Life Is a Mirror

Rating:
Summary: great book
Review: I found "Life as a Mirror" to be a peaceful approach to letting in the Holy Spirit and developing a personal relationship with God. The authors explanations and personal examples of defense mechanisms made them very easy to understand and relate to my own life. It was a new and refreshing aproach to religion. I recommend this book to anyone that is looking for a little religious and or self awareness.

Rating:
Summary: Peaceful lessons for a challenging world
Review: One of the profound challenges the author makes is to see everything as a reflection of oneself. In a society and world that often prefers to point fingers and blame, this offers revolutionary and mind-expanding possibilities for us all and our relationships.

I commend Ricchetti on her many examples that help ground book, giving a glimpse into the years of her personal transformation using the Course in Miracles. This book takes her journey and offers the reader a way to consider his/her own life in the universal situations offered (and the considerations and perceptions that arise when one is traveling a path toward inner peace).

I recommend this book to those seeking and on such a path.

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't compromise the integrity of the Course
Review: This book is an aid for students of A COURSE IN MIRACLES and is authored by a person who was fortunate enough to have access to the "Foundation for A Course In Miracles" when it was still headquartered in Roscoe, New York ("FACIM" is a teaching organization for A COURSE IN MIRACLES, as well as the Course's copyright holder). In fact, the author notes that the inspiration for this book came from two classes she attended at the Foundation, as well as from two tape series by Kenneth Wapnick PhD, President of "Foundation for A Course In Miracles." The two tape series are: CLIMBING THE LADDER HOME and SEPARATION AND FORGIVENESS: THE FOUR SPLITS AND THEIR UNDOING. The classes that influenced this book were: 1) a two week long class on the Course's view of death, and, 2) a two week long class about international relations and the Arab Israeli conflict, from the Course's perspective.

But this book also includes the author's reflections on the works of Jung, Freud, the Dalai Lama, and Gloria Wapnick (faculty member of FACIM, as well as wife of Kenneth Wapnick). Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr, and Mahatma Gandhi are also mentioned. So, this book is very well-rounded and has a lot to say. I must comment that it is perhaps the first non-Wapnick book based on A COURSE IN MIRACLES that does not compromise the non-duality of Course theory. A COURSE IN MIRACLES teaches that this world is an illusion not made by God, but made by the ego as an attack *on* God. This is a teaching that is so terrifying for us that most who read A COURSE IN MIRACLES and who write books based on A COURSE IN MIRACLES seem not to take it into account. Often, people make the mistake of believing the Course is saying that only the "bad" things in the world are illusions and are "attacks on God." No, the Course says the entire physical world - the very existance of a physical world - is an attack on God. Thankfully, Catherine Ricchetti understands this aspect of Course theory, and she integrates it into this book. This book is therefore a great surprise for the serious Course student, as many of us have become accustomed to seeing Course theory misinterpreted and taken out of context.

On a personal note: I really enjoyed this book, and I like that it gave me a feeling of having been a part of "Foundation for A Course In Miracles" while it was still housed in Roscoe, New York (it is now located in Temecula, CA). In Roscoe the Foundation had a retreat center housed in a former hotel building, that was situated on 90 beautiful acres overlooking Tennanah Lake. It seemed idealic, and I had dreamed that one day I could attend classes there (they had the capability to allow students to stay in residence for up to a year). Unfortunately, I will never know the Roscoe facilities or be a part of the community they had there. But thanks to this book, I feel as though I can vicariously live through the author's good fortune in having known the Catskills location.