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3.96 AVERAGE
3.96 AVERAGE
What a really interesting journey. So fascinating the different paths that lead to the same place. So much in common with contemplative prayer - different language that describes the same destination. But as Richard Rohr has pointed out in several of his books - if something is true, it is true everywhere and can be found in all disciplines - psychology, poetry, science, philosophy.
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
fast-paced
Very engaging book, the story like writing makes it steer away from the expected dryness that self-help or psycology book will present. The best thing for me about the book was the scientific backing for every well known and not known technics and understandings.
The first part of the book is really great, but it i can give a decreasing graph as a review, don't get me wrong, the whole book is good, but the density of content is less when it comes to the last parts.
Easy read, interesting story. The ending was a little heavy handed in that I felt like I was being beaten by the already obvious theme of the book.
Parts of this book I genuinely loved (part 1), yet many parts that were described (in the parts 2&3) as magic were just the musing of a man using his white privilege to get ahead.
sad
medium-paced
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
DNF 60% This wasn't what I wanted, it wasn't necessarily bad just not what I was expecting. It was a blend of self help, made up memoir and a tiny bit of science. I wanted more science.
Oh wow, this was a bit of a rollercoaster ride.
So, this is basically an auto-biography of Dr. James Doty, who was raised in poverty but managed to become a neorosurgeon, lose a lot of money when the dot com bubble burst, then learnt the value of compasion and became interested in it academically.
He starts of by telling the story of how, as a child, he met a random old lady in a magic shop who promised to teach him the greatest magic of all. The first thing she teaches him is to do a body scan. Okay, so we're looking at meditation. That's great. I'm a big advocate of meditation, it's certainly helped me to live with my depression and anxiety though I tend not to look to closely at the science behind it because I honestly don't care if it's working becasue of some kind of placebo effect, it's working!
Second lesson, noteing. This is the practice of seperateing yourself from your thoughts so that, instead of investing in intrusive thoughts and seeing them as intrinsically valuable because they're your thoughts, you say to yourself "ah, anxiety" and then you let the thoughts go. In his memories, Dr. Doty learns this in the back of a magic shop from a woman called Ruth. And it's worth pausing here to talk about the falibility of human memory. I should be clear that I'm not for a second suggesting that this couldn't have happened or that Doty is insincere in his belief or in the story he's telling us. What I am saying is the curreny psychological research is making it more and more clear how fallible memory is. That, far from the model where remembering is like taking out a casette tape and playing it over and over, it's more like a process of reconstruction. Every time we take out a memory, we build it again in our heads and it's possible for that to be influenced by our beliefs and the stories we tell ourselves about our lives. Or just random circumstance. And this isn't a thing we're aware of, It's not lying. We will sincerely believe what we're saying to be a true and accurate record of events. Again, I'm not saying Doty's life didn't happen in exactly the way he narrates it here, I'm just pointing out, for later, that remembering isn't watchinga video, it's an act of meaning making.
The third lesson from Ruth is to open your heart. I've heard this refered to as loving kindness meditaiton. It's a visualisation technique where you summon a feeling of love and compassion and then apply it to someone else, perhaps someone you know but not well or someone you dislike or the whole of humanity, even. Doty, thought the book, links this in to showing compassion in real life. I'm a strong advocate for compassion. I think the greatest thing we can do for yourselves and others is show compasison and understanding. In the later chapters of the book, Doty makes a compelling case for the power of compassion. This, so far, is all good.
Then we get to Ruth's step four which is that if you visualise something you will somehow cause it to manifest in the world. that's it. You can make things happen just by thinking about them.
I have big problem with this idea. To start with, there's no mechanism by which me thinking about getting a million dollars will make it happen. Okay, the universe is vast and unknowable but that doesn't mean anything. I'm sure many of us have had sincerely held desires that have simply never come true for us. Was little me insincere in her want that christmas I wanted a baby born and didn't get one? If wanting is enough, what if your wants are in direct conflict with someone else's? What if I'm sat here trying to manifest me a million dollars and my enemy is over there trying to manifest me up some poverty? What then? Or if the thing is a scarce resource? I can visualise the origial Mona Lisa hanging in my bathroom all I want but it will never happen.
Of course, there's the argument that setting a clear goal and visualising it gives you the drive and focus to go out there and make that thing happen for you, and at places that looks like what Doty's arguing here. He didn't become a neurosurgeon through manifesting a degree, he did it by going to medican school, working hard, being steadfast in the belief that he belonged there and refusing to accept barriers that others put in his way.
