Shapes of Truth: Discover God Inside You

by Neal Allen, Anne Lamott (Foreword)

Hidden in your body is a set of thirty-five divine objects that represent aspects of God; think of them as a vocabulary to describe your soul. They can help you explore your own perfect nature. With roots in Platonic philosophy and Sufi metaphysics, these eternal body-forms were discovered forty years ago and are only now being shared with the world. They don't just provide knowledge and even wisdom; they also grant immediate and sustained relief from everyday suffering. Spiritual coach and writer Neal Allen describes the discovery, the body-forms themselves, and gives step-by-step instructions for encountering them yourself. His wife, the novelist and memoirist Anne Lamott, contributes a sweet foreword that chronicles her encounter with a body-form on their first date.

Genres: Spirituality, Nonfiction

250 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 25, 2021

Reviews

[Juanita Mantz · Rating 5 out of 5]

When new ideas emerge, they are difficult to process. This book offers something totally original to the dialogue. It reminded me a bit of some of my favorite spiritual writers, Eckhart Tolle, and Ruiz, in the way that it addresses suffering. And the inner critic.

How do we stop the running of our thoughts? I was able to use the book to address and "deprogram" my own inner critic. The philosophy is deep yet also approachable and I enjoyed how the author broke it down to semantics.

I know, body forms, colors, shapes, it all seems a bit kooky but let me tell you, I found it illuminating. Open your mind to this, it may just help you find that piece of yourself that is suffering in the night, and heal you.

[Pam Reeves · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am always fascinated with matters of God and Spirit and this book delivered a unique perspective. I even did the work with an interesting outcome. Reading through some of the chapters was difficult, though, and I didn’t always understand what the point was to have a subject that was relatively easy to grasp without a need for so many stories that seemed unrelated-or at least hard to follow.

[Jan McManus · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is very heady. Some chapters just whizzed right over my inner satellite dish. Others, especially the ones with stories, made sense.

There's a niche for this type of book, a special seeker perhaps. It wasn't me, but that's okay.

[Nancy Reyering · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ummmm.. I consider myself a fairly enlightened person yet I have no idea what the author is hypothesizing here. I believe that he himself has had the experiences he describes. But positing that these are universal “forms” is a stretch for me. Will keep you posted.
Update: At the end of the day, I found the entire book overly esoteric and useless.