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Sunday, January 21, 2024

BOOK REVIEW OF AUTHOR WOO MYUNG‘S BOOK – STOP LIVING IN THIS LAND, GO TO THE EVERLASTING WORLD OF HAPPINESS, LIVE THERE FOREVER – I REALIZED WHY I HAD DIFFICULTY GETTING CLOSER TO GOD. – MELISSA R. (GOODREADS.COM / 5 STARS RATING)

BOOK REVIEW OF AUTHOR WOO MYUNG‘S BOOK – STOP LIVING IN THIS LAND, GO TO THE EVERLASTING WORLD OF HAPPINESS, LIVE THERE FOREVER – I REALIZED WHY I HAD DIFFICULTY GETTING CLOSER TO GOD. – MELISSA R. (GOODREADS.COM / 5 STARS RATING)

As a lifelong Christian, I always wanted to become closer to God. And yet, I didn’t know how, because I didn’t really understand what that meant. It’s a phrase that many people use, but I often wondered if they even really knew what that meant or if it was just me. It was almost as if there was an invisible barrier. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I’ve read the Bible my entire life to try to become closer to God, but there were still many hang ups I had on passages i wasn’t able, or ready yet, to understand. Reading this book helped put things into fresh perspective.

In one part of the book, the author writes about the stage where “a person can love his enemies.” He mentions that, “One cannot love his enemies just because he has been told to do so.” I wholly concur. He goes on to say that a person is able to “love his enemies when his consciousness becomes the land of God and when he exists in this land. At such a time, the enemies in his mind will disappear and he will be able to love them.”

That phrase shook me awoke. The enemies had been in my mind all along. Doh! Hence the phrase, “It’s all in your mind,” meaning – it doesn’t really exist. It doesn’t exist anywhere else or to anyone else. And yet it does. To me. Only to me, in my own little world. My judgments, rights amd wrongs, anger, the nonstop finger pointing and incessant blaming. Those countless, useless stories in my head. All these things lent a great helping hand to forming the enemies in my mind.

In a nutshell, he talks about the need to empty that mind and explains further. And at that moment, I realized why I had difficulty getting closer to God. There were too many enemies in my mind! If all those things were not there, there would be just nothing there. Nothing but that emptiness…that emptiness itself is God!!!

So brilliant. I feel I’ve got a ways to go until I’m where I want to be. But I’m off to a good start. This is not a light read. It’s definitely not difficult in the sense that difficult words are used. Quite the contrary. But there is depth. This book is very thought provoking.