At other times he straight up says he magically manifested enough money to pay the rent by thinking about it really hard for a few days.
And look, I'm not saying he isn't sincere in his belief. I'm saying I think something was going on other than his just thinking relaly hard about it. I'm saying memoriy is falible. That instead of leaving Ruth, going home, and getting a knock on the door where a man handed him enough money for three months rent, bills and food, leaving him just enough time to run back to the shop and tell Ruth that magic is real before she get on her flight and left forever, maybe something slightly less dramatic happened but, in the years of telling and re-relling the story, it's shaped itself into the perfect example of how magic is real. This perfect anecdote.
I'm also saying confirmation bias exists. Because, to be clear, Doty doesn't claim to actually get everything he visualises. He says the things he doesn't get, it doesn't get for a reason. So what's really happening here is that when something he visualises comes true, money turns up to pay rent when he's been visualising them not being evicted, he marks that down as proof. When it doesn't, he presumes that just wasn't meant to be and forgets it. Which leaves his falible human brain with a story and a lot of anecdotes where he visualised the thing and it happened and all the times he visualised the thing and it didn't happen forgotten.
There's also an element of power here. He talks late in the book about how he manifested a visit form the Dalai Lama. What he actually did was contact a colleague who had previously arranged a visit with the Dalai Lama and who put him int touch with the right person to make a meeting happen. And yes, there was something in this of his imagining a thing and going out and making it happen but there's also an element there where it happened because he had a contact who could go out and make it happen. If it were me, for example, I could visualise the Dalai Lama coming to speak at the primary school where I work until I'm blue i nthe face but it won't ever happen as I don't have any contacts that will make that happen. It's not just about the vision, it's about having the resources to pull it off. (I also think there's something to the fact that, of his siblings, the one who dragged themselves out of poverty was the straight man).
And that asside actually brings me to the last thing I wanted to rant about, the ways in which this "want it and visualise it and you'll get it"mindset is harmful. It places the failure of people who don't manifest great careers for themselves onto their shoulders. It's not that the medical system would have reacted entirely differently to a woman, or a black man, or a person with a disibility, or a queer person doing some of the outright audacious things he did like demanding an interview to get into medical school even though is grades werent even good enough to graduate, it's just that they didn't manifest it by believing in it and he did. To be fair, Doty doesn't say this. But many people do and it's the logical extension of the thought. If you can make anything happen just by believing in it enough then the only thing holding people back is them not believing in themselves and not, say, systematic racism so it's a waste of time tackling racism. Again, not something Doty says here but a logical extension of the worldview he puts forward here for some people.
So, yeah, tldr: compassion is good but I'm highly sceptical of any system that says just visualising something clearly enough will make it actually happen.
So, this is basically an auto-biography of Dr. James Doty, who was raised in poverty but managed to become a neorosurgeon, lose a lot of money when the dot com bubble burst, then learnt the value of compasion and became interested in it academically.
He starts of by telling the story of how, as a child, he met a random old lady in a magic shop who promised to teach him the greatest magic of all. The first thing she teaches him is to do a body scan. Okay, so we're looking at meditation. That's great. I'm a big advocate of meditation, it's certainly helped me to live with my depression and anxiety though I tend not to look to closely at the science behind it because I honestly don't care if it's working becasue of some kind of placebo effect, it's working!
Second lesson, noteing. This is the practice of seperateing yourself from your thoughts so that, instead of investing in intrusive thoughts and seeing them as intrinsically valuable because they're your thoughts, you say to yourself "ah, anxiety" and then you let the thoughts go. In his memories, Dr. Doty learns this in the back of a magic shop from a woman called Ruth. And it's worth pausing here to talk about the falibility of human memory. I should be clear that I'm not for a second suggesting that this couldn't have happened or that Doty is insincere in his belief or in the story he's telling us. What I am saying is the curreny psychological research is making it more and more clear how fallible memory is. That, far from the model where remembering is like taking out a casette tape and playing it over and over, it's more like a process of reconstruction. Every time we take out a memory, we build it again in our heads and it's possible for that to be influenced by our beliefs and the stories we tell ourselves about our lives. Or just random circumstance. And this isn't a thing we're aware of, It's not lying. We will sincerely believe what we're saying to be a true and accurate record of events. Again, I'm not saying Doty's life didn't happen in exactly the way he narrates it here, I'm just pointing out, for later, that remembering isn't watchinga video, it's an act of meaning making.
