Robert Gardner

Surprisingly hope-giving

Revisado: 10-09-24

I expected this book to be full of the dark tales of Russian prison camps and suffering. And even though that was the scene of a lot of it, the perspective taken, and the stories told about Father Arseny did quite the opposite than bring a gloomy picture of life. I found myself deeply inspired, and moved by the experiences and resilience of the people inside.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Fantastic production!

Revisado: 06-08-24

So refreshing to follow a story done in vignettes and dialogue with almost zero 3rd person narration. Quite the chase

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Read with caution: sweeping claims treated as facts instead of merely useful beliefs

Revisado: 04-11-24

Let’s start with what the author did really well:

He keeps the language clear and accessible, the examples easy to understand, and the practical, pseudo-Zen steps—while not really new or different than anything you might have already read on the interwebs—described in a somewhat fresh way that makes them feel doable for anyone. Not the thick, inscrutable tomes from ages past for sure.

Score: Joseph 1, Buddhists 0

Second, while he does use a lot of “we” language, assuming that his own life experience must somehow be universal to all humans, he also stops the narrative and asks the reader to test out his claims in their own experience. What a breath of fresh air!

At one point, he makes a key move, pointing out that, in the timeline of experience, good feelings often—if not always—precede thoughts about them. That kind of granular attention to the building blocks of experience is not commonplace.

Score: Joseph 2, Buddhists 0

Frankly, had he stopped at this, the book would have been a winner. While problematic when examined with any level of deep scrutiny, his distinction between “thoughts” and “thinking” give such a practical, no-nonsense point of entry to cutting the chain of psychological suffering, that it’s still worth exploring.

It’s all summed up in the one phrase he repeats multiple times: “It’s not WHAT you are thinking that causes suffering, but THAT you are thinking.” Or “The moment you stop thinking is the moment your peace begins.”

Thinking, of course, being “thoughts about thoughts”, not the initial, spontaneous thoughts themselves.

Score: Joseph 3, Buddhists 0

Wow! Halftime hits, and Joseph is in a clear lead. But here’s where the going gets rough. Because young Joe isn’t simply saying, “Here’s a practical approach to getting rid of anxiety and negative feelings that has worked really well in a lot of cases. Try it!”

Oh no. He’s claiming, “I have discovered the root cause of ALL suffering. This one insight is the only thing ANYONE needs to finally set their worries and pain aside.” That is an even bigger claim that Gautama, who needed a whopping FOUR noble truths to get to the bottom of things!

But is it true? Let’s start with the basics: “Thinking is the root cause of ALL human suffering.”

Babies, he claims, don’t experience stress or worry because they aren’t thinking—two bogus claims that have been amply debunked in any number of research studies.

But we don’t even need a million dollars of lab equipment to figure this out. Ever seen a baby cry? Unsoothable unless mama is touching him or her? Or when tired, poopy, lonely, cold, hungry, gassy, or anything else? Is that not a form of suffering or stress?

Turns out babies suffer just like an adult, captive to the whims of their own body, just without the decades of buildup most adults have. And they do this without having any of what Joseph would call “thoughts about thoughts”.

Score: Joseph 3, Buddhists 1

So is thinking about thoughts the ONLY cause of suffering for the people Joseph is talking about?

Joseph doesn’t want you to think about that. His thought experiments tell you to assume away some of the biggest sources of human suffering altogether. For the babies, they have to already be happy and healthy. No trauma, pain, illness, abuse, or biological mutations. For adults, no considerations of fear for survival allowed. Death is not even in the picture. Let’s just blithely edit that all out and, “Voila! See? Suffering only comes from thinking!”

Clever trick. One that completely sidesteps the real, gritty issues people wrestle with in favor of the easy pitches from entrepreneurs and boujie first-class citizens and VIPs looking to make 10k a month in their side-hustle.

That’s a foul in my book. A bait and switch. Advertising one thing and then selling another, lesser thing while hoping no one notices. Minus 1 for the author. The Buddha at least identifies other causes well beyond thought and where to start handling them

Score: Joseph 2, Buddhists 2

But let’s set aside the fact that many of the theories propounded in this book fall apart with any level of close scrutiny. Let’s just look at the author’s blatant disregard for his own material.

He found inspiration from someone else’s inspiring thoughts about his own thoughts. Then he took those thoughts about thoughts and thought about them a LOT, so much that it changed his life experience. He practiced them. He mulled over his results, thinking about them more.

Then he wrote a book full of his thoughts about his thoughts in order to have us think about his thoughts about his thoughts so that our own thoughts about our own thoughts would change and our negative emotions go away.

In fact, had he NOT thought MORE critically about his own thoughts (instead of less), he might never have arrived at the conclusion that thoughts about thoughts bring suffering. So what he did was cheat. He used thinking about thoughts to get rid of thought-born negativity and to change his thinking.

This seems like a flagrant foul, and I almost want to eject him from the game were it not for the basic, practical points at the beginning.

Score: Joseph 1, Buddhists 2

There’s not even room here to give you the full play-by-play and landslide comeback for the Buddhists.

In the end, it’s a decent, quick read for someone wanting a simple something for basic feelings of anxiety, stress, lack of confidence, or depression. Probably valuable—if simple—on that count.

