Review of Talking Spirit: Essays and Inspirations
by Mankh (Walter E. Harris, III – Allbook-books.com)
You’d be hard-pressed to find a topic not included in Nowick Gray’s recent extensive collection of writings, Talking Spirit: Essays & Inspirations. In the Food For Thought department, this book is a banquet worth attending for, at the least, a taste, and at the most, a reference manual for living day-to-day in as timeless a fashion as possible.
Although not arranged chronologically, the 400 or so pages of essays, with a few poems sprinkled in, flow one to the next in a virtually seamless fashion, attesting to the writer’s editorial skills and vision. Like a mockingbird, Gray’s literary voice jumps from common sense to an artist’s soliloquy to esoterica, the mundane, current events and to personal musings about life in general and, specifically, living a fulfilling life. Talking Spirit talks to the reader, chock-full of ideas, feelings, explorations and suggestions.
Talking Spirit has many short bits worth remembering like affirmations, along with longer sections that will make you pause to think about what you think you know and don’t know. The 7 chapters are structured in a topical progression associated with the 7 chakras aka holistic energy centers of the body, so while the essay journey may wander in a myriad of house of mirrors directions, the overall framework and structure keeps the book’s messages on track.
Since many people toil at jobs they don’t like, here’s a good prompt:
“Work can then shift from an ordeal, a never-ending uphill quest to achieve more and more rewards, to a steadying practice, a calm and content surrender to the liberating force of natural activity, day by day. The hamster wheel—frenetic motion going somewhere—gives way to the prayer wheel.”
Gray shows that he is hip to the longtime manipulations of those who attempt to wield absolute power, which as the saying goes, corrupts. From a poem:
“Take nothing of civilization for granted.
It is all given, by the grace of oppression.”
But it is high time to thwart the oppression:
“The assault is the same, the mounting crimes against nature and humanity, and time has come to hold this universal predicament to the light.”
While the author relays a fair amount about his day-to-day activities and inner processes in relation to the big picture dilemmas, his musings are not presented in narcissistic fashion rather as a window into another person’s world… of which perhaps you as reader will relate. For that is what Gray wishes: “I gather these leaves before you, not as an altar to my unique or common history, but to light a small fire for your own inspiration, to warm your hands as you contemplate the course of your life, and of our pressing predicament.
“What are you called to play next, on this instrument of your life, to sound in our shared song?”
If that’s too much to ponder at the moment, you can keep it simpler with:
“The message is all around us, and in us.”
&
“All that matters is this…
What passes unspoken between you and me and
All that is.”
In simple fashion, here’s good advice for anyone’s day-to-day and/or life-planning processes:
“Think ahead.
Consider the whole.
Do what you have to do.”
That “the misinformation controlled in “news” outlets owned by a handful of media giants” continues to sway masses of humanity, makes books like Talking Spirit that much more necessary.
~ Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) – writer, editor and small press publisher of Allbook Books www.allbook-books.com
