More of us have experienced moments of enlightenment awakening than we think. The thing is that after we have that moment of transcendence, that feeliMore of us have experienced moments of enlightenment awakening than we think. The thing is that after we have that moment of transcendence, that feeling of connection to limitless cosmos, that divine love, we're...still ourselves. Because of that, and because so often these moments don't contain an external witness, we might feel we have less experience of spiritual awareness than we do.
This book is a wonderful affirmation of these moments from a wide range of spiritual traditions, though Buddhism remains at the heart. Jack Kornfield's writing and presence in that writing is tremendously loving and compassionate. "After the Ecstasy..." strives to present "enlightenment" as something that is actually quite accessible, and by stripping it of its romanticization, make us realize that we've likely stumbled across it, or at least near it, before.
When I was in my early and mid-twenties, I was thoroughly miserable, both to be around and in my own mind. Every so often, however, the clouds would burst, and I would have a moment of illumination, where everything fit into a harmonious cosmic whole that I was seamlessly a part of. These moments were horribly brief, and after, I would go back to being a mess. I finally understand now that I had yet to do the therapeutic work I needed to hold onto this feeling, and hadn't wanted to face the trauma I was carrying. I've grateful to it for giving me the insight to realize that I was capable of something beyond feeling shitty about myself, but still clung to the wish that it had stuck. Kornfield reassures us that the transience of that blissful state is normal, and I love him for it.
The great teachers of each spiritual traditions are not the exception. We can all experience the mystic, and probably have. It's the everyday that we struggle with, the forgetting of the whole outside the myriad. Still, it's there, whenever we take a moment to tune into whatever brings us closer to it....more
Without cooking any of the recipes, I love this book but am going to hold off rating it. When I think of countries I want to go, Georgia is top on my Without cooking any of the recipes, I love this book but am going to hold off rating it. When I think of countries I want to go, Georgia is top on my list next time my family has the time and money. This book whets that desire even more as it blends travel guide and cookbook in a regional tour around the country, complete with gorgeous and tantalizing pictures of the land and its food. Sadly, this is a library book, which means that cooking from it in any depth becomes more of a challenge, though I’ll be trying a couple recipes tomorrow. What has also kept me back from trying is how elusive getting Georgian food right seems to be when cooking it at home here in the US without ever having been to Georgia to taste it for oneself.
I noticed a negative review below from someone who knows Georgian food trying to cook from it, and finding it bland. I own a copy of another cookbook from Georgia that I’ve tried cooking from, “The Georgian Feast”, and those recipes have been hit or miss for me as well. I have a list of reasons why I suspect that it’s hard to get Georgian food right in a cookbook, and at the top of that is geography. Georgia located in a fascinating place: it is south of Russia, north of the Middle East, west from Central Asia, and east from Turkey and Europe in a mountainous landscape bracketed by both the Black and Caspian seas. Replicating the palate from a land that incredible crossroads with such a unique terroir seems daunting to me, especially since the heart of Georgian cooking is in using fresh, seasonal ingredients.
Another difficulty that I suspect about cooking with this cookbook has to do with culture. What I’ve noticed most about looking at the recipes in this book is that aside from the few exemplary restaurants the author touts, is that the soul of Georgian cuisine is in it’s home cooking. In this book as well as in “The Georgian Feast”, Georgia’s legendary supras are center stage. Supras are dinner parties on steroids, something beyond what most of us have experienced here in the US outside of Thanksgiving. It’s a central part of their culture. This means that to get the best Georgian food, you probably want to be invited over for a supra rather than go to a restaurant, and this in turn means home cooking. As a home cook myself, I appreciate how hard it is to relay what you’re doing to someone else as a coherent recipe, as it hinges on you using your own unique palate to correct for seasoning and find the right flavor balance.
I’m guessing the palate that I’m aiming for in Georgian food is rich in herbal flavors, with dishes that play with the balance of sweet, sour and savory, and a hearty serving of fresh bread and cheese on the side. Of course, I can’t get the exact genus of fresh herbs, fruits, vegetables, nuts and chicken they have there here, which means that I’m approximating. It’s all well and good to approximate for some things—I’ve been reasonably successful with traditional Mexican cuisine because it’s more process oriented and I know the palate—but if I’m trying to approximate something that is using for it’s base fresh locally farmed foods, how am I going to do that half the world away with no idea what the techniques and native palate are really like, with ingredients from a large chain grocery store? It’s like trying to cook good Indian food at home. I can read the recipe and attempt it, but it always comes out as bland knock off of the real deal. To start getting it right, I would need to take a class from someone who knows what ingredients the flavors come from and how to find that perfect balance.