However, it is woefully (at times irresponsibly) lacking when it comes to the author’s actual claims of solving the root of ALL suffering and divulging the true nature of human experience. Those struggling from a lifetime of abuse, trauma, abandonment, loss, and addiction, may not find this to be the panacea it claims to be.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Mind-boggling in its scope and detail

Revisado: 11-30-23

Listened first to the Joe Rogan podcast and was fascinated but figured I’d heard everything the author would say. Not so! The continued questions and digging, all vouched within it like a detective story, kept unraveling connections that left me even more flabbergasted.

In particular, the wine god connections between Jesus and Dionysus, along with the portrait of early Greek Christianity from that vantage point left me with almost to ponder. Will definitely read again.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Assumes a lot…

Revisado: 10-28-23

The fact that this is reportedly a transcript of something that the author channeled often seems to be an excuse for people to assume that whatever is channeled is automatically the truth. I listened to this with as much openness as I possibly could. I looked at the experiences of my life to see how much they might match the message that she is sharing here in this book. And I see a lot of holes in what is said. There are contradictions in a number of different places. and in the end, it feels like somebody following and believing this book will end up staying in their imagination and not actually grounded in their own reality.

There are a few decent suggestions offered, things like breathing practices and challenging your thoughts. But there are far better books and places to find those things than the instruction given here, which is extremely vague at best.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

A daring look at mental health that oozes with hope and possibility

Revisado: 01-16-23

In this deeply personal set of “adventures”, poetry, history, and science, the author has collected the most sweeping and practical approach to well-being I’ve ever seen.

Rather than getting stuck in the narrative that stress, anxiety, depression, and addiction are facts of life or incurable diseases, he demonstrates over and over again both where that narrative came from and how misguided it really is.

Based on his own journey through addiction and depression as well as the results from thousands of clients, the author paints a picture of real and accessible hope for anyone—our bodies (he contends) are already built for freedom. They are designed to produce well-being by default. We only need to learn how to use them.

And along the way, he sprinkles in stories with enough detail and direction that the reader can follow right along with the methods he describes.

As a challenge to the push for normalizing mental health struggles, this book takes what could be considered an even bolder stance—daring us to normalize well-being while paving a practical path to make that happen.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

A pessimistic worldview with too many assumptions

Revisado: 01-12-23

For all the hype about this book, I decided to give it a whirl. The first rule started out okay, but as things wore on, the overall pessimistic tenor of Peterson’s approach to life became almost laughable — as if, despite his prodigious experience, the man never grasped the essentials of where and how happiness comes from.

A better, much more direct book in that regard would be Built For Freedom.

Instead of hope or valuable help for long-term well being, Peterson burdens the reader with a cumbersome mythology that describes life as tragedy, nature as terrible, the world as full of evil, and the way out as a tight rope walk on the precipice between order and chaos.

It’s no wonder that the man still struggles with anxiety for hours each day.

I realize there are folks in dire straits who might find his advice good enough to at least step in a more purposeful direction, hence the 2 stars instead of 1.

The long term effects of this this world view still have not allowed Peterson to experience more than fleeting moments of well-being each day as he struggles to maintain the mythological image of being a hero.

But no one wants to be a hero 24/7. Societies and bodies never thrive when constantly at war.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

A Rare Find

Revisado: 09-05-21

It is rare that a book will challenge me as gently and deeply as this one has. One of the biggest obstacles to seeing things as they are is the fact that I’ve grown up with blind spots - meaning that I can’t actually see what I can’t see and so assume it isn’t there.

For all of my attempts to ferret those blind spots out, I still likely have as many of them with regard to the Bible as I do in other areas of life. And this book has laid them bare without resorting to condemnation or any assertion that I have been wrong… only blind.

Particularly, the notions of individualism vs collectivism, guilt vs honor & shame, and rules vs relationships have left me both wide-eyed in appreciation AND inwardly uncomfortable. Because I don’t yet know what to do with such a radical shift from what I thought was self-evident. They present a world that I have never lived in nor understand even though it at least makes intellectual sense in my head.

Definitely a LOT to ponder. I have recommended this already to several friends and colleagues and will likely read it again (along with the sequel). Because I am as guilty as the next person of cherry-picking scripture and twisting to support my own assumptions of truth.

Any book that can hold a mirror up to that kind of unconscious distortion is definitely worth the read.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

An incredible challenge to what I take for granted

Revisado: 07-24-20

Like Richard Bach’s Illusions, this book playfully pokes holes in so many standard “facts” about how the world works that it can leave you wanting to pause the book just to handle the aftershocks.

Side note: It has me playing music more comfortably and inventively than I ever have, and that wasn’t why I picked up the book.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Eye-opening

Revisado: 05-28-20

One of the things I appreciate most about Bart Erman’s approach to writing is his evenhanded laying out of various opinions without declaring that his own opinion must be the one that is right.

It gave me an opportunity to explore different ideas about heaven, hell, and the afterlife, and everything else from a very measured standpoint so that I can make my own decision on the matter.

And, while his own argument might be persuasive to many, what matters more is that he has laid out a sweeping vista of historical development around the ideas of heaven and hell that demonstrate man to be an inventive, inquisitive, and insatiably curious creature. One who will unendingly craft, tweak, and modify their ideas in order to satisfy their desire to know.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña