Thursday 7 July 2011

Review: High Heeled Guide to Spiritual Living

I review lot of books for my blog, but rarely do I find myself nodding in agreement as much as I did while reading The High Heeled Guide to Spiritual Living.

To be honest, I suspected this new book by Alice Grist, who previously wrote The High Heeled Guide to Enlightenment,would be my kind of thing when I read the description of it by publisher O-Books: "The High Heeled Guide to Spiritual Living is a fiery account of one woman's mission to bring the deeply soulful into mundane everyday life." After all, my own blog is all about finding magic and meaning in the seemingly mundane.

Alice describes her new book as "a basic recipe by which bog standard human life can be entwined with the divine". She says: "Spiritual living can be done between feeding the kids, doing the laundry and catching up on paying all those irksome bills."

And the book explains how to do just that. The High Heeled Guide to Spiritual Livingdescribes simple ways to open yourself to spirituality in order to find greater fulfilment in life than you can get just from work, a social life and material possessions. The most important step is to accept a change in perspective.

Alice believes that our consumer society is the biggest thing that gets in our way when we are looking for deeper meaning in life. Advertisements, TV shows, movies - and sometimes our friends - give the impression that we can buy happiness; that if we have a new car, a big house, designer clothes and the latest beauty products, then we just might be able to attain the degree of perfection necessary to be really happy.

This is, of course, an illusion. Supermodels, film stars and the ultra-rich can be just as unhappy as anyone else, but people waste a heck of a lot of time, money and energy pursuing that kind of dream.

But you don't need to go and live as a hermit in the wilderness - or pay vast amounts of money to professional gurus - to find spirituality. All you really need to do is work at seeing through those illusions and open yourself up to spiritual guidance from the goddess, the angels, your higher self, or whatever you believe in.

The keys to doing that are faith and love - faith that there is more to life than mere material existence and love for ourselves, our fellow humans and mother Earth.

Alice's writing style is forthright, thought-provoking and sometimes confrontational, but she writes from her heart, with passion and sincerity. I didn't agree with everything she says in her book, but it would be a dull world if we all thought exactly alike.

The High Heeled Guide to Spiritual Livingis Alice Grist's second book. Her first book, The High Heeled Guide to Enlightenment,charts Alice’s journey from party girl to sassy spiritual woman. Alice is also the founder and managing editor of Soul-Cafe.net, an online network and magazine for soulful and spiritual living.

Links
http://www.o-books.com
The High Heeled Guide to Spiritual Living
The High Heeled Guide to Enlightenment
http://soul-cafe.net



1 comment:

Harry said...

Not so bad at all. I like this blog!