The Shift

I adore the work of Wayne Dyer. It's criminal I haven't posted any of his books before now. This book is a distilled version of his previous book, Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life, which looked at the sayings of the Tao. Since I would describe myself as Taoist if forced to define myself, this is right up my alley.

In the beginning, he talks about us coming and being spirit. He then moves on to the ego and the lies it tells you. It them moves on to living to a higher purpose. All good stuff. But I found myself struggling to finish the book. No fault of the book but rather with my resistance to its call to give up on attachments. I'm not in the place yet to do that. Hopefully I'll be able to return to this book in six months and be ready for it.

Jacket blurb:

The Shift— the book that was inspired by the movie of the same name—illustrates how and why to make the move from ambition to meaning

As we contemplate leaving the morning of our life, where ego has played a commanding role, and entering the afternoon (and evening), where meaning and purpose replace ambition and struggle, we may encounter unexpected occurrences that accompany this new direction. It’s almost a universal law that we’ll experience a fall of some kind. Yet these falls or low points provide the energy we need to move away from ego and into a life of meaning and purpose.

The Shift doesn’t mean that we lose our drive and ambition; it signifies that we become ambitious about something new. We make a commitment to living a life based on experiencing meaning and feeling purposeful, rather than a life based on never-ending demands and false promises that are the trademark of the ego’s agenda.