“All my life I wanted to be somebody,
Now, I finally am somebody….
But it isn’t me.”

Like a little prose poem!

It’s true, too. You can only really have what you give away, although it’s not about giving away more than, or as much as, or Enough, you know.

You just have to be nothing and have everything, or maybe have nothing and be everything, like Jesus on the Cross, you know….. Dying, yet always alive.

Anyway, Wayne is I guess like his friend (if you will) the poet William S. in that he likes everything, so he files a few entries into each genre, whether ‘comedic’ if you like, or not. So he writes a book like this, and he also writes prosperity books, and probably makes them decent to boot. The first two (I bought them together) Wayne books I got (when I first started to read, really), were this book and Real Magic (along with a pocket Bible and some more forgettable entries), at Barnes and Noble, I think right after he died and the bookstores were full of his stuff on the shelves, you know, although the dates are fuzzy for me now.

But of the two, Real Magic and Sacred Self, Sacred is much bigger, at least on the inside. There’s enough money in the world. I have enough money. The world’s problems are not primarily money problems, in my opinion, (at least for people who have had decent schooling, but even then, much of the education system was designed by Sir Jeeves and Sheldon Cooper, you know, and they don’t know what people really need to know—not even to appreciate the world’s quixotic geniuses, of whom there have been a few). People starve, but it’s not because there isn’t enough food grown. The world is heading for a climate disaster, but not because it’s physically impossible to stop eating animals (“meat”), but because it’s psychically impossible for most people to take less from things, to be less greedy.

People are just not apt to believe that you become bigger by taking less—and less ready still to believe that even then, it’s not about *any* ‘bigger’, in a way.

And yet, the world does what it does, and life goes on, like it always has, and because of God always will. I just started reading Kate today (I can’t call her Katie because that’s her last name, and can’t call her Byron because that’s not Really a first name at all, not a ‘Christian’ name, as people used to say, although here that’s ironic, lol), and the first thing she does in the Second Edition foreword to Loving What Is is, saying that it’s a friendly universe, and you can realize that…. I suppose I ought to go farther than I have and realize even that, since I suppose if somebody had a right to say, or would say, that the universe is unfriendly, that it doesn’t come out, that person would be Jesus Christ, but I don’t think he does….

Do I really, though, have that in me? I’m sure I will, so it must be in there somewhere, now, you know….

Anyway. —grand conclusion— lol….

…. …. The first time I read the part about practices in this book, they all kinda blurred together as, He talks about meditation a lot. (I’d better meditate!)…. But now I think I can kinda distinguish those four parts: banish willful negative thinking, observe yourself in daily life, do formal meditation practice, and observe the absence of presence of the fruits of the spirit.

But don’t listen to me, you know.

…. For a long time when I heard Wayne, or others, talk about the opposite of fear being love, I didn’t know exactly what was being signified, and, although life is more than a verbal formula, it was still something I wanted to know. (I remember I heard a priest commenting/explaining on a Bible verse, one that you kinda automatically gloss over, by saying, It can kinda just sound like ‘Bible talk’, right?)

But I think the idea is that love is giving and fear is selfish. Fear can be incredibly selfish, you know. Please guarantee that I’ll have mine, please do for me, please take away what I don’t like, for me, because that’s what I want.

But love’s not like that, you know.

…. Elsewhere I criticized or whatever Wayne’s use of poets, which can be misleading or naive—poets are philosophers! Gosh, I have so many friends!—but at the same time, it is often a good thing for all its seeming subtle idiosyncrasy. The—often theology-mandated, if unbiblical—divorce of religion from literature is harmful to both, tending to make lit people frantic and worldly and theologians or whatever snobbish gatekeepers who lash out at people…. Wayne does mention Jack, although for many Christians, Jack Promotion is a sort of bait-and-switch, you know. “Now that you’ve read Narnia, you’ll never, ever, EVER have to read another novel, EVER again…. You’ve arrived.” 😎🤩

…. It’s not competition per se, but competitive success confused with ‘superiority’, that’s the problem. Maybe I’ll even read a very few books (less than music/movie books) on sports history, either about those few sports that I know somewhat well (basically baseball, tennis, and football, more or less in that order), or where sports history intersects with wider social history (eg Muhammed Ali, or the 1930s boxing match between the German Nazi and the Black American)…. I’m not really a sportsman anymore, and many sportsmen are very macho-yet-repressed, but that’s not an inherent thing in playing games, this miscellaneous fantasy, and it’s good to include.

Anyway Wayne does a great job dovetailing the different aspects of purity and higher consciousness; some aspects are stereotypically ‘left’ and others ‘right’, but generally he does a relatively good job of weaving together the garment of destiny, you know.

Review in progress

I find that the ideas in this book are no longer my own, although for this reason I suddenly have something to say about them.

I’d like to see how the argument would play out in biblical language, you know, just because I really want to see that boot that Orwell talks about stomping on a human face forever, right.

Here goes:

Part I would be like “The Promise” or something like that. Verse: (Genesis 15:1), “Some time later, the Lord spoke to Abram in a vision and said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Abram, for I will protect you, and your reward will be great.’”

For Chapter 1, since he’s introducing enlightenment and everything and talking about climbing up to higher levels of consciousness, (e.g., serve humanity, be yourself, etc.), I’d use some Messiah prophecy: “Nothing will hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for as the waters fill the sea, so the earth will be filled with people who know the Lord.” (Isaiah 11:9).

Chapter 2 is about choosing between higher awareness and illusions, (e.g., the “you are your body” illusion), so I’d link it with the choice between life and death, in Deuteronomy 30:15– “See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction.” Chapter 3, about common lies—e.g., “more is better”— is similar, and is a bit like John 8:44– “.... when (the devil) lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” Obviously the original scrubs clean any mention of the devil. (More cool: “Fear is a liar.” Zach Williams. [Christian songwriter]).

Part II I would call “Prayer”, and the line would be: “Elijah was a human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years!” (James 5:17).

(review continues)

.... There are many parallels with Christian teaching, although I wouldn’t really call it a Christian book. The main difference would probably be that there is here no aim to have a personal attachment to Jesus, e.g. as in “Jesus Calling”.

Esta obra es un canto al espíritu, hoy tan desdeñado, y un mensaje de fe en el ser humano en lo que tiene de divino: en su capacidad de trascender los límites de su realidad, en su vocación de moldear la propia existencia.