Boundless Awareness: A Loving Path to Spiritual Awakening and Freedom from Suffering

by Michael A. Rodriguez, Joan Tollifson, Leslie Howard (Narrator)

Suffering is part of the human experience, and everyone in the world is seeking relief. But there is something greater, something that we all share, indeed something that we all are, that can alleviate that pain: it is the formless presence—the loving, boundless awareness—at the heart of all experience. This book cuts through the esotericism surrounding spiritual awakening to help you realize your true nature and show you how to integrate that realization into everyday life.

In life, there is turmoil and inevitable pain. There is war, hunger, failure, heartbreak, and trauma. We struggle in relationships and with our attachments, thoughts, feelings, and memories, trapped in the prison of psychological self-consciousness. Most of us have been conditioned to believe that we are all separate individuals to whom uncomfortable or upsetting things happen. We feel alone and isolated from the world, and convince ourselves that the beauty, truth, and goodness we long for are out of our reach. Really, it’s this imaginary division that causes us to suffer.

Boundless Awareness seeks to relieve this suffering by drawing attention to the beautiful, encompassing, cohesive nature of awareness itself, as found in your direct experience. Using practical, contemplative exercises and brief meditations, the author guides you along a broad path of spiritual awakening, deconstructing your delusions of self and separation and integrating a concept of existence that is free from the suffering of individual selfhood, but which acknowledges the attachments, traumatic experiences, and emotional pain of being human.

With this book, you’ll come to realize your innate perfection as the uncreated light of boundless awareness, and soften into the open, spacious, and unconditionally loving essence of existence. You’ll gain a deeper understanding of pain and attachments, and learn to meet these experiences with a new resilience. Most importantly, you’ll find guidance on how to embody and express this awakening as love, joy, service, and creativity in your daily life.

Genres: Spirituality

Audible Audio

Published October 30, 2018

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The last third of the book was best part of this book. Nothing here was bad...I've just read much of this done so much better by other writers. Early in the book the author writes that not everything in the book will be perfectly clear since, at best, one can only approximate the spiritual truths within language. This true and I accept it. However, the author continually talks about making things "simple" and "clear" yet I think completely overestimates his ability to write clearly and simply. At one point I came across this, "Because the material in this chapter my seem highly abstract and conceptually challenging (despite its simplicity)..." Is the reader being insulted, coddled, or supported? It is hard to tell. Another befuddling habit is the author uses some of his own phrases for various concepts despite the fact that there are some agreed upon terms in the world that are much easier to connect with. If you are going to write about challenging topics at least use the common language as a basis for discussion. It also makes me wonder when he uses terms such as "non-duality" if he means them in the way I understand them. He doesn't completely define all the terms he uses, so it's hard to say. There are also numerous "practical, skillfully constructed guided meditations" (Yes, that is a direct quote! ~eyeroll~) that really aren't meditations but thought experiments or illustrations. Also, the author writes these so you can personally experience the concepts he is trying to convey. However, the end of most of these "meditations" is a description of what you were supposed to experience and what that was supposed to mean. This seems to negate the power of the experience in my mind, especially if you experience it differently than you were supposed to. Frankly, I thought that most of these were a waste of time.

So there are some great nuggets of ideas here and I did takes some notes, but overall it was not a win for me. The last three chapters are the best. You could probably read those independently and get the best the book has to offer.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book on how to be awakened

I like this book a lot since it describes in details about what it is gonna share with us. But most important and different about this book is its exercise.
The writer seems to have been through these exercise himself and sound confident that they will help us to reach the goal.
Some of the exercises are new to me and I think they are really valuable.
Overall, a very important book to read and peruse.

[Joshua · Rating 2 out of 5]

My thoughts echo Katie’s review before mine. The writing was hard to follow and didn’t create a coherent story for me. I’m sure that Rodriguez had the best intentions (I saw him at a Satsang in London following the publication of his book and he seemed like a loving and compassionate human) but unfortunately he wasn’t able to translate that into a worthwhile book.

[Steve Brock · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a Best of the Best for the month of August 2018, as selected by Stevo's Book Reviews on the Internet. http://forums.delphiforums.com/stevo1...