March 2008 Books
Lifeprints ; Think of an Elephant
Lifeprints
Deciphering Your Life Purpose from Your FingertipsDid you know that medical literature documents links between fingerprints and lupus disease, heart disease, Alzheimer's, tuberculosis and cancer? Mental disorders? Hyperactivity? Or that the FBI probably needs just one line of one of your fingerprints to identify you? Or that the same patterning found in fingerprints also shows up in sand dunes?
I didn't. Not that I'm surprised, but I hadn't read that anywhere before I opened Lifeprints . But as its subtitle makes clear, none of that is not what this groundbreaking book is about. And yet it is.
“Four months before you were born, a pattern appeared on your body…,” we learn. “Call it a soul map, a holographic image, or a DNA printout, a bar-coded peak at the biological legacy of your ancestors. Consider it your transcript as you begin a new semester at the Earth University… . Your life purpose is literally at your fingertips.”
So what does Unger mean by ‘life purpose'? It's big—bigger than self-improvement. He defines it as “developing a state of consciousness that naturally and regularly unfolds into right life.” It is specific to you and the meaning of your life, and has nothing at all to do with circumstances.
Why is this important? Because knowing your life purpose lets you know what your life is all about. It gives you direction. And it offers a perspective that may help you to view your own shortcomings with greater compassion.
The book acquaints you with the four basic fingerprint types and the ‘schools' they represent (Service, Love, Wisdom and Peace). You find your school, and from there it carries you into finer distinctions and greater understanding of your own soul essence.
Reporting a lifelong fascination with hands, the author says he developed the system presented in this book by reading more than 52,000 pairs of hands. I imagine he probably knows what he's talking about. I think I'll spend some more time with this book… and perhaps figure out what the heck I'm doing here in this insane world.
—Chiwah
Think of an Elephant Combining Science and Spirituality for a Better Life
When scientists were asked what would become of the mass of an elephant if it were sucked into a black hole, they came to the shocking conclusion that its fate would depend upon the vantage point of the observer. In Think of an Elephant , Paul Bailey shows us the power such a radically different view of the nature of the universe offers us for shaping our individual and collective future.
Today, as most of humanity trembles at the prospect of the awesome and awful possibilities we hold in our collective hands without the least idea of how to set our malfunctioning societies and our failing environment right, the common response appears to be to take whatever small actions are made easy for us and pray that the rest will somehow take care of itself. The big picture is just too immense, too chaotic, too intimidating to consider.
Think of an Elephant is a momentous attempt to redirect our attention from worrying about halting the external chaos to examining who we are in relationship to everything else and how the acceptance of the interrelatedness of all things can empower each and every one of us to make a difference for the future of all life.
This immensely readable book frames our search for meaning in scientific terms we can all understand, offering profound insights into the converging force fields of quantum physics, religion and spirituality, health and medicine, and the environment. And it does so in mind-blowing and yet practical ways, opening doors to activating our vast potential for positive change—right here, right now.
In the words of the author, “ Think of an Elephant establishes that the traditional positions of science and religion are profoundly intertwined [italics his] and that there are more dimensions to reality than most of us ever realized.” And then it helps us make sense of that.
I hope you'll read this book, and get others to read it. Then we'll have some interesting discussions. But beyond that, I'm betting that some of the insights it presents will set off a domino effect of positive changes that begin in our lives and resonate throughout our society.
—Chiwah
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