Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

What Really Is: How would life look if we knew that we are not our thoughts?

Rate this book
Our true nature is simple and beautiful, thoughts are complicated and intricate. Learn to know the difference.

Our true nature is always present, in each moment, as it is now. We didn’t create it and we can’t stop it. Yet we’ve been taught that what we can’t perceive with our mind and senses is not real, that intuition is unreliable and living like this is dangerous, immature and irresponsible.

The truth is contrary to this. Our thoughts and understandings are by their very nature temporary and fragile. They come from the assumption that we can actually know or control things. And so we defend, attack, withdraw, and even kill or die for these beliefs. But when we do, the essence of our true spirit is brutally pushed aside and we lose so much of life.

What Really Is comes to convey life and the world, not as the interpreting mind describes them, but in their original form – the essence is to know the difference.

149 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 7, 2021

Loading...
Loading...

About the author

Ruth has been coaching for the past 30 years and was one of the pioneers of coaching in Israel. She has led and facilitated breakthrough processes in many different fields; working with the military, women’s organizations, the Israeli Office of Education, and with the bond between Arabs & Jews both in Israel and internationally. Ruth has coached thousands of people, hundreds of businesses, state institutions, and trained dozens of coaches.

In her personal and professional journey, she has recognized that in each one lies a beautiful and strong spirit, that if we just touch upon it, it will allow us to simply live our true nature – a unique, emerging, vital energy, which is ungraspable but always present.

Along with this spirit, there is the dimension of thought, which cannot grasp the world for what it is – beauty, wisdom and absolute love. It captures the world through friction, prices, effort and pain, and these are also its results.

Her work is expressed in her first book – “WHAT REALLY IS”, which brings the knowledge as it is, the nature of things and discerns between the motion of thoughts and the wisdom of the mystery.

Ruth is a mother of 4, and a grandmother to 2 grandchildren.

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
10 (27%)
4 stars
9 (24%)
3 stars
10 (27%)
2 stars
3 (8%)
1 star
5 (13%)
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
1 review
Read
January 14, 2022
Not helpful

Very disjointed. Too much emphasis on trivial relationships that had nothing to do with mindfulness. The author denies responsibility of making herself understood by spouting meaningless platitudes about truth and soul.
Profile Image for Melissa.
1,184 reviews1 follower
July 21, 2023
It was a little nonsensical and "out there." In fact, I disliked it so much I didn't finish it...and that rarely happens. I cannot recommend this book!
Profile Image for Grady.
Author 51 books1,839 followers
August 3, 2021
‘Our true nature is simple and beautiful, thoughts can’t grasp, but we can’

Israeli author Ruth Bar-Shalev is a life coach and works with the military, women’s organizations, and the Israeli Office of Education. Her influence in finding the bond between Arabs and Jews in Israel and around the globe is of particular significance. WHAT REALLY IS is her initial publication, and she is assisted by contributing authors Judith Pasternak and Noa Golan.

The concept of committing to writing about a subject that defies description is a difficult assignment. Nirit explains the process well: ‘I am grateful for words and, at the same time, I know that words are never the essence. They give testimony to it, they lyricize it and they praise it. They express it and allow it to be seen in the world, in our minds and in our sense, but they are not the thing itself. They simply cannot be…In our world and the culture in which most of us live, there is a quick, often inaccurate, often misleading use of language to describe the spirit. Words and wisdom that can only be understood from a place of silence, humility, slowness and surrender are often stated with determination, aggression, judgment, and an attempt to control….This book comes to speak the nature of things. To convey life and the world, not as the interpreting mind or the stories we tell describe them, but in their original form – the essence of which is to learn the difference…This book does not say much and it doesn’t reveal anything new to the soul and its wisdom, because the truth is simple. And yet, it may bring incredible blessings to the person asking to see and live this simple truth in his or her daily life…’

The theme of the book is straightforward – ‘Our true nature is simple and beautiful, thoughts are complicated and intricate. Learn to tell the difference.’ As Nirit has stated, ‘Knowledge is the nature of things and discerns between the motion of thoughts and the wisdom of mystery.’ With an almost impossible to believe facility the author makes her points about the blockades that thoughts create in understanding and experiencing spirit and our true nature. The discourse is nearly melodic and addicting, and by books end the sense of discovering our true nature is an experience well worth heeding. This is more than a ‘self-help book:’ this is a spiritual guide.
Profile Image for Tara Brabazon.
Author 43 books561 followers
January 20, 2023
Look - I like original. I like quirky. I like to follow writers on the journey they prepare for readers.

This book is not only strange - it is the non-fictional equivalent of crystal meth.

"Everything is a mirror"

"Everything that happens in me also happens outside me"

“Wake up and know the river that is us”

Whatever drugs are required to follow the argument of this book, I am clearly not taking them...
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews