Customer Rating:
Summary: Thinking Process and What It Means!
Comment: Easy reading and presented beautifully showing us how our thought process shapes our lives. Reminds me of another of my favorite books that deal with the same subject,Living The Secret Everyday: My Secret Workbook. Read this also.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Fluff Master at work again
Comment: I really do not like what Gregg has to say. See my other reviews on 2012 Odyssey and The Divine Matrix for more specifics. Gregg always borrows heavily from others and gets tripped up in the synthesis, this book is no different.

Let's start with the title. It sounds like another book that was already published. In fact 'Spontaneous Healing : How to Discover and Embrace Your Body's Natural Ability to Maintain and Heal Itself' was written by Andrew Weil and released in April 2000. From the beginning we see Gregg trying to ride the coat tails of a very solid book from a much more solid authority than himself. This is a pattern with Gregg. He makes statements that are fluffy (insufficiently conceived or lacking meaning) and then attempts to anchor them by closing his words with a truth or near-truth. In this case through the borrowing of the title he is attempting to pass off his words as meaningful by associating them with another, much better, book.

Greggs thesis here starts out by examining the ideas of those (Seth Lloyd, John Wheeler, John Barrow) who compared the workings of the universe to a computer program or simulation (ala Matrix). He says that the universe is a running computer program composed of bits (atoms) and that this concept of bits (polarity) has influenced, or corrupted, our entire mental programming. If we can realize that not everything is good or bad, and if we can swap our old beliefs for new ones (cosmic belief code), then everything will be better.

Since Greggs background is as a computer programmer, not a scientist, these 'facts' he generally conveys accurately. And he uses these facts as a foundation upon which to build a less certain train of thought. Through the book he ends up building up 31 Codes of belief which are an attempt to explain how the universe works.

Ok, so why would I have concerns about what Gregg has written here? This does sounds like a technically enlightened self-help book for the awakening minds of the 21st century right? Here is what I don't like and why and the reasons why Greggs wares actually prevent people from progressing on the spiritual path.

First, I don't like Greggs writings in general, and this book specifically, because he is not saying anything new. Read your favorite spiritual book by any ancient author. Pick the word of Jesus for instance and you have everything Gregg is saying here with more clarity and in a less complicated way. Check out the Sermon on the Mount or the Tao Te Ching as examples.

Second, Gregg seems here to be changing positions from his earlier works like The Divine Matrix (and the Lost Language of God) where it was emotion, not belief, which was absolutely primary to reordering your reality. In a section where he misquotes the Nag Hamadi scrolls he claims that the unification of two (specifically thought and emotion, like this is his grand discovery) will allow you to move mountains.

Third, he does not realize that when he is fitting the writings of others to his own concepts that he is often missing the core of the original quoted message. Did you realize that when Gregg borrowed the verse from the Nag Hamadi scrolls to try and prove his concept of joining thought and emotion that he missed something really, really, big? Neither did Gregg. Let me explain.

The unification of 'two' to 'move mountains' is primarily the union of polarities in general (ALL polarities), not the union of 'thought and emotion'. This is HUGE! It's a breakthrough in our orientation to the world and Gregg completely misses it! How do I know the interpretation I see is correct? Because it is repeated in other places in the same Gospel of Thomas (verse 22) Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]."

Jesus is saying that if you can look beyond polarities, of any kind, you will enter the Kingdom. Don't get stuck in male or female, good and evil, right and wrong. This single verse should have been the crux of the entire book. Gregg was so close but missed it.

My other main concern with the book is his emphasis on belief. If we change our old beliefs from being based on polarity and get a new set of beliefs then we will be ok. However, at some point on the spiritual journey you realize that beliefs are something that you lean upon, something that you believe 'in' that is still `out there'. You can believe in this or that being, this or that orientation. But until you really do away with polarities (including the world of separation of 'you' and 'everything else') you still need belief to hold you up and keep you going. The latest belief becomes the latest support that you cling to in order to give reality a sense of meaning. So what's wrong with having good beliefs?

After some advancement on the spiritual journey you realize that you can change your beliefs. But if you really progress you realize that to a certain extent belief fills in the gaps from what you know. Belief becomes this big box where you can put all the unknowns. But belief is still something `else'. The real solid spiritual foundation comes from knowing, Gnosis, not from belief.

To *know* the shepherd, reality, whatever you want to call it, is the only sure foundation in life. To know that the kingdom of the heavens is within you is the only `rock' of `salvation'. This is the Yoga of all the great saints and sages.

Belief is in the intermediate school of spiritual life. Gnosis is where there real substance starts to come in. I don't think the word Gnosis ever appears in this book. I don't quote the New Testament Paul very much but he understood the Gnosis when he wrote in Philipians 3:10 "That I may know him..." Knowing, not believing, is where it's at.

The paradox is that real faith is not based on belief. Real faith is having enough experience with *knowing* that you can actively anticipate how the unseen will unfold in your life. How? Because you have seen it before and know that you are always take care of.

And hence this book, which can only take you to beliefs, to change your old beliefs for new ones, better ones (still stuck in the world of polarities), shows me again why this author has nothing really new, or meaningful, to say.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Spontaneous Healing of Belief
Comment: Not an easy read.Was suprised this was so boring because the author is an excellent speaker.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Our Beliefs Do Shape Our World
Comment: No doubt, if you change the way you see your world...your world will change. This is a great book, well-written that brings home the important message of how and what we think and believe shapes our reality. Loved it and combined with Living The Secret Everyday: My Secret Workbookcan transform lives as you bring these principles into your life each and everyday.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A phenomenal book!
Comment: This is one of the greatest books that I have read on the subject of self-healing and spirituality. It really works. I recently experienced severe internal bleeding after a medical procedure and I stopped the bleeding by using the techniques revealed in the book. I have heard Mr. Braden speak in person and he's a very talented speaker as well as a writer.

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