JOURNEY OF AWAKENING AND HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS

In this ardent exploration of being, Yu argues that if you want to reach enlightenment, all you need is love.

The author raises profound questions about “what it means to live and be alive” and locates answers in a deep cosmic principle: “[L]ove is the highest, and the only force, for nothing else is real and exists.” Once this idea is grasped, she contends, we can awaken to ecstatic (though not painless) lives of authenticity and fulfillment in which we “honor and appreciate everyone [we] meet” and attune ourselves to a “divine order” that is “beyond… comprehension.” To achieve this higher consciousness, Yu recommends that readers do “inner work” that increases their vibrational levels by cultivating attitudes of desire and openness to new things. She also champions accepting oneself and what is, living in the moment, relying on the “pendulum effect” that will swing our emotions back to equilibrium after outside influences rattle us, practicing meditation and prayer, and getting in some walking. Yu’s text blends Christian, Buddhist, and New Age motifs, often conveyed in a lofty, incantatory register—much of the book feels like an abstract but sonorous prose poem. (“And all that’s left is what simply is. / And that is, forever, the light. / You are of the light, my sweet. / You are of the brave, my love. / You are a symbol of peace. / You are the one. / You are love.”) Yu’s writing is at its most powerful when grounded in her lived experience, as when she describes a childhood allergy to sunlight that caused her skin to scale: “[A]ll the kids were getting on the bus…watching me laying back in the seat in pain, all whispering what was wrong with her, what’s up with her face, she looks like Godzilla.” Passages like this make the author’s invocations of mystical healing after trauma feel well-earned and convincing.

A heartfelt rhapsody to a hyperaware existence, full of beguiling effusions.