July 2005 Books
Life Without Lisa ; Spiritual Nutrition
Life Without LisaA widowed father’s compelling journey through the rough seas of grief
The death of a loved one, especially your own life partner, is something nothing can prepare you for. Author Richard Ballo was no more ready than you or I would be when Lisa, his 38-year-old wife, passed on to the next world. In Life Without Lisa he offers us a poignantly candid account of how he and their two young sons (five and six years old at the time) dealt with their grief and put their lives back together, one day at a time.
Something about this book called to me. As I thumbed through it, each page reached in and touched chords that resonated with pain I've felt as close friends and relatives have gone on from this life. Like when one son admits, “I never said goodbye,” or when Richard goes to a dance class and realizes it never bothered him before that there were more men than women in the class, or when he discusses the loss of intimacy and his own sexual need, or when he shares conversations he engages in with Lisa's spirit.
Life Without Lisa confirms that life goes on after death, for both the deceased and the bereaved. It also offers very practical information for helping those left behind, on everything from dealing with anger and overwhelm to sharing memories… to letting go of personal items … to talking with children about death. But it was Ballo's willingness to be totally honest and vulnerable that touched the quiet places deep within me.
—Chiwah
Spiritual Nutrition
Six Foundations for Spiritual Life and the Awakening of Kundalini
This book, written by a spiritual teacher of Swami Muktananda's lineage from the direct experience of his own life, is much more inclusive than its title implies. As stated in the Preface, “It is a blueprint for creating the critical mass of conscious people necessary for the planetary transformation into a peaceful, loving, humanistic world.”
As the author explains in his Introduction, “Kabbalah teaches that in the beginning the finite vessels of the world were filled with Infinite Light, and they shattered because they could not hold the power of Light. Spiritual Nutrition is about how to repair the vessels of the body-mind complex so we can become a superconductor of the Light, and hold the Light, eternally.”
Honoring Eastern and Western paths to the Divine, Spiritual Nutrition is a deft weave of the Yogic path of the Kundalini and the Jewish path of the Kabbalah. It is both basic and advanced, a veritable compendium of information on everything you need to know to reach transcendent heights of consciousness. Vast in its reach, the book makes accessible and understandable far more information than I can possibly even allude to in the space allowed for this review.
To the extent that Spiritual Nutrition deals with feeding the physical body, it does so as a means to awakening the higher bodies, culminating in the bliss body linked to the awakening of spiritual kundalini (which the author describes as entering through the crown chakra, unlike the more mundane shakti kundalini traditionally described as rising from a coil at the base of the spine). Physical keys include eating live food prepared in spiritual consciousness, drinking structured water, and practicing yoga and meditation—and, if we are to believe our eyes, one look at the author (now in his sixties) speaks volumes about the youthing quality of such a lifestyle.
Gabriel Cousens is a medical doctor and psychiatrist by training, and also a homeopath and ayurvedic diplomate; a rabbi and certified Essene teacher; and, among other things, a four-year Sundancer and dance chief adopted into the Lakota Nation.
You are invited to experience him in Santa Monica on Thursday, July 28. In an evening workshop titled “Spiritual Nutrition for Liberation” he will lead a one-hour meditation, answer questions, and conduct a shaktipat empowerment in the tradition of Sri Swami Muktananda. $30 at the door; call 310/581-2450 for exact time and directions
—Chiwah
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