We’re a few days into January 2015 already — and I’m having a hard time believing it! Welcome to the new year when everyone fumbles dates for months and sometimes that pesky “2014” creeps in even as late as June or July. I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and are geared up and ready to tackle a brand new year.

Here are December’s book reviews. Once again it’s a smaller month than usual (although I’m part-way through several books) so the page count comes to 1232.

Disclaimer: This post contains Amazon affiliate links. I make a (very) small referral commission from purchases made using my links. This does not affect your price.

 

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

As a scientist, I’m leery of speaking on topics religious, but I kind of think I’m on to something writing-related that’s potentially fascinating…

Months ago, I wrote this blog post on how meditation might inform one’s writing practice. And then I didn’t ever follow up on that — but I’ve been pondering it in the wings ever since and I really think there’s something to it. Something that has to do with how to connect with your very best writing, your own most powerful poetry. In light of this tantalizing realization I’ve been doing some reading on meditation and enlightenment.

The basic thesis of Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment is that the way to enlightenment is through harnessing the power of Being in the Now. It’s not a revolutionary thesis — that one should focus on the present, not worry about bad things until they actually happen, or allow painful remembrances to taint the enjoyment of present bounty. It all sounds like rather common sense.

And then Tolle takes things a step further. The state of complete presence in the Now (Being — his word for God), is sought to dissolve attachment to the unalterable past, to the unavoidable future, and to the egoic consciousness itself (that thinking “me” voice that lives inside your head).

I’m not going to tell to you read this book — do if it tantalizes you, don’t if it doesn’t. But I think Tolle’s state of Being, is perhaps not so different from what happens on the really great writing days(just on a different scale). Call it what you will — the Power of Art, perhaps?

 

In Paradise by Peter Matthiessen

This might be the most interesting book I’ve read this year.  In Paradise: A Novel by Peter Matthiessen is a short novel and a quiet one. It’s the story of Clements Olin an American academic (of Polish extraction) who attends a meditation retreat at Auschwitz, a gathering of souls from around the world “to bear witness” — to what the assembled group is there to bear witness to, Clements Olin is not so sure.

The gathering of this disparate group of witness-bearers is itself witnessed from the perspective of Olin, a man remarkable perhaps only in his unremarkableness. And yet as Olin comes to terms with the history of the place and the ways in which it penetrates his own personal history, he cannot remain unchanged.

One part history, two parts poetry, and one part mysticism — this is a bittersweet book that I might just return to again some day.

 

The Desire Map by Danielle Laporte

My pick for reading in preparation for the new year was The Desire Map: A Guide to Creating Goals with Soul by Danielle Laporte. Along the line’s of some of Martha Beck’s advice on setting goals, Danielle Laporte’s position is that instead of thinking about what we want to achieve, we should first concentrate on how we want to feel. By first getting really clear on what she calls the “core desired feelings” (the way you in particular most want to feel), this allows us to focus on creating intentions which will create these core desired feelings.

In theory this approach circumvents common problems with goal setting:

• The mid-goal meltdown. By setting feeling-driven intentions and working toward our goals in a way that honors our core desired feelings we try to avoid the problem of quitting when the goal-seeking going gets tough.
• The post-goal let down. By clarifying core desired feelings first we try to eliminate the problem of setting goals that don’t turn out to be everything you thought they would be.

As someone who’s done a lot of New Year’s resolutions in the past and actually achieved a grand total of — er — none of them, I’m hoping that by setting “goals with soul” in 2015 I might actually have a hope of making just a few of my dreams come true.

Let me know in the comments below — what are your dreams for 2015?