Description

After years of spiritual study and reflection, inspirational speaker and bestselling author Wayne Dyer has emerged a highly esteemed teacher. His current message about tapping into the power of intention may sound like good old positive thinking: just stay focused on what you want, rather than focusing on the lack of having what you want. But the teaching here goes deeper than just controlling thoughts (although he does acknowledge that thought control is a surprisingly challenging and significant endeavor). This book might help readers land a better job, but it’s more relevant for those who are ready to detach from an ego-driven life filled with quick fixes of happiness and step into a more authentic, joyful, and spiritually fulfilling life. His core teachings speak to tapping into a universal source of energy that can also be called the “power of intention.” He calls people who are consciously co-creating with this energy source “connectors” and describes them as “individuals who have made themselves available for success…They don’t say With my luck things won’t work out. Instead, you’re more likely to hear something like, I intend to create this and I know it will work out.” Connectors are also committed to Dyer’s “seven faces of intention”–creativity, kindness, love, beauty, expansion, abundance and receptivity, which he speaks to throughout the book. Each chapter concludes with five suggestions for becoming stronger connectors, such as how to monitor one’s inner speech or shift out of low-energy beliefs. Some criticize Dyer for not giving credit to other teachers who offer this same message, especially Jerry and Esther Hicks (A New Beginning I) and even Ralph Waldo Emerson. It’s impossible to know whether this was a deliberate omission, but it is obvious that Dyer has tapped into a growing conversation about co-creating with “source.” Other leading-edge voices in this conversation include Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now), Shakti Gawain (Creative Visualization ) and Lynn Grabhorn (Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting). –Gail HudsonFrom Publishers WeeklyFor this very popular speaker and bestselling author of the classic Your Erroneous Zones, intention is not dogged determination, but an inner awareness “that exists in the universe as an invisible force of energy.” This conviction, gleaned from Dyer’s professional experiences, metaphysical studies and contacts with personal mentors, has allowed him to link to the force of intention and use it to enhance his life and work. For Dyer, there are seven faces, or energy fields, of intention: creativity, kindness, love, beauty, expansion, abundance and receptivity. Drawing on a variety of spiritual traditions and gurus, Dyer first describes how to surmount the barriers that may get in the way of connecting to this power, such as negative thinking, relying on the opinion of others or retaining a controlling ego. Although Dyer’s message is deeply sympathetic, his conception of the fields of insight reads like a familiar mixture of Eastern and Western philosophies wrapped up in a new theoretical package. In a chapter on living a stress-free life, for example, he recommends silently repeating the words “I want to feel good”-i.e., practicing a form of meditation-and elsewhere advises practicing detachment, a cornerstone of Buddhism. Another tactic, using forgiveness as a means to achieve peaceful relations with difficult family members, has recently found a wealth of expression. But whatever his sources, Dyer’s soothing voice and gentle prescriptions for happiness remain uniquely his own, as fans will recognize.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.