Hopefully I’ll get to Georgia one day and experience Georgian cooking for myself, but in the meanwhile I’ll try out a couple of these recipes, and if I’m lucky, they’ll come out tasting good. Fingers crossed, because I really want to like this book, and possibly even own a copy myself one day. ...more
It is tremendously hard to be called out on your racism. I get it. I think of careless words I've said about race, times whThis is an important book.
It is tremendously hard to be called out on your racism. I get it. I think of careless words I've said about race, times when I haven't said anything at all and I should have, instinctive reactions I've had based purely on skin color. I love how this book navigates the standard responses that white people give as they bristle with the accusation that they could be racists, and in the end presents a way to deal with seeing your racism graciously. Robin DiAngelo brilliantly presents the racist=bad, non-racist=good paradigm that we all unconsciously follow, believing that if we fall into a racist way of thinking that we're bad people. Instead, what she outlines is the bedrock of anti-racist training--we live in a country founded on institutionalized racism, and that this paradigm continues today to perpetuate inequality and violence upon people of color. Racism is NOT something we left behind; it haunts our country continually, and the less we deal with it personally, the more we deny the racist tendencies that our country's culture and society are inoculated with, the less chance we have at actually reckoning with it.
I could try to worm my way out of acknowledging my racism, reciting my upbringing: that I'm half Mexican-American, grew up in a household that included my Latina mother and aunt, housed Cambodian refugees and a black Vietnam vet at various times, that my father's family made racist comments about Mexicans in my presence, that my mother's boyfriend was black from late elementary school on through high school, that my aunt's best friend is Native American, that our holiday gatherings at times had more people of color than whites, that people used to often ask me, "what are you?". I could say that all of this exempts me from participating in racism, that I know what it's like. But it doesn't exempt me, not in the slightest, because I still ride the privilege of being perceived as (mostly) white.
I live a white life in Seattle, a city that is experiencing black flight and to this day is incredibly segregated. I am not around many people of color in my daily life, and that lack of exposure combined with the dominant culture gives rise to unconscious biases and behavior that I am not aware of. I have so much to learn about how to work through these tendencies, and how to break up white solidarity when a racist remark is made by a friend or loved one. This book was a helpful walk through of why and how to confront our own racism, and this is essential if we're going to give more than lip-service to our support for the Black Lives Matter movement and structural racial inequality in our society. I urge every white American I know to read it, and do the hard work of not just thinking about the racists you know, but the racist tendencies you yourself may have. ...more
I've made several recipes from this book. Sterling's love and respect for the food, people, and culture of the Yucatan peninsula is apparent in his coI've made several recipes from this book. Sterling's love and respect for the food, people, and culture of the Yucatan peninsula is apparent in his cookbook, and though the layout is a bit non-traditional (think coffee table book/cookbook), it is undoubtedly a great resource for those seeking to sample the delicious flavor palate of the region. I cooked the recipes in tandem with recipes for the same/similar dishes in the great Diana Kennedy's 'Art of Mexican Cooking', and Maricel Presilla's 'Gran Cocina Latina'. In the end, they each have their strengths and weaknesses in how they come at translating and presenting the recipes. I found David Sterling's recipe for sopa de lima almost unusable, with him saying, basically, that it was almost impossible to recreate this recipe without some very specific ingredients, where Presilla presents a completely delicious version of the soup, starting from with a spiced chicken broth. In turn, Sterling's recado rojo recipe was much easier to follow than Kennedy's, as she has you referring to other pages. There was, however, agreement between all the authors in the flavor palate and ingredient work-arounds for the wonderful cuisine of the region, which was a nice verification. It is great to know that with books such as these it's possible to re-create/approximate truly authentic Mexican food here in the Pacific Northwest. I hope to one day own this book along with Kennedy's 'Oaxaca al Gusto' so that I can gain more working familiarity with the delicious and unique flavors of southern Mexico. ...more
