Already Here: the matter of Love

by Kelly Corbet

"We must consciously create for our brains the inputs we prefer, or be subjected to the inputs others prefer."

If you are like most people, you may doubt pure Love's ability to hook you up with a totally happy life. Even if you haven't carried around buckets of overflowing joy in your life, it's not too late, nor is it impossible, to start intimately knowing happiness this very day. All you need to do is think again.

"Already Here: the matter of Love "demonstrates that joy, bliss, and spiritual connectedness are already within you. This book helps you remember your joy by learning to rethink the world-and it's shockingly easy!

Taking the heaviness out of being light, author Kelly Corbet makes insights from luminaries such as Eckhart Tolle and "A Course in Miracles" easily accessible and combines them with the wisdom of icons including Jesus, Einstein, Walt Whitman, the Beatles, and Winnie-the-Pooh. The result is a fun, engaging guide to designing a life that reflects only the most Love-filled possibilities.

If you're looking for a happier way to be and are ready to become your own wonder-worker, you'll find some miraculous ideas right here!

252 pages, Paperback

Published May 18, 2016

About the author

An adventurous thinker and teacher in the field of mindfulness, Kelly Corbet is an author, mother, meditation mentor, and loud laugher.

She offers mindfulness classes because she wants everyone to bask in the glorious calmness and joy that found her when she learned to meditate.

Reviews

[Aberjhani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Taking Time to Think Again

When I first learned the author of Already Here: the Matter of Love, had used quotes from my work in her new book, I thought for some reason that the entire project was a collection of quotations by diverse individuals. I was definitely mistaken.

Already Here is a passionately-considered and beautifully-presented work on staking your claim to joy and sanity in a world where so many are now convinced that the opposite must necessarily be the norm. From the book’s very first pages, Kelly Corbet invites her readers to “Think Again” and cautions them that, “What you’re about to catch a glimpse of will probably not match your habitual life MO.” Why does that turn out to be a good thing? Because the habitual life MO for so many of us denizens of Earth within these early years of the 21st century is one defined by war, terrorism, poverty, domestic violence, xenophobia, disease, and other atrocities that do not have to exist.

Imagine if we chose as eagerly to cultivate practices which increase the presence of Love and Joy in the world as we do to engage actions which hasten the destruction of our fellow human beings. That is within the realm of possibility for everyone. Corbet is too wise a writer to promise a cure for all of humanity’s current failings. But she happily offers an important contribution to the body of literature illustrating ways to position ourselves to experience as great a sense of delight in our lives as we do sorrow or tragedy. For starters, she suggests the following 4 points as the “foundational essence” of Already Here: the Matter of Love:

1. Big Love is the strongest force, and it connects us all.
2. Miracles and bliss are the norm.
3. What you think, you see. Your expectations create your reality.
4. Time is not real, so why spend lots of something that isn’t real going somewhere we already are.

Different wise souls have shared similar insights but when confronted by overwhelming chaos in the world (consider the gun violence crisis, the apparent total absence of ethics in various industries, mass kidnappings and epidemic rapes in different countries, etc.) many find themselves without the strength of any meaningful convictions. Then someone comes along to stoke the flames of forgotten wisdom and bit by bit we start to find our way back to more humane frames of mind.

If the author did nothing more than spout wishful generalizations throughout the pages of Already Here there would be little reason to take it seriously. As it is, however, she backs up her core principles with rigorous (and yet somehow playful) examinations of language, philosophical ponderings strengthened by scientific reasoning, and short exercises intended to increase your capacity for experiencing a deeper sense of delight through everyday living.

On the Orlando Massacre and One Pet Peeve

I received a copy of Already Here (beautifully autographed with hand-scripted calligraphy) just a few days before the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. While meditating upon the painful senselessness of the killings, I couldn’t help wondering if the shooter might not have made a profoundly different choice if he had taken time to tap into an innate sense of thrilling wonder within his own being instead of building up deadly rage against others based on imagined slights or rejections. Certainly he––and far too many like him––would have discovered more reasons to simply enjoy sharing the available music than latching onto delusional motives to end the lives of 49 people who had never caused him harm.

My primary criticism of Already Here, the Matter of Love, is that it deserves a good index but has none at all. That does not make reading the book or taking useful advantage of its exercises any less gratifying. It would simply provide a helpful tool for scholars and researchers looking to quickly locate specific exercises or key references. Among those references is the highly-intriguing selection of authors quoted throughout the text. These include: Simone De Beauvoir, Pierre Theilhard de Chardin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Albert Einstein, Khalil Gibran, Vincent Van Gogh, Dr. Amit Goswami, William James, Kabir, John Lennon, C.S. Lewis, Nelson Mandela, Jalalludin Rumi, Mother Theresa, Walt Whitman, Marianne Williamson, Pharrell Williams, and quite a few more.

Despite any purported shortcomings, there are those who may be inclined to describe Already Here: the Matter of Love as an instant modern classic of its kind. They just might be right in that assessment.

Aberjhani
author of The River of Winged Dreams
and co-author of Elemental the Power of Illuminated Love