Beyond Thought by Chris Dhladhla
Have you ever felt trapped by your own thoughts? That your mind is so busy processing what's going on in the world around you that you just can't catch a moment and simply be? Or that the outside world just won't stop pressing in upon an inner life that you'd like to be more peaceful?
| Beyond Thought by Chris Dhladhla | |
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| Category: Lifestyle | |
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Reviewer: Jill Murphy
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| Summary: The third and final instalment in a series encouraging us to find ourselves by transcending thought. Much to ponder here. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 68 | Date: June 2018 |
| Publisher: CreateSpace | |
| ISBN: 978-1720812678 | |
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I think most of us have felt these things at one time or another. If you want a way of dealing with them, then Beyond Thought is a book you should read.
Beyond Thought is the last in a three-part series from Chris Dhladhla. It follows on from The Power of Character and The Now Moment and its aim is to show us how to transcend thought by experiencing consciousness and allowing it to be revealed in our everyday lives. It is both a simple and a difficult concept to grasp but, Dhladhla maintains, a necessary one. For Dhladhla, reality is experienced rather than expressed or defined tangibly and it can only be limited with words.
This leaves me, the reviewer of his book, in some difficulty because I do not wish to limit Dhladhla's insights and understandings by filtering them through me and to you. Nevertheless, that is what a review is. So I'll tell you all the things that I found helpful or interesting.
Presence in activity is true presence. Begin first with the withdrawal from activity and return to activity with a meaningful awareness.
I like this. I feel as though I've been given permission to take a moment; to step back from the exigencies of daily life and, once refreshed and calmed, to re-enter the fray with with a mind more prepared to be what I do. Dhladhla uses a quote by Rumi to illustrate this - the quieter you become, the more you are able to hear. I think this is very true.
The book has some great advice about ego and how it gets in the way by demanding attention. If we don't give it attention, it withers away and the maelstrom in our minds withers away too. The passage about men being threatened by female equality is also thought-provoking - such men believe they are gaining in power by dominating women but the reverse is actually true: they are prisoners of their own egos.
And there is also some great advice about leading by example, or, if you prefer, leading without leading:
If you become what you want to see, instead of discussing or commenting about it, you become a pictogram of wordless teaching. You don't have to talk to me to teach me.
I found Beyond Thought both insightful and interesting. It's a short, pithy book of just sixty-odd pages but it packs in a lot of advice and information. It's clear that Dhladhla wants the world to be a better, kinder place and for people to lead more aware, more connected lives. And his book is a worthy contribution to that lofty ambition. I'm very glad I read it and I hope that I can put at least some of these principles into operation. I'm sure my life would be the better for it.
We think you'll also appreciate The Natural Health Service: How Nature Can Mend Your Mind by Isabel Hardman.
You can read more about Chris Dhladhla here.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Beyond Thought by Chris Dhladhla at Amazon.com.
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