Steve Andreas (1935–2018)

I stumbled upon this book at the public library and as happens often to me I found exactly what I didn't know I desperately needed. This is easily the most practical and effective "self help" book I have ever read. I have read quite a few and most will leave me with a more positive feeling overall but that quickly fades once I get back to real life. This book is very different, it offers problem scenarios that we all encounter in some way or another and guides you through the steps you must take to change the way you experience these things. I have started implementing some of these suggestions and it literally is life changing. I had no idea how much I was actually being affected by my everyday thoughts and now I have tools to better my mind, my experiences and my life. I'm very grateful this book crossed my path and recommend EVERYONE read it!… (mehr)

The bulk of this book are experiments on awareness. The beginning is written for the individual experimenter. The rest of the book is written for those who would lead others in such experiments, primarily in pairs or groups. There are a lot of different possibilities covered, such as imagine you are a rose. You are then led to describe your awareness in the first person, present tense. Later the author gives some samples of what various people described. Doing the experiment and then hearing the variety of other people's experience was quite enlightening. I did not try any of the pair or group experiments.

The last paragraph in the book sums up how the author thinks about awareness. I give his premise a "5 star." His experimental ideas are also "5 star." I'll give the book a 4, because it's not all that exciting to read, but I did like it. I read a few pages a day in the morning. I probably could not have stayed with reading it straight through.

Here is the last paragraph for you:

"There are immense destructive powers loose in the world. These powers are mostly created, maintained, and guided by fantasies: fears, ideologies, ideals, images, beliefs, assumptions, thinking, planning, tradition, custom, etc. Many of those who cling to these fantasies—and quite a few innocent bystanders too—are being destroyed by these powers. A growing number of us are waking up from our dreams and nightmares and getting in touch with the reality of our own experiencing. As we do this, we become personally free of these fantasies and we withdraw our participation in the destructive power that these fantasies generate. This is the revolution of awareness over fantasy, and of the living over the dead. Most revolutions ask you to give up your life for a cause. The revolution of awareness is happening because more and more of us are insisting on living our own lives, and refusing to give up our lives for fantasies. You can only join us by living your own life fully, with awareness. By being ourselves, rather than images, we can respond to each other directly and come together in honest response-ability. "… (mehr)