An immersive discussion with an appealing message to explore one’s own personal path to spiritual enlightenment.
Skye, an adult industry actor, aerial acrobat, and yoga teacher, shares his path to higher consciousness in this memoir.
“Traveling from life to life, breathing the air / Vibrating like so, of music and light,” concludes this book’s initial and eponymous poem, one of many that Skye has included in this volume, which he describes as “the teachings of my current life and an essay about spirituality in application in all spheres of life on earth under the seven skies.” Chapters kick off with translated Sanskrit mantras and touch down on a variety of spiritual topics while also unfolding Skye’s autobiography. Skye reports experiencing psychic abilities and affinities from the time he was a child in Canada, but it took fuller awakening, aided by a coach, for him to transition from a visual merchandising career to his role as a “spiritual acrobat porn daddy” by his 30s. Topics include the interconnectedness of all things, astral traveling, and past lives, with “my body of light taking the shape of each of my incarnations: forty-two fully achieved lives and 111 total.” Skye also details the mechanics and philosophy of “sacred sexuality,” asserting that, “until we see sex for the true divine experience that it is, there cannot be a shift of consciousness, period.” Clocking in at 700 pages, the text is initially rather daunting. Yet Skye’s accessible, conversational tone soon draws the reader into this intriguing and wide-ranging narrative. His descriptions of performing yoga and acrobatics and “the wonderful thrill of beautiful lovemaking” effectively illustrate the joy and power of the mind-body connection. Readers should be warned, as Skye himself acknowledges, that some of the sexual content included is “really graphic.” The biggest takeaway of this book is the exhortation to keep an open heart and mind, with Skye noting, “Let the universe guide you into what is best for you without judgment.”
An immersive discussion with an appealing message to explore one’s own personal path to spiritual enlightenment.Pub Date: May 25, 2023
ISBN: 979-8765241950
Page Count: 700
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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
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