Enlightened Relations: The Life in a Day: A Couple Enjoys Spiritual Enlightenment Together by Richard Dietrich MaddoxMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
The reader bought the book. Most readers would have an expectation of learning, or being entertained, or perhaps both, the great goal of edifying and entertaining, as Robert Pirsig set out to do with his concept of the Chautauqua in the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. But not this reader. For this reader, having attained a great and seemingly eternal Mediocrity of Spirit--caught some where in a mythical stage of 4.8 to 5.1 on Fowler's Stages of Faith--knew that the book could only be but a ripple on the surface of the deep ocean of Being. So the reader read with neither joy nor disappointment for such emotions would indicate a differentiation of one moment from the next. But time as most people know it, does not exist. It is a great illusion of the four dimensional material Universe, and for the All Being Consciousness, there is only the great and Infinite Now. The reader knew that one book like one moment could never be greater than another book...the New York Times bestseller list or a toothed gold "Amazon #1 Bestseller" medallion on a book cover being but a mere false construction of the ego which has become blinded from eternal Love and the magnificence of Soul by profit and fame.
The reader read great paragraphs of Whitmanian poetic descriptive prose which some readers would say contain a phenomenal thesaurusitic beauty that out thoreaued Thoreau and yet other readers might say the paragraphs were overwrought and perhaps infused with too much desperate wonder and veneration. But the reader felt neither beauty or boredom because the reader knows that words are but mirrors of the great Bliss, the deep Consciousness, the All Knowing All Eternal. Some readers would note a constant repetition of the idea of the Deep Consciousness having neither positive or negative views on a topic, but this reader was neither vexed or delighted with the repetition, but realized that IT is what it IS.
So the reader neither enjoyed nor disliked the book as most readers would, but yet maintained a great empathy for the author whom the reader realizes not only means well but perhaps is indeed far more Enlightened than the reader himself...who recognizes, however vaguely, that many future incarnations still remain for him. As such, the reader could neither give a good review nor a bad review. For what is a review? A Judgement! And should not the Enlightened avoid judgements in the deep ocean of Eternal Being?
View all my reviews