Reading "How to Change Your Mind", what bothered me, and continues to do so is how white male dominated this book and movement was. There are numerousReading "How to Change Your Mind", what bothered me, and continues to do so is how white male dominated this book and movement was. There are numerous women in this book, but they're at the periphery of Pollan's discussion. Maria Sabina, the Oaxacan curandera who dosed the American man who brought psylocibin US, is mentioned almost in passing, where for all that Pollan critiques and tries to work around Timothy Leary, he takes up a sizable chunk of the narrative. Women are on the sidelines in a noticeable way, primarily as wives, research assistants and guides, though if I'm to be fair, they do come in more in the present movement. Why, when we have so much to gain from upending traditional hierarchical society? Pollan himself doesn't note this phenomena, which is why this is a 4 star read for me. Likely, it's because women in the sciences already struggle with legitimacy, and for white upper/middle class men, it's automatically bestowed and can be taken for granted. When women push against the boundary of what is scientifically acceptable by the mainstream, they're easier to dismiss and shelve in the new age bookshop or ridiculed a la GOOP–niche and nonscientific. Men are the gurus, iconoclasts and scientists in this field, women are...what? The passive consumers? Support? The new age hippie earth mother? And what of American people of color when it comes to psychedelics? I’m tired of that paradigm, especially for a field that is so clearly at the forefront of psychology, psychiatry, and spirituality. We deserve representation with the other doorkeepers to this exciting frontier, and hopefully we'll be getting some soon.
Other than that, I loved this book. From the moment I started, it stirred something in me. I was raised by a father who talked up LSD to me from an early age, and a mother who spoke about the “purple haze” she lived in during the 70s. Both my parents are highly educated, productive people, so I’ve never assumed that drug usage automatically resulted in addiction, or that “dropping out” is necessarily a permanent thing. Even with that upbringing, a healthy respect for the wilds of my own mind have prevented me from being tempted by LSD, and smoking pot has always made me anxious. It was also apparent to me that what my parents were really seeking from these drugs was beyond recreation. What they ended up passing down in all that talk was a calling to the spiritual, a path to search for the meaning, beauty and love in my life, and permission to do this in a rational, informed, and nontraditional way.
The thing is that you don't have to take psychedelics for Terence McKenna and other psychedelic gurus to make sense. When I read this book, what I see is how much we're in need of help to get out of the grooves of habit and self-narrative. We’re so wrapped up in our selves, our lives, and the rigid labels we put on everything that we can’t see beyond them half the time. It takes something jarring, something out of the everyday to wake us up, and psychedelics do that, chemically. There are other methods for transcendence of the self, but none so easy or surefire. I think it's fantastic that Pollan gave a legitimate front to this movement, and I hope that people continue to be awakened to their spiritual selves. In these times, it's something sorely needed....more
This is what YA fiction should be. Clear-sighted and honest, emotionally wrenching but funny, written to the level of teenager but immensely readable This is what YA fiction should be. Clear-sighted and honest, emotionally wrenching but funny, written to the level of teenager but immensely readable for adults as well, I devoured this book in an afternoon while my daughter slept on my lap. I look forward to the day she reads it on her own. ...more
Having finished this book in audiobook format last night, my first impulse this morning was to go to Third Place Books and buy a paper copy so that I Having finished this book in audiobook format last night, my first impulse this morning was to go to Third Place Books and buy a paper copy so that I can start reading it again. If I could go and get myself and my one-year old dressed without waking my sick husband, that's exactly what I would be doing now.
I don't know when the last time I read a book that was so insightful, intelligent and compassionate. The heroes and villains of "Middlemarch" are people that you and I might know--champions of idealism and the myopically self-absorbed. There is no need for a grandiose stage on which to illustrate the depth and breadth of human nature; Eliot/Evans restrains from hurling her characters into epic catastrophe when the disappointments of everyday life are enough to grind a person down. As Jane Austen laughs at the folly of a poorly-matched marriage, Eliot/Evans keenly observes its effects on a person's psyche in an age where divorce was generally not done. Her turn of phrase is wonderful, and though the work is over 900 pages, of the Victorian era and has a pastoral setting, there are none of the tediously descriptive passages that are often found in other books of that sort.
For those who like stories laced with adroit psychological insight and nuanced morality, I highly recommend "Middlemarch". It endures on top 100 lists of best novels for a reason. ...more
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