THE STILL POINT

A spiritual guidebook accompanies readers on a journey of self-discovery with a meditative focus on the constancy of the inner self.

The first chapter of this manual of enlightenment posits, “Our lives have both a dynamic quality and a static quality to them.” This notion that human existence is composed of ever changing experience swirling around an unmoving core is present in a number of religious traditions. Biotechnology executive Krenitsky calls this core the “Still Point,” but he points out that it’s also been called “Awareness, Consciousness, Knowing, Being, Holy Spirit, Presence, Tao, and so forth.” Around this Still Point, the author notes, humans experience a number of unhelpful thoughts and emotions that he summarizes as “the insane conditioning of the ego, which has brought you nothing but fear, worry, and conflict.” Chapters such as “The Seduction of Thought,” “The Absolute Need To See the Ego Self as False,” and “The Illusion of Control” expand on the idea that happiness requires one to tune out a cacophony of feelings, desires, and ideas in order to become aware of one’s “true, unchanging nature.” After this, the seeker’s next step, the author asserts, is to expand this moment of consciousness into an “ever-present awareness”—which, in turn, can lead to personal as well as social change. Much of the book is presented in a question-and-answer format, and Krenitsky presents it all in the style of a good teacher; the overall tone is direct and respectful, without pretention or condescension. His evocation of the Silent Point, that thing “you have called ‘I’ when referring to yourself your entire life,” is likely to feel relevant and compelling even to those who are unfamiliar with practices of meditation and self-realization. At the same time, there’s not much new here for longtime practitioners of New Age or Eastern spiritual traditions, but instructions such as “Be the Actor and not the Character in the Movie of Life” may provide seekers with helpful ways to approach enlightenment.

An informative, if often familiar, manual of spiritual development.