Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #102685 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-04
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
We are all students in the "Earth school," according to authors Gary Zukav and Linda Francis in The Heart of the Soul. And the time has come to create a whole new lesson plan. For thousands of years we were outwardly focused as we mastered the tasks of cultivating food and building shelter. Unfortunately, we are still stuck in an outward fixation, obsessively accumulating more wealth, material objects and power. "What enabled our species to survive so long is now bad medicine. In fact, it is poison" according to Zukav and Francis. What we need now is an inward focus, in which we cultivate the heart and live in alignment with our souls.

As it turns out, The Heart of the Soul is a timely guidebook, being published shortly after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. "The pursuit of external power produces physical violence and destruction between nations. You can see this in every newscast," the authors note.

Billions of people live in poverty, are hungry, and suffer oppression, and brutality. Changing these circumstances requires our hearts. It requires the ability to feel the pain and joy of others, and to take their needs as seriously as we take our own.

And here is where the heart lessons come in. "As long as there are parts of yourself that reach outward to make you feel safe, valuable, and loved, you need to identify them and heal them." The authors include numerous exercises and suggested activities to help readers feel and understand their emotions in order to "empower the soul" and live a more rewarding and joyful existence. The words and intentions are indeed poignant and worthwhile. The numerous boxes, diagrams and passages in bold print create a self-help structure that some will find simplistic and others will find inviting. --Gail Hudson, Amazon.com

Synopsis
In this work Gary Zukav elaborates on the principles laid out in his books "The Seat Of The Soul" and "Soul Stories". He shows us how to implement these principles in our own lives, especially in developing our emotional awareness. There are helpful exercises to assist you in making a difference in your own life.

Customer Reviews

Attacks Our Insecurity and Loneliness
Zukav knows many people are lonely, are pursuing things which don't matter and are not finding contentmnt when we acquire those things. He knows we don't want to die alone, just like Eleanor Rigby of the classic Beatles tune. Zukav knows we want to matter to others and to ourselves. It is that core insecurity that sells this book. He implies he has the answer.

In "The Heart of the Soul: Emotional Awareness," Zukav mixes various religious points of view and trues to create a new paradigm. Like any self-help book, he tries to toss around a mew vocabulary to distinguish his thoughts from, say, Tolle or Myss. Zukav's book makes it sound as if he himself has invented God.

The goal presented readers is spiritual development. Why? No real reason, except for self-serving ones. Zukav leads readers into the same self-serving trap he condemns them for, only this time with a spiritual spin.

Spiritual development is a fine aspiration, but Zukav manages to pervert what this means, corrupting the message of his book into just another money-making Pied Piper-ized search for ourselves.

All the lonely people might rush out to buy this one, but I don't recommend it, not for you, or for Eleanor Rigby. Seek first the kingdom of God, but don't expect Zukov to show you the way. The answer isn't in "The Heart of the Soul: Emotional Awareness."

Anthony Trendl

Feel each emotion in the present moment
Gary Zukav's previous book set out his basic concept explaining how expansion of human perception beyond the 5 senses leads to a new understanding of power as the alignment of personality with the soul,in other words, "authentic power".

In this book, he and his spiritual partner show us the importance of emotional awareness in our own daily lives.

Developing emotional awareness is challenging and difficult because it requires becoming aware of our buried emotional pain. This book shows us how to free ourselves from our compulsions, fixations, obsessions and addictions. These include anger, workaholism, perfectionism, obsessive eating, alcohol and drug abuse and sexual addiction.

Emotional awareness - becoming aware of everything we are feeling at every moment - is one of the most challenging tasks we can undertake. As Zukav says in the book: "The longest journey that you will make in your life is from your head to your heart." That, of course, is the journey towards spiritual growth - wholeness, wisdom, compassion and healing.

The chapters on Processing Energy I found to be very helpful. Everyone's energy system has 7 centres or chakras which I had heard of before. As energy flows through each centre it creates different emotional experiences. Energy enters our system through the crown chakra and moves downwards towards the base of the torso. Then it reverses, moves upwards and leaves the energy system where it entered. It also leaves the energy system through the other 6 centres at the same time.

But, there are only 2 ways that energy can leave the system: 1)in fear and doubt or 2) in love and trust. No matter where or how energy leaves your system, it produces an emotion. Fear and doubt produce painful emotions and love and trust produce positive emotions. According to Zukav, you may think that your anger comes from an interaction with a rude person but it does not. It comes from leaving your energy system in fear and doubt. Similarly with the emotion of sorrow from the death of a friend.

The 6th centre or chakra is in your forehead between the eyes. This centre allows you to see more than the 5 senses can show you. According to Zukav this centre is becoming active within the person who is reading the book (or perhaps, I think, even you reading this).

Zukav goes through each energy centre and describes sensations and emotions associated with each.

He also goes through the many ways in which we run away through: perfectionism, vacating, boredom, idol worship, overeating etc, etc.

This book makes me think a little more deeply about my actions and, more importantly, why I act in certain ways. As a 7 year meditator I feel that I am on the right track spiritually and I now believe that certain books and teachers come to me when I need them. Sometimes if things are explained in a different way suddenly the penny drops and I feel that this has happened with this book.

Great tool to help understand yourself and others
I was always searching for tools to help understand myself and other people, also why I react the way I do to certain situations. This book has helped me see things with incredible clarity. The beginning is slow as the author needs to establish the fundamentals but then once that has been read the rest is easy and quick to read although there is a lot of homework!