{"id":200,"date":"2003-10-25T16:22:47","date_gmt":"2003-10-25T22:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/?p=200"},"modified":"2003-10-25T16:22:47","modified_gmt":"2003-10-25T22:22:47","slug":"review-the-celestine-prophecy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/2003\/10\/25\/review-the-celestine-prophecy\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Celestine Prophecy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;d like to give this book a good review.<\/p>\n<p>No, really, I would.  When I picked it up, I had high hopes for a deeply moving spiritual experience.  Unfortunately, I didn&#8217;t get it.  Oh, it was a good reminder that I need to be more connected to the source of my spiritual strength, which is God.  But, mostly, it was watered-down New Age mubo-jumbo.<\/p>\n<p>It started out okay, though it wasn&#8217;t what I expected.  It was, essentially, a work of fiction meant to impart nine &#8220;insights&#8221; of a spiritual nature.  I hadn&#8217;t expected a story at all, but I plowed ahead anyway.  Even though it was written at about the same level as USA Today.  Then, they started to tell me that I needed to be a vegetarian.  Uh-oh&#8230;  I disagree with that for a number of reasons, which I won&#8217;t go into here.  Suffice it to say that was my first warning that this wasn&#8217;t my kind of book.  But, I reminded myself of all the Hindu and Buddhist vegetarians and kept reading.<br \/>\nThen, they started seeing auras.  Oh, they called it &#8220;energy fields&#8221;, but it was nothing more than auras.  That&#8217;s not bad in and of itself, but it added a bit of hokey-ness to the whole thing that was hard to get past later.<br \/>\nAnd, from there on out, everyone was a characature of a stereotype found in pop-psychology or New Age literature.  Not that it&#8217;s all that bad, but it didn&#8217;t endear the book&#8217;s author to me.  And, ultimately, it all got in the way of my reading.  It&#8217;s never a good sign when the medium obstructs the message.<\/p>\n<p>Still, it wasn&#8217;t a total loss.  I did gain a deeper appreciation for better books!  And, it made me think about what &#8220;coincidenes&#8221; really mean.  Are they just interesting accidents?  Or, are they messages from a higher source?  So, I vowed to pay closer attention to chance encounters and such.<br \/>\nAlso, it made me think more about how we interact with each other.  How most of us are not conscious of the way we talk to and treat others.  I know that <i>I<\/i> have not always been very conscious of how I deal with others.  So, I promised myself that I would pay more attention to my interactions with other people.<\/p>\n<p>So, while I can&#8217;t honestly reccomend this book to anyone else, it wasn&#8217;t a total loss.  Oh, and normally, I&#8217;d post this on a Sunday, since it was a book about spirituality, but I&#8217;m announcing a new site feature tomorrow.  And, the next two Sundays as well.  Stay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;d like to give this book a good review. No, really, I would. When I picked it up, I had high hopes for a deeply moving spiritual experience. Unfortunately, I didn&#8217;t get it. Oh, it was a good reminder that I need to be more connected to the source of my spiritual strength, which is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,16,17,23],"tags":[328,329],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criticism-marginalia-and-notes","category-fiction-and-its-kin","category-personal","category-review","tag-energy","tag-usa-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}