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38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book is helpful for everyone, 9 Feb 2006
This book is written by a very wise woman. The basic premise of the book is that depression is caused by events in our life (mainly in our childhood) that have developed the 'mental idea' that we are somehow bad. This feeling of badness was constructed by blaming oneself for the past mistakes of others (mainly our parents) and oneself instead of being easy-going about mistakes and forgiving about oneself and others. This thought process creates allsorts of justifications and rationalisations to sustain the ‘illusion’ of ones inherent badness which builds the fearful mental prison. Of course this idea that one is bad is just a figment of ones imagination built over time but it becomes more real than the reality of one being a living, breathing, feeling, thinking loving human being. This self image of badness in ones memory prevents one seeing the truth and dominates ones (re)actions. It is in seeing the falseness of this 'mentally created idea’ that stops one 'believing' the illusion, then one becomes free of it. This books show us how we can become free of it and shows us how it is just an idea in our heads. The books looks at how we hold onto our suffering for security and certainty purposes and that by letting go of it we would be free. However what prevents us from letting go is that we think it will reveal our so called badness; and so the suffering in a sense is confirmation we are trying to be good but are really bad. The book encourages to break free of this cycle. It is this whole self destructive process that needs to be seen as a mere figment of ones imagination and not the absolute reality of our life. It is this we have mistaken to be true that creates the illusion. This book is helpful for everyone because there are things in it that relate to most people's states of mind. This book as lead me to read people like J Krishnamurti, Eckhart Tolle, Buddhist teachings etc. Another great book for everyone (if one wants to understand the reactions in the mind) is Pure Power: How to Achieve World Peace and Happiness by James Christopher.
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