cracked Up To Be spoke to me, though it takes its time to seep in.
January 7, 2023
The author and I both believed that once you are enlightened, every problem is solved. He no longer believes this. In particular, he believes himself to be enlightened and knows he isn't problem-free. What's more--he notices problems existing among the other enlightened beings. The one he emphasizes is that, though they are enlightened by themselves, they still seem to have difficulty relating to others outside of a teacher to student relationship. His conclusion--enlightenment has helped him a lot but didn't solve everything--that is, it ain't all it's cracked up to be.
My conclusion is different. I would say that those with problems are not enlightened--including the author. They may have developed certain "higher" states of consciousness, "siddhis" (magical, mystical powers) even. But that's not the same thing. The author at first doubted his enlightenment but many of his experiences seemed to match the way others, presumed enlightened, described their lives. Finally he asked Ram Dass who cryptically said
"yeah, this is that" which sufficed to dispel his doubts. It does not dispel mine, however. For one, Ram Dass never, to my knowledge, described himself as enlightened. For two, their conversation was not like "Jazz in the soul," and expression the author uses to distinguish the unenlightened uptightness exhibited by those who aren't at ease with others. For example, the author didn't enquire further. He could have asked "Are you sure?" "Are we talking about enlightenment here?"
So my conclusion is, if enlightenment even exists (I still suspect there is such a thing) it's not what all these people with problems have achieved. They had various awakenings, religious experiences, transformations of their understanding of who they were. But they don't rate the big 'E'. They are not the same as the Buddha, whom I will assume for our purposesis actually enlightened.
Still, I appreciate his quest, and the questions he is asking about enlightenment. If I can't rate him, enlightened, at least I can give him 4 stars.
My conclusion is different. I would say that those with problems are not enlightened--including the author. They may have developed certain "higher" states of consciousness, "siddhis" (magical, mystical powers) even. But that's not the same thing. The author at first doubted his enlightenment but many of his experiences seemed to match the way others, presumed enlightened, described their lives. Finally he asked Ram Dass who cryptically said
"yeah, this is that" which sufficed to dispel his doubts. It does not dispel mine, however. For one, Ram Dass never, to my knowledge, described himself as enlightened. For two, their conversation was not like "Jazz in the soul," and expression the author uses to distinguish the unenlightened uptightness exhibited by those who aren't at ease with others. For example, the author didn't enquire further. He could have asked "Are you sure?" "Are we talking about enlightenment here?"
So my conclusion is, if enlightenment even exists (I still suspect there is such a thing) it's not what all these people with problems have achieved. They had various awakenings, religious experiences, transformations of their understanding of who they were. But they don't rate the big 'E'. They are not the same as the Buddha, whom I will assume for our purposesis actually enlightened.
Still, I appreciate his quest, and the questions he is asking about enlightenment. If I can't rate him, enlightened, at least I can give him 4 stars.
November 5, 2013
Superb book! Really enjoyed the author's style and sense of humour. A fascinating insight into a spiritual journey.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews