Product Details
January 2010: Spring: Book Review in UK new-age magazine, Paradigm Shift. www.paradigmshift.infoIn this book Margaret Dempsey shares a frank and often brutally honest account of her own spiritual journey along with some essays she wrote about insights she gained along the way.
In the first part we follow her from her choice at 11 years old to go to a catholic boarding school to her first introductin to Buddhism, a trip to India her first mild kundalini experience which was followed by a much stronger and persistent experience during a meditation retreat, a second trip to India and finally her involvement with the Landmark Forum in London.
In the second part Margaret shares what she feels are the most important things she has learned on her journey. Margaret talks a lot about her challenges, doubts and confusion along the way and stresses that you don't have to be special to follow a path to enlightenment.
There is always some value in reading about other people's journey's, and a book like this will often answer questions you didn't know you had, or strengthen opinions that have already been formed. For me this
book did both'.
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Journey to Self is a record of one woman's spiritual journey through elation and despair. It is a journey of spiritual transformation, a path that is as real today as it was in the days of the great mystics and saints..... . The talk addressed the Kundalini energy that lies dormant at the base of the spine ; discusses it's purpose, and explores how to ensure that it rises naturally and safely, so that it rests in the heart, and opens it instead of remaining in the brain.
It was 1998, on a meditation retreat in Devon called 'Awakening the Heart'. Suddenly, Margaret feels a current of energy that seems to rise up deep from within the spine. It rises to the head and then falls. As a Buddhist for many years Margaret knows that there is nothing to be afraid of in the inner world. She connects fully with what is happening. The experience ends when she releases her feet from her meditation stool and surrenders to what she has called 'THE LIGHT'.
An experience that is broadly similar to Margaret's is discussed by Vanessa Graham in her book, The Hidden Path, published by Oshadi Publishers. The Oshadi Meditation Centre is at Saddlers Meadow, Henfield, West Sussex.
Here is a link to a Catholic web site, set up by a long standing friend of Ki Publishing, /www.ursulinesjesus.org Sister Hilary, the webmistress, was based in Jersey, in the Channel Islands, for many years, and was very active in establishing the island of Jersey as the first Fair Trade island. in the UK.
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Over the last twenty years or so there has been a veritable explosion of books purporting to validate this or that spiritual awakening. At best most of this literature witnesses merely to the spiritual rootlessness endemic to our time; at worst it witnesses merely to the ego inflation of the author. Like much else that is written today, Margaret Dempsey's is eclectic. What makes it different is the author's honesty and humility. Without any reliable teacher to guide her, she demonstrates an extraordinary knack for distinguishing teachings which challenge the ego from those which merely sooth it. This is a warts and all account of a woman's spiritual awakening starting from her earliest years and charting a long and difficult search. No easy answers here - rather a challenge to the reader to address his or her own experience with the same radical honesty and commitment. Warmly recommended!
Jeremy Cranswick (Gnosticism, Christianity, Theosophy & Classical Antiquity)
http://www.watkinsbooks.co.uk