An informed, dynamic exploration of sexual history and energy.
In this guidebook for sexual awareness and enjoyment, the authors deliver narrative stories and explanations to help demystify sex and bring depth and meaning to readers’ sexual lives.
Meuth and Weaver present compelling information about what it means to have sexual experiences that involve mental, emotional and physical engagement. Beginning with a foundation for sexual knowledge, the authors define sexual enlightenment as having two dimensions: The first revolves around “sexual life-force energy, which brings forth life in all that is alive”; The second “involves the human capacity to be self-reflective or aware of one’s own existence, particularly becoming aware and conscious of one’s life-force energy.” Sexual enlightenment also involves an integration of the mind and body, which produces an awareness of the self as it fits into the greater sexual force of the world. Written conversationally, the book dives into not only definitions of an enlightened sexual life but also ways to strive toward awareness, including meditation, conscious breathing and “energy awareness,” which involves becoming aware of the sexual energy that moves around and through us. The book also presents a variety of passages that offer historical context for sexuality, such as the rise of Tantric sexual discovery and the ways in which Puritanism, Hinduism and other ideological institutions have conceived of the sexual experience. Movement and physicality are deeply connected to our emotions, the authors say, which have been trained by experiences, both good and bad. In order to move the emotional body away from anger, victimhood and other negative emotions that stunt sexual energy and life force, the authors posit that one “can make a conscious decision to shift out of this auto-emotional state of reaction and actually invent other interpretations by calling on your ‘witness state.’ ” For example, maybe that driver who cut you off was actually racing to be with his pregnant wife who has gone into labor; such reasoning (even if invented) should calm your senses, the authors say, and thus help return you to inner peace. Elsewhere, drawing from theories involving chakras and energy fields, the authors examine the physical body and the areas of the body that emanate sexual energy. Much like a touch from a lover can be arousing, a cool breeze or heat from the sun’s rays can excite the body, further encouraging the idea that creative, sexual energy comes from within, not from the validation and acknowledgment of others. These kinds of lessons and reinforcements make the book a valuable read for anyone seeking a deeper relationship with his or her sexual self.
An informed, dynamic exploration of sexual history and energy.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4525-8543-7
Page Count: 142
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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