The third lesson from Ruth is to open your heart. I've heard this refered to as loving kindness meditaiton. It's a visualisation technique where you summon a feeling of love and compassion and then apply it to someone else, perhaps someone you know but not well or someone you dislike or the whole of humanity, even. Doty, thought the book, links this in to showing compassion in real life. I'm a strong advocate for compassion. I think the greatest thing we can do for yourselves and others is show compasison and understanding. In the later chapters of the book, Doty makes a compelling case for the power of compassion. This, so far, is all good.
Then we get to Ruth's step four which is that if you visualise something you will somehow cause it to manifest in the world. that's it. You can make things happen just by thinking about them.
I have big problem with this idea. To start with, there's no mechanism by which me thinking about getting a million dollars will make it happen. Okay, the universe is vast and unknowable but that doesn't mean anything. I'm sure many of us have had sincerely held desires that have simply never come true for us. Was little me insincere in her want that christmas I wanted a baby born and didn't get one? If wanting is enough, what if your wants are in direct conflict with someone else's? What if I'm sat here trying to manifest me a million dollars and my enemy is over there trying to manifest me up some poverty? What then? Or if the thing is a scarce resource? I can visualise the origial Mona Lisa hanging in my bathroom all I want but it will never happen.
Of course, there's the argument that setting a clear goal and visualising it gives you the drive and focus to go out there and make that thing happen for you, and at places that looks like what Doty's arguing here. He didn't become a neurosurgeon through manifesting a degree, he did it by going to medican school, working hard, being steadfast in the belief that he belonged there and refusing to accept barriers that others put in his way.
At other times he straight up says he magically manifested enough money to pay the rent by thinking about it really hard for a few days.
And look, I'm not saying he isn't sincere in his belief. I'm saying I think something was going on other than his just thinking relaly hard about it. I'm saying memoriy is falible. That instead of leaving Ruth, going home, and getting a knock on the door where a man handed him enough money for three months rent, bills and food, leaving him just enough time to run back to the shop and tell Ruth that magic is real before she get on her flight and left forever, maybe something slightly less dramatic happened but, in the years of telling and re-relling the story, it's shaped itself into the perfect example of how magic is real. This perfect anecdote.
I'm also saying confirmation bias exists. Because, to be clear, Doty doesn't claim to actually get everything he visualises. He says the things he doesn't get, it doesn't get for a reason. So what's really happening here is that when something he visualises comes true, money turns up to pay rent when he's been visualising them not being evicted, he marks that down as proof. When it doesn't, he presumes that just wasn't meant to be and forgets it. Which leaves his falible human brain with a story and a lot of anecdotes where he visualised the thing and it happened and all the times he visualised the thing and it didn't happen forgotten.
There's also an element of power here. He talks late in the book about how he manifested a visit form the Dalai Lama. What he actually did was contact a colleague who had previously arranged a visit with the Dalai Lama and who put him int touch with the right person to make a meeting happen. And yes, there was something in this of his imagining a thing and going out and making it happen but there's also an element there where it happened because he had a contact who could go out and make it happen. If it were me, for example, I could visualise the Dalai Lama coming to speak at the primary school where I work until I'm blue i nthe face but it won't ever happen as I don't have any contacts that will make that happen. It's not just about the vision, it's about having the resources to pull it off. (I also think there's something to the fact that, of his siblings, the one who dragged themselves out of poverty was the straight man).
And that asside actually brings me to the last thing I wanted to rant about, the ways in which this "want it and visualise it and you'll get it"mindset is harmful. It places the failure of people who don't manifest great careers for themselves onto their shoulders. It's not that the medical system would have reacted entirely differently to a woman, or a black man, or a person with a disibility, or a queer person doing some of the outright audacious things he did like demanding an interview to get into medical school even though is grades werent even good enough to graduate, it's just that they didn't manifest it by believing in it and he did. To be fair, Doty doesn't say this. But many people do and it's the logical extension of the thought. If you can make anything happen just by believing in it enough then the only thing holding people back is them not believing in themselves and not, say, systematic racism so it's a waste of time tackling racism. Again, not something Doty says here but a logical extension of the worldview he puts forward here for some people.
So, yeah, tldr: compassion is good but I'm highly sceptical of any system that says just visualising something clearly enough will make it actually happen.
One of the most profound books I have ever read. The book starts out strong from the very beginning. Once I started it, I could not put it down. It is definitely an emotional roller coaster, but leaves you feeling fulfilled and hopeful. I highly recommend it for anyone struggling with who they are and what they are meant to do in life...or for anyone just looking for an inspirational story.