Rating: 
Summary: "God, I didn't expect to run into you here!"
Review: We are living under the ancient Chinese curse of "interesting times." We spend our days fretting about one thing after another. Our state of mind has become less important than what we're doing. In this book, Hugh Prather looks at "what cleanses the mind, focuses it, and makes it whole versus what fragments it and robs it of peace and presence" (p. 36). "If more of us could experience what it is like to go through just one day with an unfragmented, unconflicted mind," he writes, "a day in which we react to all things from our own wholeness, a day in which we see other people clearly because we ourselves are clear, a day in which we are truly and deeply in ourselves, there would be no need for motivational seminars, inspirational sermons, or self-help books. We would already know reality; we would have experienced it firsthand" (p. 49).Prather is a Methodist minister who lives in Tucson, Arizona, "a city that can get above 115 degrees in the summer," he writes, "and in the last four nights we have killed ninety-three adult scorpions living in a tight circle around our house" (p.109). He covers a lot of ground in his "little book" about "healing and release" (p. 118), encouraging us to let go of "mental pollutants," "emotional fixations," misery, prediction and control, inner conflicts, honesty, "ego mind," and spiritual superiority. "A mind that lets go," he writes, "gradually returns to its inherent wholeness, happiness, and simplicity" (p. 4). "Letting go is freedom. When you find yourself in a useless battle, you merely walk off the battlefield" (p. 10). I don't read many self-help books, but I enjoyed this one. Like digging up weeds with deep roots, letting go of old attachments is hard work. Reading Prather's down-to-earth book is easier than the practice of letting go. G. Merritt
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